Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Making Homemade Sidewalk Chalk

Monday I read on a friend's blog that she had made homemade sidewalk chalk and thought that sounded like a great project for the boys and me to do while they are here. We ran to town and got the supplies and came home ready to have a lot of fun .... WELL... it didn't start out to be QUITE as much fun.... in fact... it was not working at ALL ! The recipe I was following ( NOT
my friend's, she didn't have a recipe on her blog,so I looked one up online)
called for WAY too much plaster of paris for the amount of water and said to use warm water ( found out later that COLD water is what you need to use). Either I did something wrong or plaster of paris can be diferent! ( HERS was REALLY nice!!)
The THIRD batch we were finally able to use. It still was WAY thicker than is should have been and had to "glob" it into the tubes rather than pouring it as the directions said.
They worked but I was disappointed that they didn't "LOOK" right.
I talked to my mom the next day and she told me that when she had worked with plaster of paris they used milk cartons and shook it to mix it... I tried the cold water and used a lg juice bottle and "shook" away!!
I also cut down the amount of plaster of paris and it made SUCH a difference!
Also, the first ones we made I left in the molds for 24 hrs ( as I was instructed)When I did that the wax paper stuck in the cracks when it became hard. Then after watching a Youtube on making sidewalk chalk I decided to just let it set for and hour THEN take the mold off and let it finish drying. IT was wonderful... I think I have it figured out now! It was FUN after all !!!
Silly Reed
Cutting the duct tape to cover the bottom
Reed taped them down
First batch we had to throw out

THIRD batch that we "globbed" into the molds

Posted by Picasa

No comments: