I’ve avoided Borax as a crafting tool until now because it can be a potential skin irritant, and of course hazardous is if ingested… but snowy days inspire snowy projects, and for this one we really needed the Borax. Luckily Travis was very responsible using it as an ingredient in our craft.

The goal was to make sparkly crystal snowflakes, but first we needed to do some mixing. Under careful supervision, have your child pour 1/3 cup Borax into a mason jar.

I added 3/4 cup boiling water, and then monitored carefully as Travis stirred to dissolve the Borax; make sure your child doesn’t touch the glass jar, as it will be hot at this point. Travis loved the slightly taboo nature of all this!

To make your “snowflakes”, bend pipe cleaners into a roughly snowflake-like design. Ours were really more like stars, with five points instead of six. Of course you could also make other shapes, including circles, squares, triangles, or just freeform.

Tie the pipe cleaner shapes onto jumbo craft sticks, and then dangle into the Borax solution. Now we needed to wait overnight!

In the morning, on yet another day of polar weather, we were rewarded with sparkling icy snowflakes.

We’re going to set these aside to make them ornaments next Christmas!