On Pinterest, there are tons of holiday craft ideas to choose from, but the Borax Crystal Snowflake craft idea originally posted on the Martha Stewart website looked easy to make while being easy on the wallet so I attempted to make it. Here’s my attempt at making this interesting project.
The instruction provided on the Martha Stewart website was very straightforward, however, I took some extra precautions when doing the project to make sure that my eating and cooking supplies would not be ruined or poisoned by the borax. This includes boiling the water separately without putting the borax into the pot I used to boil the water in, and washing all the cooking equipment I used thoroughly after use.
It only took me about 45 minutes to set up the hot water crystal solution and the pipe cleaners. Because the project deals with growing crystals, it is assumed that the most time spent on the project will be waiting for the crystals to grow. Although the website from where I read the instructions from stated that it would take about 8 – 12 hours to grow the crystals, it took me 48 hours to get to the size and amount of crystals that I wanted, and the end product didn’t look like the image showed on the website. When I did the project, I used thinner value pack pipe cleaners, instead of the more fuzzy kind. This may have resulted in the low amounts of crystals that grew. When getting the pipe cleaners for the project, be sure to get white colored ones and to make sure they’re as fuzzy as possible, so that more crystals can grab on and grow. Take note that the color of the pipe cleaner will matter because the borax crystals will be clear when they are finished growing, so if you used a pink pipe cleaner, you may end up seeing pink if you don’t add any food coloring to your crystal snowflake. Although food coloring can be added to the borax solution to make the crystals a certain color, I kept the solution food coloring free so that the end product would be a clear crystal snowflake, since I want Christmas lights to reflect off of the crystals and retain their original coloring when reflected.
The overall cost of the project was very affordable; a one time cost of about $7 to get the pipe cleaners and the borax laundry booster. This is a one-time purchase because multiple crystal snowflakes can be made with the materials purchased (borax is usually sold in mass quantities). Although the outcome was not what I expected, this was still a fun project and I will definitely do it again so that I can hang more on my Christmas tree and then turn on the Christmas lights to enjoy the reflection given off by the crystals. I’d also recommend this to be done with a family, since there are so many easy parts that can be done with young kids but also parts that may require adult assistance, like boiling water for example. Overall, the project was straightforward and I ended up with a pretty borax crystal snowflake, despite its different appearance from the image posted on the website from where I found the project on.
