coloured ice sculptures

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building with coloured ice cubes in the snow

I’m really excited to share today’s activity with you!  We were building coloured ice sculptures in the snow!

Now, we’ve played with coloured ice in the snow before, but THIS…coloured ice sculptures happy hooligans

I’ve always wanted to do something like this with coloured ice, but I never quite knew how to get the cubes to stick together.coloured ice sculptures = happy hooligans

Then a friend in Ottawa shared photos of her boys participating in some Winterlude (winter festival) activities, and they were building some awesome structures with coloured blocks of ice.  When I asked her how it was done, I learned that the secret ingredient is….   drum roll please…   a bottle of water.   I’ll explain in a moment. various ice trays and storage containers for making coloured ice cubes

First things first:

Gather up your ice cube trays and small food containers and storage containers.  I have quite a few of them, and over the course of 2 days, I used them all several times, and made a ton of ice.  I would fill up all of the trays and containers with coloured water, and I’d freeze them (some outside over night, and the rest split between the fridge-freezer and our chest freezer) and once frozen, I’d dump them all into a large bin in the chest freezer, and I’d start again.  This is about half of my stash.  I still have a few trays and a couple of ziplock bags full of cubes reserved for the next time we do this!

bin of coloured ice cubes

I coloured my ice with these Neon colours by McCormick, (you can click on the image below and order them from my site)

but you can use whatever you have on hand.    GO EASY on the colour though!  For my first round of ice, I put one drop in every ice cube compartment, but I didn’t like how dark the colours were.  I kept them, and we used them, but for the next batches, I would mix up a jug of water with 5 or 6 drops of colour in it, and I’d pour that whole jug into a tray or two.   Much better.

3 trays of coloured ice for coloured ice sculptures

The perfect conditions:

Once you’ve got enough ice made, you just need to wait for a nice, COLD day!  You want it to be BELOW zero (celcius) or below 32 Farnenheit for this to work.

The secret ingredient:

A bottle of water!  I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before!  Every time you add an ice cube to your structure, dribble a bit of water over the cubes, and have the children count to ten.  The water freezes quite quickly upon contact with the ice, and while the children are counting, forms a glue to hold the cubes together!  coloured ice sculptures

Our temperature was hovering right around zero today, so some cubes took longer than 10 seconds to freeze into place.  I think the colder it is, the quicker your water will freeze, and the more solid and sturdy your structure will be.IMG_3328

This was a great start for us today though.  The colours are gorgeous, and the ice shapes look good enough to eat!coloured ice sculptures

I’m hoping for the temps to dip a little more so we can get back out there and add to it!IMG_3357

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27 thoughts on “coloured ice sculptures”

  3. That looks like soooo much fun!!! Shame ite never gets much cooler than 16c where we live!!! We’ll have to plan a trip to the snow for this one. Thanks for all of your lovely posts. Many of the activities you do have inspired many a play date at our home.

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  5. I’m so glad that you found me! I love these! We make things with colored ice, too but I don’t think I’ve ever made such of an abundance. Which a terrific idea! Thank you for sharing your well photographed photos, as well! I’ll definitely be back!

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    • Well, I got a little carried away with my ice making, Gina. You never really know how much you’re going to need. lol There’s so much more than what you see in the photos of the post! There were 2 more plastic bags and another plastic bucket full of cubes in my freezers. We’ll be doing this a few more times before winter is over!

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    • I really hope you get a chance to do it, Kim. It’s so cool! Crossing fingers that Colorado is cold and snowy when you’re there!

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    • Thank you, Ester. I’m not exactly sure what your comment says, but I can tell it’s full of happiness and thanks. Thank you!! xx

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  9. This is so awesome! And beautiful. We’ll have to try this…eventually/ I’m pinning this to my Winter board, because it looks like we may not be getting snow this year, unless the weather changes its mind soon! It hasn’t even gotten all that cold. Great idea!

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    • It’s been a really wacky winter here too, Jessica. Not too many days that have been well below freezing and perfect for something like this. I’m glad we got a chance to get at it last week. It was really neat.

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  11. Your ice sculptures turned out amazing. I love the photos. Water is a very clever touch, wish I’d thought of that. The ice cubes are a good idea too, i went for bigger lumps but i think yours looks prettier. My ice post goes up on thursday (for kids coop)

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  12. Those sculptures are beautiful!! However you will not be catching me outside in 32 degree weather!!! if I can avoid it at all…I am a cold weather scare-dy cat :-)

    Thanks for sharing at Sharing Saturday!

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    • I detest the cold as well, Michelle, but our winter months are so long here that there’s just no avoiding it. At least doing something fun and colourful like this helps to make it more bearable. Come on, Springtime!!

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