Fish In A Bag - Soap

One more busy school morning until the weekend, and then busy weekend mornings =)

Today I worked on some prizes for my kids combined birthday party. This year we are having a combined birthday for the two. The agreeable theme was Spongebob Squarepants. I am really excited at all the little things I have planned. Even more to see everything together and get to show all of you!

My children can hardly handle themselves with all the odds and ends coming together. They want to get into everything, but I can't blame them.

Here is a tutorial on the fish in a bag soap. These will be with other items for the children to choose from when winning a game.

The materials needed are:

Baggies – whatever you prefer

Clear Glycerin – I used a 2 pound block and got three soap bags to my liking.

Plastic Fish – I bought mine from Oriental Trading

Rubbing Alcohol

Small Spritzing Bottle

Cups – To steady the bag *optional

Funnel - *optional

To start you need to gather all your materials. Chop up your Glycerin block into squares.

To melt the glycerin I decided to go with a large glass measuring cup. Place the Glycerin into the microwave and heat until completely liquified.

Grab your bag and open. Seperate the sides of the bag as much as possible. You want to avoid pouring the soap down the sides of the bag, because when it hardens you will be able to see where the soap has touched. This is when you may want to use a funnel, but my 6 year old was more then happy to help!

Gently pour in about a ½ inch of soap. If there are any bubbles use your spritzing bottle filled with rubbing alcohol. When you spray the alcohol onto the glycerin it will do magic (making the bubbles go away.) 

Prop cups around your bag to help stabilize it. The glycerin will cool and develop a sort of “skin.” Once this begins to happen you will want to place your fish.

In this picture, I am aware that this is more than a 1/2 inch of glycerin. I did this and learned very quickly it works a lot better when you start will a smaller amount. =)

Once the soap has cooled most of the way, completely re-heat the glycerin. You will then top off your bag to the level of your liking.

Wa La! Your Done!

Now I found trying to“prop" the filled bag with the cups was really hard to do because... your filling over top of the hardened first layer. Propping it with the liquid on top creates a weird shape that ends up draping down over the solid base. Sooooo... I decided to tie the bag right after filling them. Trapping the air inside kept it at the natural looking shape that I was going for. Thus, I had to cut all the strings off after they hardened, because of the condensation, LoL...DUHHH. All in all my suggestion would be to do that, but have rubber bands to tie the bags off so you can easily let the condensation out after they have set completely.

Enjoy!