How to Make Glow in the Dark Slime, and the Rule That Keeps It Out of Your Carpet

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We made this in Napa, during the pandemic, while the sky was on fire.

Eight of us had been quarantining together in Santa Monica, plus all the dogs, and we had reached the stage of cabin fever where a change of scenery felt medically necessary. Napa seemed perfect. Outdoors, space to walk, beautiful things to look at, wine for the adults, and no crowds to worry about.

Then we arrived and there were wildfires. Not close enough that we had to leave, but close enough that the air was too smoky to be outside in. So we had left one quarantine for another. We went out in masks when we could, but it was hot and sticky and not remotely as fun as we had pictured.

So we made our own fun indoors. My daughter was small, deep in a YouTube phase, and already the kind of kid who considers the kitchen a laboratory. Slime was the obvious answer, and we let her pick her own recipe and run it.

Put paper down first

I have paper down across the whole table in that video and it is not for the camera.

This project is a mess. All the good ones are. If you are a mess intolerant kind of person, take it outside somewhere you can hose down afterwards, and make your peace with a little glow glue living in the grass for a week or two until the elements deal with it.

What you need

Glow glue, one third of a cup. One caveat before you buy it: you can skip glow glue entirely, get clear glue by the gallon, and just up the amount of glow powder. That is also the smart move if you are hosting a slime party. Activator, one third of a cup, which is just contact solution with boric acid and sodium borate in it. Glow powder, one teaspoon, and go slowly because a little goes a very long way. A bowl.

One sensible note, then I will stop being a grown up about it. The activator is a mild chemical, so make it with them rather than near them, keep it out of mouths, and wash hands afterwards. That is the whole safety briefing.

How to make it

Put the glue and the activator in the bowl and mix.

Add the glow powder a little at a time. Resist the urge to dump it, because you cannot take it back out and a teaspoon really is enough.

Knead the dough. Keep working it with your hands until everything is properly combined and the texture goes from sticky and stringy to smooth and stretchy. This is the part kids will do for twenty minutes without being asked.

Then charge it. Leave it in direct sunlight for a while, or if you happen to own a black light flashlight, use that instead, because it charges faster and the effect is better.

And then you run. Find the darkest room in the house, take the slime with you, and shut the door. That is the entire payoff and it is worth every bit of the mess.

Make it giant and fluffy

Same idea, more volume, much better texture.

Add two to three cups of shaving cream, one third cup of glow glue, one third cup of regular glue, a quarter cup of water, a teaspoon of glow powder, and a tablespoon and a half of activator. Mix it all in one bowl until it comes together as a goopy dough, then knead and roll it until it is fluffy and holds a shape.

Fluffy glow slime is stretchier, holds a shape better, and is significantly more satisfying to squash. It is also, obviously, a bigger mess.

Fluffy glow slime is just one or two cups of shaving cream away from the regular kind, and it has its own bonus track on YouTube to prove it.

The rule you should make before you make slime

Here is the thing nobody tells you.

Nothing on this earth is as grotesque as a well loved slime that has been sitting in a child's bedroom for five weeks. Whatever vibrant, enticing color it started as becomes something closer to what lives in the gasket at the bottom of your disposal. It smells like laundry detergent and plastic had an argument. And it will have collected the most diverse sampling of hairs and fibers you have ever seen on one object.

So we made a rule, and we made it before the slime existed.

Yes you can make slime. Yes you can have it. You can even make it in the house, as long as it happens at the kitchen table. But once it leaves that table it stays in your hands or it goes into a named container, and after about a week it goes in the bin.

We call these temporary crafts, and we have a whole category of them now. Without that category the hoarding instinct in this family takes over, because children believe storage is infinite, and we end up in a house that looks more like it is inhabited by raccoons than humans.

I am lucky to have a family that makes things. It means hours of hands busy and screens down. It also means thousands of projects and nowhere to put them. So the question we ask now is simple: do you want to keep this, or do you want a picture of it? Over the years that has gotten easier for them to answer. One of my kids has a single shoebox of mementos from twenty two years of life. Another has six boxes and keeps trying to send me more. The rule does not change per kid.

Because some of it, and slime especially, is temporary joy. Spontaneous love, spontaneous fun, meant to live in our memories and not in our carpets.

What is the craft you had to make a household rule about? Tell me in the comments, I need to know I am not alone.

Next up: yarn pumpkins made out of toilet paper tubes, which are the opposite of this in every way.

If this gave you an idea worth trying, there's more where it came from. Follow along on Pinterest (@CraftandBondCo) and Instagram (@craftandbondco) for new projects, recipes, and the occasional honest mess, and save this post so you can find your way back to it.