Create Your Own Winter Wonderland With Frozen Soap Bubbles

Nothing says “Winter Wonderland” better than frozen soap bubbles. Pictures of these little magical orbs will make you want to live your best Snow Queen fantasy. But you don’t have to resort to the internet to get a glimpse at those beautiful crystal-like bubbles. As long as you find yourself somewhere really cold, you can make them on your own! Here is how you do it.

What you need

First, you will need to make sure your environment is cold enough. This experiment can only be done in less than -13°F. Then, you need to make sure you have the following ingredients: water (obviously), corn syrup (35 ml.), dish soap (35ml), sugar (2tbsp), a bowl, a spoon, and a plastic straw. A squeezable bottle if you want.

What you do

Mix the ingredients in the bowl. Put the whole thing in the freezer for 30 minutes, and then stir it again a little. Then, step outside and find yourself a nice, cold surface with texture (bubbles stick to texture better than smooth surfaces) and use the straw to start blowing! It will take some trials and errors before getting the right bubble and capture them in a picture (Instagram or it didn’t happen, right?) but you’ll get it right eventually.

If you’re feeling fancy, you can fit the straw into an empty squeeze bottle and use that to blow the bubbles. This way, the air you trap in the bubbles will be colder and help the little orb last longer.

The science of it all

Regular soap bubbles are made of three layers — two layers of soap and a layer of water molecules set in between them. A water sandwich, if you will. The freezing temperature of the water is higher than the freezing temperatures of the soap. So, when we freeze the bubble, we actually freeze the middle layer of water, which is then held together in between the soaps.