Borax Crystal Ornaments | Christmas Science

I love growing crystals. Makes sense, right? My name is Crystal. Perhaps this is why I have always been drawn to chemistry. But really, if you haven't grown crystals before you need to do it today. The results are completely awe-inspiring and gorgeous, and it's a really easy process. I have gone a bit loco crazy growing crystals since we did this science activity, as you'll see in my posts in the coming weeks. For today, we made our own crystallized borax Christmas tree ornaments and, I have to tell you, they are stunning.

Total Time: About 20 minutes to prepare and then several hours to wait for the crystals to form.

Safety Concerns: You will need to boil water for this. Just watch the kiddos!

Materials You Need:
Pipe Cleaners
Festive Cookie Cutters
String
Pencil
Mug, vase, or jar
Boiling Water
Borax

Directions:

• Bend your pipe cleaner into your desired shape. We did this by using cookie cutters as a guide as seen below.

• Tie a piece of string to your pipe cleaner shape. You can use string, yarn, or even dental floss if you want!
• Attach the string to a pencil, pen, spoon, or other long object and set aside.
• Fill your jar or vase with boiling water. Add 3 TBSP borax per cup of water and stir. It's okay if some borax settles on the bottom of your container.
• Lower your pipe cleaner shape into the hot water/borax mixture. Make sure it is not touching the sides or the bottom of your container, and that you can get it through the mouth of your container easily. Feel free to trim or bend your shape accordingly. It is fine to have two ornaments in one large container just as long as they don't touch.

• Make sure your jar is in a quiet place where it won't be disturbed. You don't want it to get jostled or bumped at all while the crystals are growing.
• After a couple of hours you will start to see crystals growing! Leave your mixture overnight for best results, or remove your ornaments after just a few hours if you just want a light dusting of crystals.
• Let your ornament dry on a paper towel for an hour or so. Then pick it up and admire it in the sunlight. Seriously, the crystals are intricate and gorgeous. You will want to grab a magnifying glass to observe them more closely!

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The thing I was most surprised at is how sturdy these are! I thought they would be delicate and fragile, but they are deceptively hardy. Also, they look edible, but they aren't. I even found myself tempted to gnaw on them. Don't do it.

Crystal science is amazing. The word crystal actually refers to any material that is arranged in an ordered form. Some crystals (like borax) are arranged into little cubes. Other crystals (like snowflakes) have six different arms. You can grow crystals from many substances including salt, sugar, epsom salt, baking soda, and borax. In most of my undergrad chemistry labs the last step was to crystallize the product so we could weigh it. I'll tell you, though, these borax crystals are much easier to grow than most of the substances we had to grow in my lab, and they are more beautiful, too!

I love the way these ornaments reflect the light on our tree. The crystals give the shapes a delicate frosty look.

And, yes, I know we have a very obviously fake Christmas tree. And, yes, I know this ought to get me kicked out of Portland and banned from ever returning. But it's still kinda pretty, right? RIGHT?!

So now you have a big box of borax. What else can you do with it? How about making some slime? Or crystallizing more stuff like I've been doing all week? Let me know what you are up to in the comments!

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DIY Window Gel Clings | Christmas/Winter

Welcome to another edition of Make Your Own Window Gel Clings! Today we are featuring Christmas and winter themed gel clings...ya know, snowmen, bells, candy canes, and stars. I can honestly say that these are my favorite window jellies we have made so far. The key? Glitter. Lots of it.

It is becoming a bit of a tradition in our household to make new gel clings for each season/holiday. We started with our spring/summer clings, which were replaced by our Halloween bats and pumpkins. Embarrassingly, those stayed up until November 29 when I finally deemed it appropriate to put up Christmas decorations. The Christmas edition may stay put until Spring. We'll see...

Making your own window gel clings is super-easy. They are even edible if you leave the glitter out. (But really, a small case of glitter-tummy never hurt anyone, right?)

Grab your favorite Christmas/winter cookie cutters and let's get started!

Total Time: About 10 minutes to prepare, 20 minutes to color, 10 minutes to cut out with some waiting time between each step

Safety Concerns: You will need to boil water for this. Just watch your kids around hot water and the resulting hot gelatin. Let it cool a bit before your kids get close.

