Greetings, lovely Iggle Campers!! Gillyweed here, with another craft challenge just for IGGPPCamp! Last year, I posted a new craftastic challenge every day, and this year, I’m doing it again! I decided to go with some simpler crafts this time around, with hopes that more lovely folks join us this year!
On to day four – Borax crafts! Borax comes in such a big box I thought it only appropriate to give two options for crafts today! First, slime!
Here’s what you’ll need:
- Two largish bowls (larger than a cereal bowl)
- Measuring cup/spoon
- Water (1 cup plus ½ cup)
- 1 teaspoon Borax (Found in the laundry aisle at Walmart and other stores)
- 4 ounces Elmer’s glue
- Food coloring and/or glitter to color (optional – I’ve made uncolored slime before, which is a nice crisp snow white)
First, add 1 cup of water (I use hot tap water) to one bowl, and mix in your Borax. (I only just noticed I used 1 tablespoon instead of a teaspoon… the ingredients call for only a teaspoon, but using the tablespoon obviously didn’t mess up my slime or else I would have noticed when I made it. Perhaps using the correct teaspoon results in an even slimier slime?)
In your second bowl, mix your ½ cup water with your glue, food coloring, and glitter. I used 6-8 drops of purple food coloring, which gave me a nice color and that pile of glitter? Not near enough glitter to really be noticeable in the slime.
Mix that bowl thoroughly.
Now drop your borax water in to the glue bowl.
And use your hands to pull and gather the clumped up gooey goop.
Take gooey goop and knead with your hands until it’s no longer sopping wet and sticking to your fingers.
And there you have your slime! Have fun!!
Extra note:
Out of curiosity, I also decided to try this with 4 ounces of Elmer’s classic glitter glue as well.
The result is more of a putty-like quality than a slime. I’m assuming it has to do with the fact that this glitter glue is clear and not the opaque white, cheap Elmer’s glue. Of course, I also used the tablespoon in this mix as well, so perhaps this ends up being more like slime if I followed directions. (But I used the tablespoon in the above purple slime too!) Either way, be prepared that the clearer glues won’t quite slime the way the white one does.
Moving on to Borax craft number 2: Bouncy balls!
What you need:
1: Two empty cups (bowls will work too!)
2: Measuring spoons
3: 2 tablespoons Water (hot tap water)
4: ½ teaspoon Borax
5: 1 tablespoon corn starch
6: 1 tablespoon Elmer’s Glue* (Pictured is the cheap white stuff, but hold your horses, this works better with the clear glues!)
7: Food Coloring and/or glitter to color (optional)
In the first cup, mix your ½ teaspoon of Borax in to the water. (notice I’m using the correct measurement for this one.)
In the second cup, mix your glue, cornstarch and coloring.
Pour cup one in to cup two and let sit for 10-20 seconds, then stir. It’ll get difficult to mix, you might have to scoop the contents out in to your hand and knead it a bit.
Roll in to a ball and done!
Extra notes:
These bouncy balls are not comparable to the ones you get from a gumball machine – these ones don’t bounce nearly as high. It’s just fun to make yourself. 🙂
And again, I attempted this recipe with the glitter glue and the bouncy ball result actually worked way better than the plain white glue one.
Kinda skin colored, yeah? HAHA
So, out of curiosity and because I happened to have random amounts of glue lying around, I made two more bouncy balls. The top ball and the green ball are both made of white Elmer’s glue, the peachy pinkish ball is the glitter glue, and the white one on bottom is plain clear Elmer’s glue.
The glitter glue and the clear glue bouncy balls bounced a lot higher than the white glue. So I’d recommend using the clear glues!
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s challenge and that you give it a try yourself! If you do, an achievement awaits!! Enter campersgetcrafty4 to get IGGPPCamp Challenge Achievement #4, and please don’t forget to share your pics via twitter and hashtags #IGGPPCamp and #IggleCC!
ooh Iv made these with my daughter. Its so much fun! we kept them in the fridge to help them get less sticky. If it gets too sticky add more borax. Also liquid starch works great to make them if there isn’t any borax.