How to create colored bubbles

– our picks from Amazon for this project:

Popped Bubble Art

I’ve done this activity with my kids a few times now and it never fails to fascinate them – and me! Simply color bubble mix with food coloring and blow bubbles onto paper – as the bubbles land and pop, they create beautiful works of art. It goes without saying that this project is best done outdoors. A great one for those lazy summer afternoons.

Project Info

• Bubble Mix
• Bubble Wands
• Food Coloring
• Paper

Step 3

1. Pour 1 tablespoon of bubble mix into a small, shallow bowl.
2. Add a few drops of food coloring to the bubble mix and stir well
3. Place your bubble wand in the colored bubble mix, remove and blow bubbles towards your paper.
4. As the bubbles hit the paper and pop, they will leave interesting patterns. Repeat with other colors.

Tips

1. Caution: Food coloring will stain surfaces and clothing. Be sure to protect both!
2. This activity can be frustrating on a windy day – as the wind makes it hard to get the bubbles to hit the target paper!
3. You can use any bubble mix from the store for this project (the little plastic bottles with wands in the lid work fine) – or you can make your own using one of these recipes: Recipe 1: 2 cups warm water. 1/3 cup dish soap. 1/4 cup corn syrup. Recipe 2: 4 Tbsp tap water 1 Tbsp concentrated dish soap – dishwashing liquid soap 2 Tbsp sugar Recipe 3: 2 cups hot water 1/4 cup dish soap 1 (.25 oz) packet gelatin 2 tablespoons glycerin

✶✶✶✶✶ 2 review(s)

✶✶✶✶✶ What Bubble Mix By HappyMomma – April 24

✶✶✶✶✶ Bubble mix By jobiehowell – April 6

Could you share the bubble mix recipe used?

How To Create Art with Colored Bubbles

Put your kids in their oldest clothes, grab the materials listed below and head outside for some bubble-art fun. Your kids will love to watch the colored bubbles as they float in the air—and also when they pop on the plain paper! Painting with bubbles makes this bubble art craft twice the fun!

What You’ll Need

Old newspaper
Plain paper
Small plastic containers (one per color)
Dishwashing liquid
Liquid food coloring
Bubble wand
Cover a work surface with a thick layer of old newspapers.
Place plain paper on the work surface.

Pour one inch of dishwashing liquid into each small plastic container. Add ½ teaspoon liquid food coloring to each container, using a different color for each.

Stir the liquid with a bubble wand to mix the color, making sure to rinse the wand between colors.

Dip the bubble wand into one container and blow bubbles toward the plain paper. Hold the container under the wand to catch any drips.

Keep blowing the bubbles onto the paper until it’s about half-filled with the popped-bubble decoration.

Rinse the wand and blow colored bubbles of another color. Keep blowing bubbles or changing colors until you’re happy with how the paper looks. Then set the paper aside to dry—and start with a new piece.

Extend the Fun

Younger kids: Talk about bubbles with your child. Where do you normally see or play with bubbles? How are these bubbles the same as, for example, bubbles in the bath? How are they different? If your child is interested in bubbles, ask the children’s librarian at your local library for some nonfiction and fiction books about bubbles.

Older kids: Help your child brainstorm ways to use this paper. Is there a journal or book that needs a cover? A gift that needs wrapping paper? Maybe your child can fold the paper into quarters and use it as a greeting card.

Colored bubbles arise after 15-year quest

For inventor Tim Kehoe creating a bubble with a single color that won’t stain when it pops has been a 15-year, $3-million obsession.

Zubbles.com
July 10, 2009, 4:05 PM UTC / Source : Discovery Channel
By By Eric Bland

Shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, bubbles are a joy to children young and old. For inventor Tim Kehoe, however, creating a bubble with a single color that won’t stain when it pops has been a 15-year, $3 million obsession. Two weeks ago, the world’s first colored, non-staining bubbles, Zubbles, went on sale.

A lot of people “said that you just can’t color a bubble,” said Kehoe, “which is discouraging when that is exactly what you are trying to do.”

The use of bubbles for entertainment purposes was first recorded about 400 years ago. Today, bubbles are arguably the world’s most popular toy, with more than 200 million bottles of bubble solution sold annually.

The simple chemistry of bubbles — two layers of soap sandwiching a layer of water about a millionth of an inch thick — has foiled virtually every attempt to modify them. Bubbles that last a little longer or can be blown a little bigger have since been created, but adding color, what some toy manufactures have called the “holy grail” of toys, has remained frustratingly elusive.

Standard food coloring or dyes have no effect; they simply run down the sides of the bubble, creating a drop of color on the bottom. Other dyes can stain bubbles, but when they pop they also stain clothes, dogs and eyes, as Kehoe discovered during one accident. Other tests, including one for a bubble dye that washed out, didn’t fare much better.

“I thought a washable bubble was a great idea,” said Kehoe. “But the kids (of a large focus group) were covered head to toe in red dye. It looked like a scene from Braveheart.”

Eventually Kehoe and his colleagues found the three different classes of dyes that produce intense, vibrant and uniform colors. Originally, it took three days to produce what would eventually become Zubbles, but now it takes about 30 minutes.

Once a bubble pops, the dye fades in 15 minutes on virtually every material imaginable: concrete, leather, nylon, cotton and paint. Even easily stained material like silk remain unstained 15 minutes after a Zubble touches them.

Right now, consumers can only buy blue and pink bubbles, although Kehoe says that he can create bubbles of any color.

Kehoe won’t say which dyes he specifically uses for the colored bubbles, but in a 2005 patent application Kehoe listed chemicals such as alkyl metal sulfate and polyether.

Kehoe also lists several other uses for the colored bubbles in the patent application, including plastics, soaps, shampoo and many others.

That’s optimistic, says Cyril Isenberg, author of the The Science of Soap Films and Soap Bubbles and a professor at the University of Kent. Isenberg doesn’t think that non-staining colored bubbles will have any market value outside of a child’s toy.

Still, the children’s toy market is a huge and lucrative one, and even if colored bubbles don’t have the success of their iridescent cousins, it was time well spent to Kehoe.

“It’s a good feeling after 15 years to see colored bubbles become reality,” said Kehoe. “After eight years, you think, ‘What am I doing this for?’ but I am absolutely glad I stuck with it.”