How to Make Sparkly Cyrstal Leaves, Shells, and Twigs!
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A Brief History Behind the Craft:
Years ago, I tried making crystal flowers by dipping real flowers into a borax solution. That didn't work very well because the hot water caused the flowers to instantly wilt. So I ended up growing crystal on artificial flowers. (You can read about the results here: Borax Crystal Flowers.)Recently, I found this really fun blog called Stuff You Can't Have. Catherine does a lot of experimenting with art materials. I peeked at her crystallization experiments and I was inspired to try growing crystals on hardier natural items. Plus, I was pumped to make more things super parkly after our mini crystal sculptures turned out so cute.
Materials Needed:
- Borax
- Hot Water
- Containers
- String
- Pencils/ Skewers
- Scissors
- Hardy natural items that won't disintegrate or wilt in water (sticks, waxy leaves, seeds, and egg shells- flowers probably won't work because they're just too delicate, unless you try growing crystals on fake flowers )
Let's Grow Crystals on Leaves, Sticks and Egg Shells!
1. Boil a bunch of water and pour it into a plastic or glass container.2. Try to dissolve as much Borax as you can into your hot water. (Keep mixing and dissolving until the Borax on the bottom of the container no longer dissolves. Congratulations! You've just made a supersaturated solution!)
3. Dip your items into the solution by
- tying them to skewers and suspending them from skewers into your hot borax-filled solution
- letting them float or sink inside the solution
(to make our colorful eggs: we floated them opening-side up and added a bit of food coloring to the water too)
Leave your items for several hours (or overnight) voila! Sparkly Crystal Nature!
Doesn't it look like Jack Frost visited us in July? Super cool.
More Ways to Grow Crystals:
