How to make Big Bubbles

Do you remember making big bubbles when you were a kid? In my memory, all we did was put dish soap and water in a bucket, stirred it around and instantly we were able to make giant bubbles with a coat hanger. For the life of me, I have not been able to recreate that! (Which makes me think my memory must be forgetting a few ingredients… ha!) I’ve researched bubble recipes online – there are tons – but many of them use crazy ingredients. This recipe uses simple ingredients most people have at home already!

The full, printable recipe is at the bottom of this post!

The biggest trouble I have with homemade bubble recipes is that I can’t seem to find unconcentrated dish soap. Every dish soap I see on the store shelves is either “Ultra” or “Concentrated” which makes it really difficult to figure out how much you need to use compared to the unconcentrated dish soap. That and so many of the recipes I see online use mysterious ingredients that I’d have to order online. I was super excited to try this recipe because it only uses water, corn syrup and dish soap, all of which I already had at home!

I used regular Palmolive dish soap. It says it’s “Advanced” and that it has “40% more cleaning ingredients”, so I am assuming it’s not the most ideal for bubbles, but at least it still worked reasonably well! As for the corn syrup, the recipes online called for “light” corn syrup, but that didn’t seem to be available anywhere, so I used regular corn syrup and it was no problem.

There are a few different methods you can use to make your bubble maker. We found it easiest to use straws and yarn.

Cut a piece of yarn to about 3 feet long, thread it through the straws, tie it in a knot, then stretch it out to look something like this:

As for the bubble mixture, it’s super easy. Just combine all of the ingredients in a 9″ x 13″ pan, or a small bucket –  1 cup corn syrup, 1-1/3 cups concentrated dish soap, 6 cups water. (Scroll to the bottom for the full recipe).

The corn syrup kind of just falls to the bottom of the water when you pour it in:

And the dish soap floats in the middle:

It takes a bit of effort to mix it all together.  You have to stir gently enough that it doesn’t make tons of bubbles. Eventually everything dissolves, but it took a good 5 minutes of slow stirring.

Another good thing about this recipe is that you can use it immediately. So when it’s all mixed together, just take it outside and get started! Dip your straw and yarn bubble maker into the bubble solution:

Then hold it up into the wind to make the bubbles. It works best of there’s a bit of a breeze outside, but of course, you can move your arms or walk backwards to make the bubbles too!

This next shot was from a particularly gusty wind:

This photo on the other hand, was of me running to make the bubbles. (When there’s no wind it’s a good workout!)

I wouldn’t say these were enormous bubbles, but they are definitely bigger than your average bubble! It all depends on how big you make your yarn and straw bubble maker.

You can see below that we also tried using one straw with a loop of yarn for the bubble maker. I liked that one the best. And it didn’t take long for our five year old to get the hang of it!

Then along came my husband with his bubble making contraption:

We definitely got the biggest bubbles when we did it his way. We used two 3″ pieces of straw, a 6 foot piece of yarn, with a measuring cup weighting it down at the bottom. The measuring cup wasn’t the most ideal object to use as a weight, because it filled with bubble solution when we dipped it. But you can use anything that can be tied to the string to keep a reasonable weight at the bottom.

So for that method, hold the two straws wide open, walk backwards to make your bubble and then bring the straws together to close off the loop and allow the bubble to be released.

We got some REALLY amazing bubbles with this method! We had a bit of trouble getting them to detach without popping, but they were HUGE when they were blowing through the string!

We did manage to get some of them to float away, and when we did, it was awesome! How cool are these big bubbles!?

Is this recipe perfect? No. But did it make big bubbles? Absolutely! I would say 80% of the bubbles we tried to blow worked when they were attached to the yarn, and only about 20% successfully detached. So keep in mind that it’s not 100% when you use concentrated dish soap. You may need to tweak the amount of water too, depending on the type of dish soap you use (more about that in the recipe), but you should be able to get some pretty amazing bubbles!

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4 from 1 vote

Big Bubbles

This recipe for big bubbles is so much fun!

Prep Time5 mins

Total Time5 mins

Materials

• 6 cups water
• 1-1/3 cups concentrated dish soap use 2 cups if you can find unconcentrated dish soap
• 1 cup corn syrup
• straws
• yarn

Instructions

• Combine the water, dish soap, and corn syrup in a 9" x 13" pan or bucket.
• Mix slowly until the ingredients dissolve (about 5 minutes).
• If you are having trouble making bubbles, try adding more water to the solution, 1/2 cup at a time until it improves.

Notes

There's no need to let the bubble solution sit before you use it. You can use it right away!

This recipe for big bubbles is so much fun! It uses simple ingredients, you can use it right away and it reliably makes medium to large bubbles. You probably already have the ingredients in your cupboard, and if you don’t, it’s nothing you can’t find at the grocery store. Try this the next time you are up for a fun, backyard adventure!

Source : onelittleproject.com
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