Don't give up the sparkles yet! Making your own Eco Friendly Glitter is a fabulous zero waste alternative to traditional glitter. It is kid safe, low waste, cheap, easy to clean up and won't end up in our oceans.
This post is going to show you the simple steps to make your own natural glitter in lots of different colours.
Glitter has been getting a bad reputation lately for its environmental impact, and in a household with crafty kids, this is a hot topic for us. Today, I'll show you how to keep the sparkles in your life while you figure out what to do with all the glitter you have stashed in the craft cupboard.
Ingredients
1 Tablespoon of Epsom Salts
1 Tablespoon of Table Salt
4-5 drops of Liquid food Colour
When selecting ingredients, opt for those in the most recyclable packaging and as plastic-free as possible. Food colours usually come in plastic bottles, but these do last a long time and can be reused for so many things.
I'm curious to try this with natural food dyes in the future. I have created some delicious ice-cream scented playdough using natural food colour and this turned out fantastic, but I think the process will need to be quite different for home made glitter..
Picture: Here I used 3 drops of Blue and 1 drop of Green to get this Frozen
inspired colour.
Instructions
>Add the epsom salts to a glass or plastic container
>Drip food colours in carefully and give a little stir with a spoon
>Pop on the lid and give it a really good shake
You can use immediately but I find it best to allow it to air dry for around 30 minutes to an hour.
How simple is that!
Here's a pine cone we decorated recently for Christmas with our home made glitter.
You can also use it to decorate home made cards and gift tags - Just use some glue, cover with your eco glitter and allow plenty of time to dry.
You can easily adjust this recipe to make larger quantities of glitter too.
With kids in the house and school holidays here, I just know we will be using this quite a bit so I made double and triple the quantities listed above.
I don't recommended using sugar unless you're making edible glitter, as the last thing you want is to have your crafts and sparkles covered in ants!
If you want to make it bath friendly, just omit the plain salt.
For edible glitter, use only sugar and colouring of course
If you still have some plastic based glitter in your home, here are some fabulous ideas to mindfully use your glitter without polluting the environment.