Make Your Own DIY Borax Crystals With This Easy Tutorial

Tools and Materials:

• Borax
• Pipe cleaners
• Boiling water
• Measuring cup
• Cups
• Mixing tool
• Food coloring

The first thing you need to do is create your borax saturated solution. You’re going to do this by mixing 4 tablespoons of borax per cup of boiling water. I used a measuring cup to mix it and made 2 cups’ worth of the solution. 

As you mix your solution you’ll see that the borax dissolves into the water. For this project you’re going to need some of the borax solution to remain undissolved at the bottom of your cup, so as you feel it dissolve, keep adding more so that you’re left with some at the bottom.

Now I’m going to show you two different ways to go about creating the crystals. 

The first way is to use colored pipe cleaners. So take two colored pipe cleaners (same color) and wind them together in no particular order. You just want to make sure there’s no big gaps in between them. Once you’re done, you’re just going to wind a bit of thread or string to the end.

Pour some of the solution into a glass. Then wind the other side of the string around a paint brush, pen, or anything else that can lie flat across the cup, and rest your pipe cleaner in the solution. Measure the necessary length first, though, because you don’t want the pipe cleaner to touch the bottom or edges of the glass. You can put multiple ones in the same glass. 

The next option is to add coloring to the solution itself and use white pipe cleaners. You’re gonna wind them together the same way as the first option, and rest them on top of the glass, again making sure not to touch the bottom or sides of the glass. If you watch the video you’ll see that I first tried this with acrylic paint and it actually didn’t turn out so well. I next tried it with alcoholic ink, and that worked much better. I think food coloring would work just as well. 

Before we continue onto the next steps, I just want to show you some differences. Here you can see three different colors. The lightest one is the result of white pipe cleaner in colored solution, the middle one is the result of purple pipe cleaner in clear solution, and the darkest one is purple pipe cleaner in purple solution. 

Here you can see some failed attempts that I wanted to share with you so you can learn from my mistakes. With these I didn’t use enough borax in the solution, they didn’t crystalize as well, and you can see the pipe cleaner very clearly. My other tip would be that when you have your crystal resting in the solution, cover up the top with a piece of paper or cardboard or anything just to keep it hot. 

Just to finish it off, I added a gold rim to the crystals. I tried with both a paint marker and gold paint, and they created very different effects. I liked the paint much better, but feel free to experiment and see which you like better yourself. 

And that’s it! I really enjoyed this project and am very happy with the results. I think they turned out beautifully and really look just as stunning as the real thing, which, in these sizes, can run you upwards of $50. The other cool thing about this project is how you can really get creative with it and experiment with different shapes, sizes and styles. You can see that I made a starfish one, as well as some that were just the crystals that remained at the bottom of the glass. I love the way they come together as a centerpiece and am just so happy I did this. I would absolutely love to see the ones that you make, so please show me in the comments below!