Make Ice Cream Slime at Home

Materials you'll need

• Glue
• Borax (activator) ⚠️ See safety note below
• Water
• Mixing bowl
• Measuring cup
• Spoon
• Soft clay
• Red food coloring
• Ice cream scoop
• Ice cream cone
• Sprinkles

 

*Safety note

Borax can irritate skin, especially with prolonged contact or for kids with eczema or sensitive skin. If you'd like to use a lower-concentration alternative, swap the borax/warm water mixture for a contact lens solution activator: mix ½ teaspoon of baking soda into the glue-water mixture, then slowly add contact lens solution one tablespoon at a time, stirring as you go, until the slime comes together. Check the label. It needs to list boric acid or sodium borate as an ingredient, or it won't work. Note that contact lens solution contains borax derivatives at a much lower concentration, so it's gentler but not entirely borax-free. Either way, wash hands after playing and keep slime away from eyes and mouths.

Heads up: swapping the activator may change how your slime turns out. Different concentrations can affect stretchiness and texture, so results may vary.

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1: Grab a bowl and pour in 1 cup of glue.

Step 2: Slowly add the borax/warm water mixture and stir until the mixture pulls together into a stretchy blob of slime.

Step 3: Knead a ball of soft clay into the slime, folding and squishing until it's fully blended in and the slime feels smooth.

Step 4: Add a drop of red food coloring to the top and knead again until the whole ball turns an even pink.

Step 5: Use an ice cream scoop to scoop up the pink slime and swirl it onto an ice cream cone, building up layers like soft-serve.

Step 6: Finish it off with a sprinkle of colorful sprinkles on top.

Learn more

This project works thanks to polymer chemistry. Liquid glue is full of long, wiggly molecule chains called polymers, and normally those chains slide right past each other — that's why glue pours like a liquid. When you add the borax mixture, the borate ions grab onto those chains and link them together, a process called cross-linking, tangling them into a stretchy, connected network instead of a runny liquid. Mixing in clay thickens the slime and gives it a smoother, less-sticky, more moldable texture — exactly what you need to swirl a scoopable "soft-serve" shape onto the cone.