Ivory Soap Experiment - Soap Clouds

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I hope you've all been loving your day of good luck and green foods...and everything else that St. Patty's Day means to you.

This post has nothing to do with St. Patty's Day. As a matter of fact, I thought it would be fun to try this experiment with Irish Spring soap instead - you know, because it's Irish and everything - yeah...well,...anyway, the only soap that will work for this experiment is Ivory soap. And this experiment is amazing!! Thanks to Pinterest, I found out about this project from this blog.

Photo from Pinterest

The only things you really need for this experiment are ivory soap - which is really cheap - and a microwave. And, if you want to continue to use the soap and make your own shapes and all afterwards, you'll want some cookie cutters and food coloring - that's it!

Did you know that Ivory soap is the only soap that floats?? Well, I didn't. I learn new things every day. I saw this in the blog linked above, so I'm sure you didn't need me to tell you, but I really thought it was fascinating...for all of you who still bathe in rivers and lakes and such. hehe.

Anyway, we put the soap in the microwave and watched a soap cloud form. Oh. my. goodness. gracious. It was so cool!

Notice my nephew's handy work on the microwave? He's really into labeling things right now and I think that rocks!

After the soap was all fluffified, we gently handled it so it wouldn't fall apart on us too much and once we were ready for it to be re-formed, we squished it bunches into a bowl. When you start the squishing, make sure you do it over something - it really does fall apart like dust or snowflakes and it's easier to just not have to worry too much about the mess. 

I hear there are many fun things you can do with this soap cloud, including having your kiddos get in the tub and sprinkle it over them like it is snowing. I do hope to try this someday. What we did, though, was make ourselves some reshaped soaps by just adding a little bit of water and food coloring into our freshly crumbled soap.

From there, we flattened it out (a bit) and pressed cookie cutters into it. I'd recommend leaving the cookie cutters in for a few minutes, otherwise the goo will come right back up with it. 

Once the cookie cutters are removed, the soap will need to set for quite a while - like multiple days, but the final result is...well...ugly...and fragile. But, usable! This was fun, not too time consuming, entertaining and exciting for me, my nephew and my son. I'd say it was a success...an ugly success, but a success just the same and way fun.