Homemade Bubble Blower from a Cardboard Roll
Use a cardboard roll for a homemade bubble blower when your kids want to blow bubbles but you can’t find your bubble wands.
Kids love blowing bubbles, but there’s nothing worse on the first bubble blowing day of spring than realizing can’t find your bubble blowers and bubble mix. Fear not, Mama! I’ve got a couple of solutions for you! The first being this easiest-ever homemade bubble blower made from a cardboard kitchen tube! We just love repurposing our cardboard rolls! Don’t you?
The kids wanted to play with bubbles the other day but I couldn’t remember where I’d stashed our bubble blowers and solution the end of the season last year.
Normally I would make a batch of our homemade giant bubble solution, but that has to sit for a few hours to settle, so I didn’t have time for that. We improvised completely, and made some homemade bubble blowers out of common kitchen items, and our bubble mixture? About 2 tbsp of straight dish soap!
Hey, don’t laugh. Not only did our cardboard bubble blower work, it worked REALLY WELL! We also made a homemade bubble pipe out of a straw and a coffee filter, and it worked great too. A
So how did we “make” our homemade bubble blower?
Simple! Grab a cardboard kitchen roll and a bottle of dish soap!
What kind of cardboard roll works best for a homemade bubble blower?
We started off with a paper towel roll, but it got soggy fairly quickly. It will do in a pinch though!
What we found worked best was the sturdy cardboard roll that holds aluminum foil or cling wrap. It held up very well.
Using straight dish soap as bubble mix:
To blow our bubbles, I simply poured a couple of tbsp of Blue Dawn Original (un-concentrated) Dish Soap into the bottom of a shallow bowl.
We dipped the end of the tube in, and blew, and wow! It totally worked!
Just go slow with the dipping, and try not to work up too much of a froth in your bowl. Too much foam will prevent your detergent from working. Just dip, hold, lift. No swishing or tapping up and down with the cardboard roll, okay?
Do you have to use Dawn Dish Soap?
I would imagine any dish soap would work, but I don’t know for sure. We used Dawn because it’s what we use when we make our Giant Bubble Mix. That stuff makes the best and biggest bubbles EVER so I figured it would work for this.
You’ll start to play around with your technique when it comes to flicking the wand to release your bubbles off the end of the wand.
I also found if you puff into the tube making “puh” sounds: “puh-puh-puh-puh-puh”, you’ll make a series of bubbles, one after another, after another, after another.
It was pretty cool!
And easy enough for the preschooler to get the hang of quickly!
The toddler much preferred to chase the bubbles around. 🙂
Click here to see more fun bubble activities for kids.
Want to see another super-cool and easy homemade bubble blower? Check out the bubble snakes over at Housing a Forest.
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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.
