Tutorial: How To Make Borax Snowflakes

Written by Sara Lillestol for her blog, Magical Mama Blog.

You can follow her on Facebook and Instagram!

How To: Make Borax Snowflakes

I’m from the beach cities in Southern California, so growing up, my Christmases were never white.

Every year at Christmas, I would hang up the sparkly snowflake ornaments in windows and even went as far as stringing lights and fishing line along the ceiling of the hallway and hanging snowflakes from there… I was determined to have “snow” for every Christmas!

Even though I finally live where there is a bit of snow, I still adore hanging my snowflakes up every year!

Now, in addition to my regular sparkly ornaments, I’m adding in Borax snowflakes!

These are easy and fun to make and they have a 3D rock-candy type of texture that really catches sparkles!

Here’s what we need:

Box of Borax

Pipe Cleaners

Straw (or pencil or chopstick, etc.)

String

Pot

Water

Glass Jars

Head out to the store and grab your Borax in the laundry aisle and some Wintery colored pipe cleaners in the school or craft section.

Chop up pieces of pipe cleaners and let the kids run wild twisting and connecting them into snowflake shapes.  Attach a length of string to your snowflake and secure the other end to a pencil, straw, or wooden spoon.

Cooking Time

Bring 2 cups of water to a boil and mix in 1/3 cup Borax in.  Note: it will fizzle up when you add it… don’t worry, your pot won’t overflow!  Let cook until dissolved (2ish minutes).

Pour your solution into a glass or jar, submerge your designs and rest the pencil or chopstick on the top!

Confession: I tried doing multiple designs at once in the pot…don’t try this.  These did not turn out as gems!

For each design (or two small designs), make their own batch of boiled borax water and give them their own jar.

Though this may sound like a lot of work, it is an incredibly fast process, it’s not very wasteful, and it’s incredibly cheap! (A regular 65 oz box of Borax is about $3.)

While the kids are making their designs, you can boil each batch and pour them into jars so the designs can go right in.

For best results, your designs should be fully submerged, vertical, and you want to avoid them touching each other or the sides or bottom of the jar.

Magical Science Stuff

Let sit overnight and watch their faces the next morning!  This is a fun little science experiment for them to bring up in class!

There was no way for me to capture the incredible sparkle that these things make!  Think of the inside of a geode rock, how every angle sparkles when lights hit it.

Hang them on the tree, in a window, or lay them out on a table runner as a centerpiece.

Happy crafting and Happy Holidays!