Christmas 2016: A Sensory Bottle (Snow Globe)

A couple of these gifts that I post might seem a bit familiar to those who have followed the blog for a while.  Well, the reason for that is simple.  Some of them are actually duplicates to things I made last year (with a couple of small changes) as I found my son LOVED a couple of the gifts I made last year.  One of those gifts was a sensory bottle.

Last year I made two bottles.  One with a regular shaped bottle and the other one was a globe shaped apple juice bottle.  He quickly ditched the regular shaped bottle, but the globe shaped sensory bottle he plays with CONSTANTLY to the point that the plastic is actually crinkly where it used to be stiff.  Thank goodness the bottles are double reinforced plastic, or I might have had a mess at some point *laugh*.

So, this year I made another sensory bottle for him, but instead of purple (the only color food coloring I had in the house at the time), I made it in blue.  I used a combination of distilled water and corn syrup for the liquid.  I filled it probably 1/3 of the way full of corn syrup, added 1/2 of a container of glitter (silver in this case) and then filled the bottle most of the way full of water after that.  Screwed on the lid and shook the contents to see how suspended the glitter would become and I ended up adding some extra corn syrup until the bottle reached the right consistency that I liked (I like the glitter to suspend for a while to create a really interesting sensory experience before settling back down).  I then added about four drops (next time I'll start with two I think) of food coloring, shook it to incorporate into the liquid and then added distilled water (which was just a tad...like maybe a teaspoon) to make the bottle full and then super glued on the lid.  And voila!  A really cool sensory bottle.

For anyone who might want to create something like that, but isn't keen on using corn syrup, you can create a sensory bottle using Elmer's Craft Glue (you can look up the tutorial online), but I liked this method better for me. 

Total Cost to Make Gift:  Probably about 2.00 overall.  The juice I bought on sale (to get the bottle) for 1.25 (although we drank the juice, so really I could consider the cost less than that, but I'm counting it since I bought the juice JUST to get the bottle) and the corn syrup I bought on clearance a while back.  The glitter was left over from making sensory bottles last year.

Total Time To Make Gift:  About ten minutes (not counting the washing out and drying the bottle time).