Easy Homemade Floam

My kids love Floam. They’re always asking for it when they see it in the store, but it’s so expensive for such a small container! I did some experimenting, and figured out you only need a few ingredients to make your own Easy Homemade Floam! Your kids are gonna love you (and so will your wallet!) when you let them help make this.  

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What you’ll need to make Homemade Floam:

• (4) 8 oz styrofoam cups
• 1/4 cup glue or glitter glue
• 1/4 cup hot water
• 2 Tablespoons of Borax
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 gallon slider storage bag
• blender or food processor

There are two ways you can get colored homemade floam. You can either buy colored glitter glue, or you can just use a few drops of food coloring to dye the regular glue. My daughter was over the moon excited about pink glitter glue, so that’s what we used to make our floam.

Your first step in making homemade floam will be to pulverize the styrofoam cups. I recommend tearing up the cups into smaller pieces, and putting them in the food processor with a couple of tablespoons of water (the static gets out of control if you skip this step). Then, when the food processor has finished, dump the styrofoam into the blender, with another couple of tablespoons of water and blend until nearly all the styrofoam is in tiny little balls.

Once your remove it from the blender, this is about what your styrofoam should look like when it’s finished. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but the smaller the better. If you see any stray, larger pieces, just pull them out. This is a great thing to let the kids do for you, while you move on to the next step!

Next, you will need two small bowls. In one bowl, mix the Borax and the hot water until the Borax completely dissolves, then set it aside. In the second bowl, combine the warm water and the Elmer’s glue. Stir the glue and water mixture until all the glue feels thin and watery. 

Now comes the fun part! Grab your gallon storage bag, and put the styrofoam in it, followed by the glue mixture, and finally the Borax mixture. Seal the bag all the way shut, with as little air left in the bag as possible.

If your kids are helping, this will be an awesome time for them to contribute! To mix the ingredients, you will need to just squeeze them around in the bag until they start to form into a solid ball. You will have excess liquid, and that’s normal. The Borax and water mixture will not actually combine with the glue and styrofoam, but instead will cause a chemical reaction. The chemical reaction will turn the glue into a more solid, gummy substance, making it the perfect copycat goo to make homemade floam! 

Once you feel like you have all the styrofoam incorporated into the mixture, and that it easily forms a ball within the bag, you can remove it from the bag. Gently squeeze the ball of homemade floam over the sink to squeeze off any excess liquid it may be holding on to. 

And now, your kids will officially think you’re super mom, because you can make floam!

Depending on how much styrofoam you were able to get out of your food processor and/or your blender, your final product may look differently from mine. I tried to get as much styrofoam as possible, so it helped the final product not be as sticky and easier to play with for little hands.

Floam from the store does make your hands sticky when you play with it, and homemade floam is no different. I always keep some baby wipes handy, so when my kids are done playing with it, I can just wipe their hands off quickly.

Once your kids are done playing with the homemade floam, make sure you store it in an air tight container. We store ours in a little tupperware container that has a snap on lid. This keeps it from drying out, and will help it last for a very long time!

 My kids are already bugging me about what colors we can make next, and this was so easy, I don’t mind obliging them! Let us know how your homemade floam turns out turned out, and what colors are your kids favorites!