by Ana Dziengel 166 Comments
My daughter is a slime fanatic… ahem… slime “enthusiast” and there is always a new slime recipe or two she wants to try. We have always been fans of the glue and starch slime recipe but I have heard of the contact lens solution version and was curious to see how it worked.
This post has been sponsored by Dover Publications. All opinions are my own.
When we got a copy of Slime 101: How to Make Stretchy, Fluffy, Glittery, & Colorful Slime their chalkboard slime recipe using a saline solution was the first we wanted to try. And it was awesome! 
Slime 101: How to Make Stretchy, Fluffy, Glittery, & Colorful Slimeis a new book by Natalie Wright published by Dover Publications. Slime 101 is a great introduction to slime making for slime novices but there are some interesting variations even for more advanced slime makers. It’s a full of pictures with step-by-step instructions on how to make 10 different variations of slime. My daughter flipped through it and was raring to try some ideas she had never seen before, like the textured and stress ball slimes. 
Today I’m excited to share a slime recipe from the book that you can use as a canvas for art: Chalkboard Slime. Think of this as the perfect STEAM slime!
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Materials
- White Glue Buy it inexpensively in bulk here
- Baking Soda
- Contact Lens Solution (must contain boric acid)
- Chalkboard Paint (purchase at craft store)
- Chalk Markers
- Spoons & Mixing Bowl
Make the Slime
- Step One Pour 4 oz of glue into a mixing bowl.
- Step Two Add 2 Tablespoons of chalkboard paint to the glue and mix thoroughly.
- Step Three Add 1 teaspoon of baking soda to the glue/paint and stir to combine
- Step Four Add ½ teaspoon of contact lens solution and stir. The slime should begin to thicken. (Use a sturdy spoon for this! Plastic ones can break.)
- Step Five If the slime is still sticky, add in a few drops of contact lens solution at a time and stir until the slime begins to pull away form the sides of the bowl.
- Step Six Take the slime out of the bowl and knead it for a minute or two to fully combine all ingredients.
Draw on it
- Step One Draw on it! Using chalkboard markers, you can draw on the slime by pressing down to make dots.
- Step Two When you are done with your design distort it! Pull the slime and watch your drawing elongate.
- Step Three To make a new drawing simply knead the slime until the color disappears and start again.
Tips
- DO NOT add too much contact lens solution! We did and your slime will turn into a rubber like substance. On second thought that also is a good science experiment, ha!
- Store your slime in an airtight baggie. Note that this slime will be more rubbery as it sits over time.
- Don’t draw on the slime like you would on paper. The marker tip will get stuck in the slime. Mark the slime using dots instead.
The STEAM
There is so much STEAM in this simple slime project I could go on and on. But let’s start with the top ideas you can point out to your child in this project.
The Science: Making slime is a classic chemistry experiment where kids mix different ingredients to form a very stretchy polymer. A polymer is a substance made up of a long chain of molecules that repeat. Glue is a polymer and when you add in contact lens solution, which contains boric acid, the glue molecules and borate ions cross-link, forming a viscous, thicker polymer than before.
The Art: This is the perfect intro to pointillism! Pointillism is an art technique developed in the late 1800s by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac that involves painting with very fine dots of color in lieu of brushstrokes. When you stand back from a pointillist painting, your brain combines the dots your eye is seeing into a fluid picture. If you stand up close you can view the individual dots. It’s a marvelous optical trick. One of my favorite pointillist style artists is Chuck Close. He not only plays with how your eye perceives fine dots from a distance, he plays with the average color your eye sees when a dot contains several different hues.
Lastly let’s talk distortion! Pulling your pointillist slime drawing apart causes the image to stretch and the dots turn into strips of color. Distortion is used both in art and the design world. Sometimes an artist will purposefully use distortion to create anillusion of 3D space on a 2D surface. Distortion is also a subject well known to photographers whose lenses can cause distortion which may or may not be desired in the photo they are composing. It’s a factor they take into account every time they chose a focal length.
What I was drawn to most about this slime recipe was the opportunity to work in a little STEAM twist to slime making. And seriously who can resist drawing on slime? It’s such a novel way to create art!
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