Homemade Bubbles, Wands and Blowers

I did this as a guest post earlier this summer over at HomeSpun Threads as part of Aimee's Summer Soiree. There were tons of posts, full of ideas of how to fill the summer days with your kiddos. I thought I would repost this here for those of you that missed it earlier this summer.
I will show you how to make your own bubbles, wands and blowers at home, for a fraction of the price you pay at the store! And it's fun, I promise. My boys had a blast helping me make the bubbles and wands, and had even more of a blast playing with them! Okay, let's get started!

Homemade Bubbles, Wands and Blowers

You will need:
1 gallon plastic jug (recycled from your gallon of milk or water)
2/3 cup of Joy dish soap
2 1/2 Tablespoons of liquid glycerin (found in health and medicine area of Walmart or any other drug store)*
plastic straws
string
plastic bottles (recycled juice or water bottles)
*you can substitute Karo light corn syrup for the liquid glycerin if you can't find it

Directions:Measure your dish soap and glycerin in a measuring cup. Pour into your plastic jug.
Fill the jug with water. Let the suds at the top subside (I let the water help push some of them out of the jug and into the sink). Cover the jug and shake really well. My boys had fun taking turns shaking.
To make your own bubble wands, cut straws in various lengths and make any shape you like. We did triangles, diamonds and squares.
Insert string into the center of each straw to string the straws together into your shape.
Tie a knot to secure, and cut off any excess string. If your string frays at the ends, you can use a lighter to melt the ends to prevent fraying. Make sure an adult does that step.
To make your own bubble blowers, cut the tops off of recycled juice or water bottles. You might have to poke the center of the bottle with a knife to get an opening, and then use kitchen scissors to even the cut all around. You can make these any length you want. We cut ours pretty short. Again, this step is for adults.
We used a couple smaller water bottles, and one big water bottle. Now we are ready to play! Head outside with your homemade bubbles, wands and blowers.
Pour some of your homemade bubbles into a tray or pan (an old round cake pan works perfectly).
Dip your straw wands into the solution...
And blow!
How cool is that?
You can also wave the straw wand around, instead of blowing. You will get longer bubbles this way.Try out those bubble blowers too! See how big you can make a bubble. Moms are allowed to play too, you know.
The big bubble blower was pretty cool.
Making homemade bubbles, wands and blowers is so easy and super fun! Now go raid your recycle bins and have a great summer!
All the pictures in this post were taken by Travis Sharkey. You can check his blog here.