Bubbles Bubbles Everywhere!

I'm not sure what our infatuation is with bubbles, but what kid does not like blowing bubbles?? Or adult for that matter? I know my children love blowing bubbles, and in fact, when they went outside to play today, Jennah instantly said, "Mom, I want to blow bubbles!"  And my response was, "perfect!", because today was the day that I was going to construct the Big Bubble Wand!


I remember being a kid and my parents bought this particular bubble wand that had two handles and some rope in between.  We'd spend hours trying to make the biggest bubbles we could without them popping, so I wanted to do that with my kids.


Once again, I'm glad that I found the instructions on Pinterest, although, I knew it would be easy to find the instructions online.

For the actual wand - you need FOUR things. 
                          
                   * Two Dowels (5/8 - 1/2 inch wide & 24-36 inches long)
                   * 2-4 small washers
                   * 2 eye screws
                   * String - I used my cotton yarn.  You want it about the
                             thickness of yarn, maybe a tad thicker.  


 - Drill a hole in the center of one end of each dowel.  Screw the eye screw in each dowel as shown below.

Next, cut two pieces of string - one longer than the other.  The directions called for one piece 100 inches and the other 70 inches.  I'm not sure how long my strings were, but I know they were less than each called in the directions.  The idea is to have one really long string and one shorter.  

Put the washers on the longer string, then take one end of each string and tie those two ends to one dowel/eye screw.  Then, take the other two ends of the strings and tie them to the other dowel/eye screw.  When you pick the two dowels up and hold them apart from one another, the string will make a large happy face shape. 

Now you need Bubble Solution

    For REALLY big bubbles, you need a concentrated solution.  These are the ingredients for the solution:

                          *12 cups of purified water

                          *5 cups of unscented/uncolored dishsoap

                          *1/2 cup glycerin

This is the set of ingredients found on the site that I used (http://tatertotsandjello.com/2010/08/summer-project-make-giant-bubbles.html) - BUT - that seemed like ALOT of solution, and I just used regular blue Dawn dishsoap, and I only had 2 1/2 cups, so I halved the recipe.  (And after blowing bubbles for more than 1/2 an hour, I still have almost all of the solution - so I would suggest making the half batch.)

When we got outside and started blowing bubbles, we noticed that the bubbles were popping fast, so I just added more glycerin, gave a gentle stir, and the bubbles were perfect!  It's amazing how much better bubbles are with glycerin!!!  

Dip the string in the bubble solution.  I leave the string all together as I pick it up from the bucket, then, I open the string up and either let the gentle breeze blow the bubble, or move the wand to create a bubble!  

Sorry the pics aren't great - it was hard to blow bubbles
AND be the photographer.

The kids were amazed at how big the bubbles were.  It was, once again, so much fun to see their faces of excitement seeing the bubbles.  Then, they were aggravating me, because I was trying to create the biggest bubbles that I could - and they kept popping them!  LOL  Once I told them to stop popping the bubbles, they weren't interested as much, and decided to go play on the swing set, returning now and again for the really BIG bubbles.  What did I do??  Well, I kept blowing bubbles!  

This is one of the bubbles that escaped the children
from popping it!  It was as tall or a bit taller than Kylee!
Lots of fun!