I’ll tell you How to Make Bubbles with your own homemade bubble wands and solution so that kids and adults alike can enjoy immeasurable outdoor fun!
For well over a year now I was planning on putting my awesome bubble secrets on my own blog, but since I pretty much stick to sharing delicious recipes and I don’t have a great home for anything crafty or DIY, I realized that sharing my super-secret bubble recipe with multiple uses of proven success would benefit far more people on Real Housemoms. You’re welcome!
Before I dazzle you with a ton of awesome bubble photos which will make you want to drop what you’re doing and whip up a batch for yourself, I figured I’d show you all of the ingredients that I put into my bubble solution. Every time I make it, people – we’re talking both kids and adults – just stop and stare.
Then they inevitably ask “Wow. You did that with just soap and water?” Ummm. No. If they had ever tried making bubbles with just soap and water they would know that’s a dumb question. I feel like I have perfected my recipe after making it so many times… tweaking it just a bit after each round. I started off by making a combination recipe based on two very different recipes I made online.
Homemade Bubble Ingredients
- Dawn Ultra – I used a Good-for-the-Earth dish soap once when I ran out. The conclusion was that you specifically need Dawn Ultra
- Guar gum – found in the gluten-free baking section of the grocery store
- Corn starch
- Baking powder
- Rubbing alcohol
- Glycerin – found with cake decorating supplies
If you’re missing one or two of the ingredients, try it without. It might still work. This is just how I do it and you’ll see from the results below, its pretty rad.
The other trick is in making good bubble wands. I’ll explain how to do it in the recipe box at the end of the post. The first time I made them we just used scrap wood and a nylon rope. Don’t do that. A cotton rope is what you want because it absorbs the solution. And the wooden dowels that I bought are just easier on the hands than splintered scrap wood.
The photo above is my favorite one from our most recent bubble making escapade. First off, it’s not cropped one bit. I just barely got the entire bubble and the bubble-creator in the entire frame. Plus, I just love the expression of sheer joy on everyone’s faces.
This photo above makes me smile because I captured it just as the massive bubble was beginning to pop. These bubbles are so big that half your photos will be of them popping mid-bubble and that’s just plain fun. The glycerin helps them hold their shape as they disappear into nothing.
The real trick with these bubbles is keeping the little ones from popping them right away. We had to come up with a game called “1,2,3, POP” just to ensure the bubble maker had the freedom to at least try. It’s similar to placing a big chocolate ice cream cone in front of a hungry kid on a hot day and telling them to wait before they can lick it.
Kids of all ages can make these bubbles. If they can walk, a bubble shall be made. The best scenario is when there’s a slight gentle breeze and all you have to do is dip your bubble wand in the solution and then open up the sticks so that a nice triangle is formed – the breeze does the rest. When the air is still, however, all you have to do is walk backward.
Bubble making works at different temperatures, too. In the photos above, it was pretty warm out. In the photos below, taken when we were camping (or rather, “glamping” because we were in cabins), it was chilly enough to require jackets. Do you see the bubble serpent? Scary bubble.
Just so that you have a frame of reference, the little girl in the photo below is just about 4 feet tall. I measured the length of the bubble based on her height and it equates to 20 feet in length… and she wasn’t even done.
Don’t think this is just for the kids, either. The adults love making giant bubbles just as much as the kids do!
The bubble below was one of my favorites. It started off as a super long bubble and then divided itself into three separate bubbles. One of them just kept floating up over the campground at heights of a good 100 feet and seemed to float forever before a tree finally popped it. Pretty cool, eh?
Ingredients
Bubble Solution:
- 1 cup Dawn Ultra dish soap
- 1/4 cup corn starch
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon guar gum
- 1 teaspoon alcohol
- 1 teaspoon glycerine
- 12 cups very hot water
Bubble Wands:
- 6 wooden dowels found at JoAnns
- 10 yards cotton rope found at JoAnns
- 3 heavy washers
- 6 eye hooks
Instructions
To make the bubble solution:
- In a very large container, mix together all ingredients except the water. Ensure all of the powder is fully incorporated.
- Get tap water flowing as hot as possible and add hot water to soap solution 2 cups at a time. Stir the solution to fully mix but try not to over mix such that you create bubbles.
- You can use it immediately or save for future use.
To make the bubble wands:
- Screw an eye hook into the end of each dowel.
- Cut the rope into three 10 foot pieces. This is a good length for adults. If you're making a wand for a child, you might want to cut 1-2 feet off the length.
- String a washer onto the rope and then thread it through two of the eye hooks. Tie a knot to secure. In other words, when the dowels are held out, you want the rope to make a triangle with the eye hooks in the top two corners and the washer as the bottom corner (see dipping photo above).
To make your giant bubbles:
- Fully submerse rope into solution. Lift straight up and allow the excess solution to drip off back into the container.
- Pull dowels apart from each other such that rope forms a triangle shape. Either let the breeze blow the bubble or walk backward. Close the dowels together to close the bubble. Proceed to pop the bubble! Repeat.
