April Fools' Day Portable Milk Spill

Happy April Fools' Day! I've never been one to do practical jokes but this one from Instructables seemed easy enough (and not life-threatening, like some "jokes" out there). It's easy enough for any kid or kid at heart to make, it's portable, and scary enough to look realistic but not so scary that you'll need a defibrillator on hand.


All you need are four things:

#1 - A piece of glass (which I took from a picture frame)
#2 - Elmer's glue
#3 - A bar of soap
#4 - A knife

First, coat one side of your glass with soap. The soap will act as a lubricant and will make it easier to remove the "spill" once it dries.

Next, draw out your "spill" with the glue. The thicker the spill, the easier it'll be to come off once it's dry. I tried not to make it too cartoony (which is hard because you don't want a blob but you want it to look realistic), however size and variance is completely up to you.

And then, the waiting game. I let mine dry overnight because after 7 hours, it was still sticky.

Once it's completely dry, use your knife to poke the sides and peel it off the glass.

If your spill is not completely dry, then it's going to stick to the glass and you'll end up having a big hole in the middle. Lesson learned: be patient!

However, if you did it correctly, you should be able to place it on top of anything valuable - keyboards, laptops, iPads, your kid's homework... whatever will look the most realistic! Have fun and be prepared to face the consequences... like payback!

TOTAL COSTS: $5
$2.99 for Elmer's glue from Michael's
$2 for IKEA picture frame glass
X-acto knife and hotel bar soap already on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 5 minutes + overnight (and then some if need be!)

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 1 out of 5
I've never been one to be a.) patient or b.) good at practical jokes so I'm not surprised with this outcome. However, if you're patient, you should be able to pull this off with flying colors!

Homemade Bath Crayons... Or So They Said...

I saw these on Pinterest and thought they would be fun for any kid to have during bath time (or any adult for that matter!). Seemed simple enough:

1 bar of Ivory soap
Food coloring
Warm water

Shred soap into containers or
measuring cup

Soap will collect under grater!

So I got to work! The original post says 1C of shredded soap but 1 bar is practically 1C (maybe a liiiiitle more) so just grate the entire bar. Note that yes, your grate will be covered in soap (see right) and may cling to the back, so be sure to shake it out. If you want to skip a step, you could grate the soap into the containers you're going to use to add the food coloring, but it might get a little messy.

Once shredded, and divided into the containers you'd like to use, add the food coloring. I didn't know how much to add so I did 10 drops for each color.

Separate into containers

Now here's where I think I messed things up, so take note. It didn't say how much warm water to add so I just added a 1-2 second amount to each container, which was too much because it was very watery. The only one that didn't end up be watery was the red soap (I guess I had more soap in that container than the others!), so I was able to mold that into a heart. The others I decided to transfer to an ice tray and stick in the freezer for a while, to become a bit more solid.

So remember: keep a very watchful eye on how much water you add. It should be less than you think it needs, and mold the soap from there!

After 30 minutes, I tried the molded soap I left out (red) and while it worked, per se, it started falling apart in my hands.

After an hour and 10 minutes, I took out one of the soaps from the ice tray:

And I tried to draw on the tiles... yeah, apparently when they're cold, it's like writing with ice cubes. What's that M&M saying? "Melts in your mouth, not in your hand"? Well, the slogan for these would be, "Barely gets on the tile, falls apart in your hand."

So moral of the story is: if you're going to try these, don't expect it to look like the photo, prepare for a bit of a mess, and use very little water when molding the soap! Your kids will still have a blast with it... as long as it doesn't fall apart before they can get their hands on it!

TOTAL COSTS: $2.69 
$2.69 for a 3-pack of Ivory soap from Vons
Already had food coloring on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 20 minutes (or 2 hours if you stick the in the freezer!)
5 minutes to grate soap
15 minutes to put in containers, add color and water, and form

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 2 out of 5
You just want to keep an eye out for how little water you add to the mixture. Other than that, you should be good to go! Let the kids help make the molds and have fun!

Holiday Soaps

I wanted to do a project that would a.) get men/boys interested and b.) stick with the Halloween theme. After seeing this post by Jourdan Crouch Fairchild on CountryLiving's website, I figured I'd run to Michael's and give it a try. I've never made soap before but it can't be that hard, right? And if I add some creepy crawlers inside the soap, how cool would that be??