Materials You Need:
Four cups of boiling water
Six packets of unflavored gelatin (or about 43 grams)
Food coloring and glitter of your choice
Toothpick for stirring
One large cookie sheet with a rim
Cookie cutters
Spatula

Directions:

• Add gelatin to hot water. Stir to make sure it all dissolves and spoon out any bubbles.
• Pour your mixture into the baking sheet. You want it to be about a quarter of an inch thick (½ – ¾ cm). It doesn't have to be exact, but you want it to be level.
• Once gelatin is cooled a bit (10-15 minutes), have fun dropping food coloring into the gel and swirling it around with a toothpick. Sprinkle it with glitter if you desire. You only have about 30 minutes before the gelatin starts to harden so don't dawdle!
• Let the gelatin harden for at least a couple of hours. Leaving it out uncovered overnight yields the best results.
• Once it has set use cookie cutters to cut out shapes or cut out your own shapes using a butter knife.
• Use a spatula to lift your gel shapes out of the pan. Don't worry if they tear because you can simply mold them back together on the window. Stick them to your windows and enjoy!

*Please Note: I have had some readers say their gel clings were too wet or heavy and didn't stick to the window. If this happens to you, simply leave your pan of gelatin out uncovered overnight and try again in the morning. If they are still too heavy, leave them again until the next day. Each day, water evaporates out of the gelatin, making it stickier and lighter, thus more likely to stick to your window! Also, they stick better to cold windows than to hot ones, so you may have more success putting them up in the morning when the windows are the coldest.

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I love how these window jellies catch the rare rays of sunshine during the winter. They light up our front room!

In addition to being a fun art/sensory/family bonding activity, there is great science to be learned as well! You will notice as the gelatin cools down it gets thicker, or more viscous. When the gelatin is hot the food coloring moves easily through it, but as the gelatin cools down and hardens, the food coloring doesn't mix in as well. My kids had so much fun coloring this batch that they had to rush at the end to get in all the colors and glitter before it firmed up completely!

Also watch as the days go by how the gel clings dry out. They start out squishy and plump, but within a few days they will be paper-thin plastic-y shapes on the window as the water evaporates out of them. My kids touch them every day to see how they are changing.

*This project was inspired by The Kitchen Pantry Scientist. Check out her post for more details about the science of density, diffusion, and evaporation!

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Candy Cane Play Gel | Winter Sensory Fun

Winter...Frost outside, fire in the fireplace, soup on the stove, the scents of evergreen and peppermint in the air. We are finding ourselves inside a lot more these days, grateful to be cozy and warm together. Now that it is chilly and wet outside we are finding new festive ways to play and learn inside. Last week I posted a new way to make a fun squishy sensory material called Play Gel. This week I am bringing you a festive candy cane twist on our new favorite scientific sensory material.

You can make Play Gel using one of two methods. You can either buy it in the form of Insta-Snow Powder or Sodium Polyacrylate and follow the directions on the package or you can grab a clean diaper and follow the directions in my original post. All of these products are made of sodium polyacrylate and you get the same fluffy, white, squishy, beautiful snow-like gel from all of them. Personally, I think it's more fun to rip open a diaper (plus it's less expensive!), but some people find that strange and opt to buy the powder straight.

We used two Luvs size 6 diapers and it made probably 12 cups of gel. Sodium polyacrylate is so absorbent, you could even add more water than we did. Experiment for yourself to find the consistency you like!

Once you have your Play Gel made, divide it in half. Add red food coloring to one half and leave the other half white. Drop in 1-2 drops of peppermint extract or essential oil for olfactory sensory fun, add some glitter if desired, and you are ready to go!

I arranged our Play Gel into red and white stripes so it looked (and smelled!) like a candy cane and added some red and clear jewels from the dollar store. I wish I had a Maple Leaf to set on top for a shout-out to our Canadian readers! Next time :) Then the kids dug in and PLAYED!

*This post contains affiliate links. Please see our disclosure policy.

**Play Gel is not edible, so please keep it out of reach of your babes and toddlers. Also, don't wash large amounts of it down the sink. I have a feeling this stuff is really good at clogging drains.
 

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