grow a crystal heart

we have been growing borax snowflakes for years. they are fascinating to watch. you can almost see the crystals growing! they are equally dazzling when they are finished and we hang them to shine and sparkle above our nature table.

this year we gave it a little valentine's twist and i love how these crystal hearts turned out! here's a brief recap so you can make some, too. great last minute valentine's as they take only a few hours to crystallize.
you will need borax, wide mouth glass jars, pipe cleaners, and hot water. if you wish to color yours, you will need a coloring agent, too. we happen to be a house free from food coloring so we used our watercolors and it worked wonderfully.

borax is a laundry booster and is labeled *all natural* but please use caution when working with children. mine never touch the borax and we work in a ventilated room just to be safe.
to make the heart shape, first fold your pipe cleaner in half.
now twist the two ends of the pipe cleaner together and pull them down into a heart shape.
tie a string around your heart and tie it to a pencil. this will rest on the lip of the jar, suspending your heart in the borax solution. set it aside and put some water on to boil.
when you have poured hot water into your jar, begin to pour in borax powder. stir, stir, stir. continue adding borax until it will no longer dissolve. we are very unscientific in this process and just keep adding until the powder starts to gather on the bottom.at this point we added color. we usually have some primary watercolors already mixed up so we squeezed it into the jars. we added varying amounts in each jar to produce different shades of pink and red.

i had some beet juice concentrate in my freezer waiting for a dye project. we tried some of that too but it reacted with the borax and turned brown! of course you could use food coloring here, too.
aren't they lovely? we used all sorts of ribbons to hang them.i wish my camera could really capture the sparkle of these crystals!we found a budding branch on the side of the road and brought it home. i hung it over our dining table and our hearts and our valentine fairy now dance above our heads.yesterday we did some more experimenting. we did one with epsom salt (red), one with borax (purple) and one with sugar (clear with read pipe cleaner). only the borax has produced crystals for us so far. the other two are still on our table under observation.here's a peek at the borax heart after only a couple of hours.i can't wait to see what this one does! from what i've read, the sugar solution can take several days to make crystals. i think this heart will be spectacular with the red pipe cleaner inside the white crystals.

have a wonderful weekend and happy heart crafting! i have a make up birthday party to get ready for......