Learn how to make a Homemade Bubble Pipe from a straw and a coffee filter! Pair it with some dish detergent straight out of the bottle, and blowing bubbles just got a whole lot cheaper and easier!
Blowing bubbles is one of those classic childhood activities that never gets old! Normally, every spring I whip up a batch of our Giant Bubble Mix, and we spend the day making the biggest bubbles you could ever imagine. Today’s weather was overcast and humid, which is perfect for blowing bubbles, but I didn’t have any bubble mix on hand and I couldn’t find our bubble blowers.
Well, I’ll tell you what we did. We got out the dish soap and a few household items and started experimenting. And we discovered that we could make some pretty fine bubbles with things we had around the house.
First, we made a bubble blower out of a cardboard roll, and then we made this bubble pipe using a straw and a coffee filter.
The kids had the most fun with the bubble pipe.
Homemade Bubble Pipe:
It’s a homemade bubble pipe! Remember bubble pipes? I never quite understood their purpose when I was a kid. I thought a bubble should take flight and float up and away over the roof-tops. Not so with the bubble pipe. What was up with that? Recently I saw these amazing bubble snakes over at Housing a Forest, and it all made sense!
And so today, I decided we’d see if we could make a bubble pipe one with some stuff we had on hand.
How to make a homemade bubble pipe with a drinking straw:
Supplies:
- drinking straw
- coffee filter
- tape
To make your bubble pipe, simply tear off a small piece of the coffee filter. You know the size of a square of toilet paper? Probably about a quarter of that size.
Place that piece of coffee filter over the end of the straw and twist the loose stuff snugly around the straw.
Wrap a piece of tape around it a couple of times to hold everything in place.
Using straight dish soap as bubble solution:
I’ve heard for years that when you’re making bubble solution Blue Dawn Original (NON-Concentrated) dish soap (affiliate link) is the best brand to use, so I figured if any detergent was going to work as a bubble mix straight out of the bottle, it would be this one.
Guess what! It worked GREAT!
I poured 1-2 tablespoons into a shallow bowl. Just enough to make a small puddle for the girls to dip the end of their bubble pipes in.
Bubble solution tip:
The trick here, as with all bubble mixtures, is to avoid rapidly stirring or swishing soap. That will create a lot of foam and froth, and you’ll have problems blowing any bubbles. You want to keep the detergent as close to its normal, liquid state as possible. I just kept encouraging the girls to dip their straws in and out of the soap slowly and gently.
Check it out! I was so amazed at how well these bubble pipes worked! We were actually able to gently transfer our bubble blobs to a solid surface and then we’d blow another string of bubbles and gently transfer it on to the first blob. We’d repeat again and again, and we ended up making some decent bubble structures!
And now you know, when you’re in a pinch, that you don’t need bubble solution and a store-bought bubble wand! You can have lots of bubble fun with a simple drinking straw bubble snake.
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
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