Enjoying Sports on your Deck: Artistic Beauty of Frozen Soap Bubbles

We’ve all enjoyed the simple pleasure of blowing soap bubbles as kids, come on, you can admit it. Creating those perfect and shiny spherical shapes with their colorful diffraction patterns that floated on air currents was both a mesmerizing and magical experience as a kid.

If you think you’ve experienced all there is to this simple activity, there is yet another variation to bubble blowing that will captivate you and your kids for hours: making frozen soap bubbles. What’s so special about this activity? When the bubble freezes, small crystalline snowflake-like patterns form and grow ever bigger on the surface until the entire bubble freezes. It’s primarily a visual experience with which no words can do justice.

Although there are ways of blowing them indoors on a tray and placing them in your freezer, the activity is far more enjoyable in the great outdoors of your deck. While it’s not exactly an athletic form of enjoying sports on your deck, freezing weather is just around the corner and this is another activity to enjoy with your kids in addition to the snowball fights, snowman building, and sledding.

How to Make Frozen Soap Bubbles

You pretty much make them the same way that you do in warm weather. You can either buy the bubble solution from a store or make your own with liquid dish washing soap (1 cup), water (3 cups), and some corn syrup (1/2 cup) to make the bubbles stronger. The outdoor temperatures must be below freezing, and the lower the temperature, the less time required for the bubbles to freeze. In fact, soap bubbles can be blown on extremely cold days.

It’s recommended that you do it when there is no wind. It will also take some practice to get the technique right. In extreme cold, the bubbles will freeze before they hit the ground. You can get some extra elevation by blowing them from your deck above the ground below. You can also keep the bubble on your wand and watch it freeze close up, or you can try landing them on a nearby frozen surface. This is recommended when the air isn’t cold enough for them to freeze before hitting the ground.

Bubble Photography

To add another dimension to this activity, you can try your hand at photography to capture images of these beautiful crystalline spheres. They are best photographed when the sun is low in the sky. The low angled sunlight will light up the crystals with warm colors. The colors stand out best when the background behind the bubble is dark. Experiment with the lighting by viewing the bubble from different angles relative to the sun.

For information about using and caring for your deck, contact us at DeckMAX.