First off, I had no idea there are so many different kinds of soaps you could buy! And honestly, I picked the Higher Temperature Glycerin Soap primarily because of the price (it was the cheapest for the amount provided - $11.99 for 2lbs. or 8 soaps total). As to whether or not that was the best choice, we shall see.

Next, I knew I needed to put the melted soap into some sort of a mold. "How many should I get?" I asked my husband, who was a saint for being there in the first place but definitely wasn't interested. I went with a pack of 3 by the same company (ArtMinds), figuring that'd be a good place to start. I can always reuse them. Too bad only 2 out of the 3 survived (more on that later).

Ok, so we've got soap, we've got molds, now we need something to go in the soap, like plastic insects or spiders. Note: Michael's does NOT have any small plastic bugs in bulk, except for a tube of 9-10 insects (most over 3") for $8.99. Yeah. I don't think so. So I decided to use some plastic spider rings that I received as a Halloween grab bag gift and cut off the "ring" part.

Lastly, a fragrance for the soap. I didn't know what glycerin soap smelled like but I knew I'd want to cover it up. Now what smells like spiders? Mint seemed like the best choice. Don't question, just go with it.

Onto the soap making! Ok instructions, tell me what to do:

That's it? Ok, but how much do I cut? What do I do after it has cooled? What about bubbles? I had to make up the answers to these questions, because the instructions were definitely lacking.

SUPPLIES YOU'LL NEED THAT THEY DON'T MENTION:

Gloves

Knife

Cutting board

Microwave safe bowl or measuring cup to put soap in

Something to stir soap with (I used a plastic knife so I could throw it away later)

Fun toy to put in soap
Oven mitts

Step 1 - Put on gloves and cut the soap. I didn't wear gloves and my hands smell something awful. Turns out 4 squares = 1 mold, so I cut up 12 squares (since I had 3 molds). 

Step 2 - put 4 squares in microwave safe bowl or measuring cup and put in microwave (I used a bowl and it spilled a lot, so you might want to go with a measuring cup). I put it on high for 30 seconds, stirred the contents, put back in the microwave for 15 seconds, stirred, then 15 more seconds in the microwave. One of my tries, the soap was still hard so I put it in for another 15 seconds. Just keep adding 10-15 seconds until it's all melted. Once it was all liquid, I added 6 drops of Mint soap fragrance and stirred it up with a plastic knife.

Step 3 - Be very careful with this next step. Wearing oven mitts (because the bowl/measuring cup will be HOT), pour the bowl/cup of melted soap halfway into the mold, put in your toy, and pour in the rest. Now the spiders I used were too light so they floated to the top/bottom of the soap.

One thing I didn't think of until it was too late was the bubbles. Try and remove those as soon as you've poured the soap into the mold, otherwise you'll have bubbles in your soap. Not a big deal but something to think about. You should be able to scrape them out with a knife.

Bubbles in the corner of my mold I forgot to remove

Step 4 - Set aside mold for 1 hour

Step 5 - Immediately clean up your work area (or the microwave), in case you spilled any soap.

Once the hour is up, removing the soap from the mold is the most frustrating step. The first mold, I swore a lot, took out a pair of scissors, and hacked the mold to pieces. Ahem. The second mold, I regained my composure and tried to separate the sides first, before pushing out the soap from the mold. That seemed to have done the trick! I even tried out one of the soaps and by golly, it works! Whichever soaps you're not using, be sure to wrap in clear plastic wrap to preserve the freshness of the soap bar. Another thing they forget to tell you in the instructions :-/

And remember, if you do add a toy, put it in the center of the mold and try to remove the bubbles or it's going to look foggy, like this -

Swimming in a sea of soap and bubbles

TOTAL COSTS: About $20

$11.99 at Michael's for 2lbs of ArtMinds Higher Temperature Glycerin Soap

$2.99 at Michaels for 3 ArtMinds Embossing Soap Molds

$4.99 for ArtMinds Mint Soap Fragrance (.05 fl oz)

Spiders were free

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 1 hour, 11 minutes

3 minutes to cut 12 squares of soap

1 minute/soap mold in microwave (and I did 3)

1 hour to wait for soap to cool

5 minutes to remove soaps from their molds

EASY-PEASY SCALE: 3 out of 5

Not super hard, just need some nails and upper-body strength to remove the soap from the molds!