DIY Bubble Soap and Wands — make your own summer fun with homemade bubble solution and wands! Simple fun for both kids and adults.

DIY Bubble Soap and Wands

Who doesn’t love blowing bubbles? Kids of all sizes and ages love bubbles, whether blown with your basic plastic bubble wand or your fancy-schmancy Lawrence Welk-esque bubble machine. Bubbles are just fun, period.

But the part of bubble-blowing that’s not great is how quickly one flies through the bubble solution. Accidents happen, bubble machines go haywire, and bottles get tipped. It happens … comes with the fragile bubble territory. And how many times do those teeny-tiny wands go missing, leaving a bubble-blower without their essential tool?

This post solves both those problems: Make your own bubble solution AND your own bubble wands! Problem solved my friends!

I’ll be honest … I tried a couple of bubble recipes before settling on this one, which was my third different batch. The first two batches worked okay for little bubbles, but not to make the fun kind that bounces off blades of grass instead of being popped by them nearly instantly.

I hadn’t planned on making our own wands till my oldest mentioned she couldn’t find their usual stash of plastic wands of every size and shape. After my initial eye-roll about the wands being MIA, I decided they could make their own wands instead and it really worked out great — all done with items you’re likely to have on hand already.

 

 

For the wands, all you need are some pipe cleaners and cookie cutters in basic shapes (we used a star and a heart since they were easy to mold). Just mold the pipe cleaner around the cookie cutter and twist it off with the remaining pipe cleaner (excess becomes the handle).

We used both the standard fuzzy pipe cleaners and the ones with the more metallic look and feel. Surprisingly, the metallic ones worked best since the fuzzy ones absorbed a LOT of the solution and wasted a lot of it by dripping off. But they were still pretty. 😉

And while we didn’t do it this time, as a kid I was taught to make your own wand by lacing string or yarn through two straws, then tying off the string once laced through. The straws become your handles and you dip the string into your bubble tray (a shallow tray or pan works well). You can make HUGE bubbles this way!

 

 

As you can see from the pictures, we had a blast. My girls squealed with delight when they got big, bouncy bubbles and when they were able to catch a bubble for a few seconds before it burst — not at all like the usual mixtures!

 

 

But I will warn … these are best blown outside, where both the soap and corn syrup will do less damage from any residue left behind; any bubble “pops!” that occurred on patio furniture I wiped off with a damp rag just to be safe.

Looking for other fun ideas? Here’s some!

DIY Fairy Lanterns

DIY Water Bottle I-Spy Game

Yield: 2.5 cups

DIY Bubble Soap & Wands

Print

DIY Bubble Soap and Wands — make your own summer fun with homemade bubble solution and wands! Simple fun for both kids and adults.

Materials

Bubble Soap

• 2 cups distilled water
• 1/2 cup Palmolive dish soap (NOT ultra/concentrated)
• 1/8 cup light corn syrup

Wands

• Pipe cleaners

Tools

Bubble Soap

• Container with lid.

Wands

• Cookie Cutters

Instructions

1. Pour water into container.
2. Slowly add dish soap and corn syrup.
3. Stir gently to keep bubbling inside bottle at a minimum.
4. Allow to sit for an hour or so — the longer, the better.
5. FOR WANDS: Mold the pipe cleaner around the cookie cutter and twist it off with the remaining pipe cleaner (excess becomes the handle).

Notes

As noted above, do not use ultra/concentrated dish soap.

Be cautious of sharp ends on pipe cleaners.