DIY Glowing Bubbles You Can Touch
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If you’ve been here before, you may have noticed that my kids and I are big fans of bubbles. BIG fans. Check out my posts on bubbles you can touch and frozen bubbles. This week we kicked things up a notch by making GLOWING bubble solution! We lucked into a nice, non-windy evening that was perfect for blowing bubbles.
These bubbles don’t glow without a blacklight, but there are a ton of different flashlights available on Amazon. Lots of different price points, of course, but they don’t have to be very expensive. This is the one I bought, and it works great.
Here’s the recipe I used for each color of the bubble solution:
- 1 cup water (I used distilled because I had it)
- 2 tbsp dish soap (I used regular blue Dawn)
- 1 tbsp glycerin
- 1 large highlighter
You also need:
- Container to store bubble solution
- Bubble wand(s)
- Blacklight flashlight
Optional:
- White cotton gloves (so you can catch bubbles)
The first time I made this bubble recipe (without the highlighters), I used regular tap water. This time I happened to have distilled water on hand, so I used that. I don’t know that it made a difference, so I say use whatever you have.
I used a big chisel-tipped highlighter set that I had in my collection of extra school supplies. It’s a store-brand set I’ve had for ages, but here’s a set I found on Amazon. (If you try this one, please let me know if the purple one works!)
To make sure that the highlighters would work with the blacklight, I drew lines of each color on a piece of paper and then shined the flashlight on it in the dark. As you can see, only the blue was a dud. Of the four remaining colors, I decided to go with the orange and yellow. The yellow and green were similar enough that I wasn’t sure they’d look much different under the light. Someday I’d like to see what the pink and green look like, though.
Let’s make some glowing bubble solution!
Step 1: Soak the highlighter in water
To get the ink out of the highlighter, you first have to get it open. I used pliers to pry the bottom off of mine. You might need a knife for yours. Whatever you do, be careful!
Soak the highlighter guts in one cup of water. I wasn’t in any hurry since it wasn’t dark outside yet, so I let mine sit for a long time. Here you can see what it looked like right away, after an hour, and after two hours.
Step 2: Add dish soap and glycerin
Slowly mix in 2 tbsp dish soap and 1 tbsp glycerin. If you stir too quickly, your solution might get extra bubbly.
I’ve read that you should let your bubble solution sit for 24 hours, but ours didn’t sit very long before we took it outside.
Oh, and I’m guessing my orange solution turned opaque because of the blue dish soap, but I don’t know for sure. What I do know is that it did not make the bubbles look any different from the yellow solution except in color.
I should also note that I poured the bubble solution into glass jars because that’s what I had on hand and I figured it would be easier to use with the bubble wands, but I also knew I was taking a risk by using glass jars over concrete.
Step 3: Blow bubbles!
This is the fun part. My kids are old enough that I didn’t hesitate to let them blow bubbles. I’m not sure it’s possible to do this without getting splattered with bubble solution, so keep that in mind if you have younger kids. Sometimes they wanted me to blow the bubbles so they could try to catch them. Other times we blew them over the grass so we could watch them land. I was amazed by how long some of them stayed on the grass!
The gloves really are great for catching bubbles. Some of them will still pop right away, but we had plenty of them stick around for a long time. Not only did they stick around, but we could squeeze them gently. The bubble solution looks pretty cool on the gloves, too.
We blew bubbles for a long time and hardly made a dent in our bubble solution. I see lots more glowing bubbles in our future!
This was an experiment to see if the bubble recipe would hold up with the addition of the highlighter ink, and it did!
If you try it out, let me know!
