Making heart-shaped borax crystals has been of my all time favorite craft DIY posts of all time! And even today I still LOVE them! Valentine’s Day may have just passed, but this easy and fun science experiment technique can be modified for any holiday! I created a fun crystal MOM with a heart for the ‘O”, but just thinking of the possibilities. Twist a green shamrock for St. Patrick’s Day, how about some crystal Easter eggs, or just crystal flowers to bring on Spring?

Mother’s Day isn’t until May, but is there ever a bad time of the year to not celebrate MOM? Nope!

I made a short how-to video to show you the basics of how to make your own borax crystal ornaments, and how I made this pretty, sparkly homage to MOM’s everywhere.

All you need to make your own borax crystal ornaments is:

• Borax (found in the laundry detergent aisle of your grocery store)
• Mason or glass jars
• Pipe cleaners
• Boiling water
• String
• Craft sticks

I used a scissors to cut my pipe cleaners in half, and I used pint mason jars. The trick to making your own borax crystal ornaments is just the amount of borax to water you use.

Borax is actually naturally in crystal form, and dissolves in boiling water. Hot water can hold more borax than cold water, so the hot water actually becomes saturated with Borax. So when the water cools, the Borax returns to its natural state leaving large crystal shapes.

I formed my desired shapes with colored pipe cleaners. In this case, I created two ‘M’s” and a red heart to spell the word MOM. Keep in mind, depending on the color pipe cleaners you use, is what colors will reflect in the crystals after forming.

Then I suspended them in a boiling water/borax mixture in each mason jar. I used 1/2 cup of borax for each pint mason jar.

I let the pipe cleaners and the jars sit overnight, and in the morning the crystals had formed on the bottom of my jars and my pipe cleaner shapes.

I pulled them out and put them on a paper towel to dry before hanging.

These would look great hanging in a window or wrapped on a present.

Each borax crystal comes out completely different!

So pretty and sparkly! You can see my original post here.

I’m telling you, this one is so fun to do with kids of any age!