If a politician who used to be a Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer hasn’t banned all food coloring by the time you read this, here is how you can make your own green slime. In both Gen X - chemicals that sound like chemicals - and more natural-sounding versions of chemicals. Basically, people who think Dawn dishwashing liquid is an organic weedkiller.

These are excerpted from Halloween Science 2.0, available on Amazon (and free if you have Kindle Unlimited)



Let’s post two ways. Both of these scale, depending on how much slime you want.

First, the feral Gen X way. It’s not a surprise we had borax and glue laying around, most people fixed their own stuff back then and losing an esophagus was part of growing up, so if you have those, here is an easy recipe.

Gen X Slime

In bowl 1:

A few drops of food coloring. Kids seem to love green.

3/4 of a cup of water

1 cup of glue. Use water soluble glue, like Elmer's. Trust me on this one.

In bowl 2:

Mix 4 teaspoons of borax and 1 1/3rd cup of water

Pour bowl 1 into bowl 2 and just let it sit there for a minute. You don't even need to stir, chemistry will do the work. If you want stiffer slime, use more glue. It easily goes into any container, even an air-tight bag, so you can make it in advance.

You may be thinking 'no thank you' due to glue and borax, especially if you have kids who dare each other to put things in their mouths. I get it. My family hasn't given birth to a girl in over a century, so I have heard or seen it all from boys.(1)

If that is a concern here is an alternative.

Hippie-Dippie Baloney Slime

Just kidding. In modern times you are a lot more likely to have facemask liquid and baking soda or contact lens solution in your house than borax and this works really well.

Graphic: Arm & Hammer(2)

Polyvinyl alcohol sounds scary if you don’t like chemical names but it’s the active ingredient in a peel-off face mask and seeing people in those are scarier than a lot of things in science. You still use food coloring, which is scary to some, but instead of borax you can use baking soda and contact lens solution to start the chemical process.

In a bowl, mix 1 cup of the face mask liquid, 1 cup of baking soda and a tablespoon of shampoo, dish soap, or contact lens solution. Color as you like.