Make Fluffy Slime at Home

Turn shaving cream and glue into cloud-soft slime that stretches and squishes.

 

Materials you'll need

• large bowl
• shaving cream
• food coloring
• white school glue
• baking soda
• contact lens solution (check that the label lists boric acid and sodium borate)
• spoon
• measuring cups and spoons

 

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1: Grab a large bowl and fill it with 3 cups of shaving cream.

Step 2: Add a few drops of food coloring and stir until the shaving cream is evenly colored.

Step 3: Add ½ cup of white glue and ½ teaspoon of baking soda. Stir until everything is mixed together.

Step 4: With a grown-up's help, measure 1 tablespoon of contact lens solution and mix it in. Contact lens solution contains borate compounds, the same family of chemicals as borax, so this slime isn't completely borax-free.

Step 5: Keep stirring. The mixture will get sticky and start pulling away from the sides of the bowl. When it gets too thick to stir, pick it up and knead it with your hands until it's smooth.

Step 6: Stretch it, squish it, and twist it. Wash your hands when you're done playing, and keep slime away from eyes and mouths. 

Learn more

Fluffy slime is a polymer project with a foamy twist. Glue is full of polymers, long chain-like molecules that slide past each other, which is why glue pours. The contact lens solution in this recipe contains boric acid and sodium borate, and baking soda helps them form borate ions that link the polymer chains together. This is called cross-linking, and it turns runny glue into stretchy slime. Shaving cream is a foam packed with tiny gas bubbles, and the slime traps those bubbles, so it turns light, puffy, and fluffy.

If you liked this project, Butter Slime starts with the same glue, baking soda, and contact solution, then swaps the bubbles for kneaded-in air-dry clay to make a thick, smooth, spreadable slime.