Thanks to a friend we are boiling Straws!

Lumi Does It:Boil Bracelets?

Yes, Yes I can.

never say never!,by a.ilumi with photos by LUMI-SOn!

About three months ago an old friend of Lumi’ssent her a crazy e-mail! It said,

“I don’t know if you knew this or not, but If you take colorful plastic straws and put them in a huge pot of boiling water you can make bracelets. They harden and look really cool… If you try it and they come out right, then you can put them on the Auntie Wicked page, if you want… that seems like the kinda thing you guys put on there.”

From that moment on, Lumi has been searching for information on the practice of BOILING BRACELETS and found almost NOTHING! Finally, she found this about boiling toothbrushes!Well? If you can boil a toothbrush, certainly you can boil a straw, right? Also, note to people who actually did follow the link, Lumi certainly DID NOT wrap her arms in paper towels for any part of this process! But if you feel like you would enjoy wrapping your arms in paper towels? You just go right ahead and send us pictures if you do! Thankfully, the friend/informant for this blog topic, Mrs. Dyan, had warned me about the possibility of straws failing because as she said, “maybe straws aren’t made like they used to be” WHICH MADE LUMI WONDER , “What straw would be more like and OLD straw?” Well it turns out straws are usually made of polypropylene .

Lumi is not sure she read ALL of that correctly but it seems one would need VERY hot water, beyond boiling? to make these new straws get melt-ish and by that time you would prolly end up with a mess! The FIRST time Lumi did this experiment, she did indeed try these new straws and NOTHING HAPPENED:

I boiled those suckers for like an hour!!

So, the question remained…what would be an old straw? Well a really old straw would be like horsey straw but in this case Lumi thought of “crazy straws”, which actually IS the technical term for straws like these:

These straws seem to be made out of a DIFFERENT plastic! Something more like Polyvinyl Chloride ,which I think has a lower melting point which would make all of this make good very scientific sense! Yehs! Science! Big Words! Safety Glasses and aprons! Yeah! The crazy straws scored at the grocery store and fully investigated on the internet, Lumi snagged Lumi -son, and we were ready to

DO THIS THING!

Actually as mentioned , Lumi ended up doing this thing TWICE! Because the first time a combo of my dying camera and bad lighting led to pictures that looked TERRIBLE and didn’t tell much of the very fun story of making bracelets from straws and toothbrushes! So a byproduct of this experiment? Lumi learned she needed a new camera! The first experiment also taught Lumi, that any modern-like rubbery toothbrushes never hold a shape even if you do get to the point you can bend them(which may never happen)! So remember SWIRLY straws and brittle old-school toothbrushes only!

LIKE THESE:

It also helps to have:(materials)

– Some kind of work gloves: that water is hot(but neither Lumi or Lumi-son were able to keep them on WHILE shaping the slightly cooled straw) On the toothbrushes though you will need them!

– Needle nose pliers: for shaping bracelets and pulling out toothbrush bristles

– Tweezer: also for shaping and pulling out bristles

Once you have your materials together, everything else is actually really easy and FAST!!

Boil some water and keep it boiling. Then drop in one swirly straw, in about thirty seconds it will look like this:

You have about thirty seconds to shape the bracelet before it cools too much!

If it gets too brittle and you are just not done perfecting your design, don’t worry! You can hold the bracelet form back in the water to get it soft again! This seems to work about three times before the straw just becomes hardened for good! The most difficult part of the bracelet making is actually figuring out how to do the closure? The straws do not get hot enough to really melt the ends together! Perhaps a well placed grill type lighter would be appropriate? My helper, being eight years old, I decided not to try the torch the ends method at this time! I actually twisted the ends around and around until the length I didn’t need came off or got thin enough to snip with a scissors. Most of the time this created a seal and a neat twisty bottom of the bracelet.

Here’s finished bracelet number one!

This is one of those projects where you really appreciate the process! There is this WOW moment! Lumi felt like a real science girl with the tongs – OH I FORGOT TONGS IN THE LIST OF THINGS TO HAVE! Yehs, tongs and boiling water and things changing form from solid to semi-solid…kind of exciting science stuff and then out pops a bracelet!

All science should culminate in bracelets!

Here’s the before and after!

So Lumi did a bunch more straw bracelets and Lumi-son did some bracelets and we had a BLAST…

until we ran out of straws! But thankfully, we also had TOOTHBRUSHES TO EXPLORE:

So same story, you drop the toothbrushes into boil. These take about one minute. You will KNOW for sure when you pull them out and they HANG!

The big difference is when these babies come out, you have to ,and this is the part Lumi found the MOST fun part both times…You have to yank out the bristles with a tweezers or pliers and or your hands!

check it out:

The tweezers work great:

After all the bristles are out these toothbrushes go back in the boiling water(yes you do keep it boiling all this time – you may need to add extra water!)

Then you get to pull them out and bend them into bracelet shapes!

You need to hold the toothbrush bracelets in the shape that you want them for about a full minute, maybe a sketch longer! Until they are really cool! Cool like our photograph, who’s subject has been sitting there making wolverine claws with straws (and will just perish, if lumi doesn’t include some of our posing with straws in this blog).

The Brilliant photographer Lumi-son/wolverine:

and here is one of “way too many” that Lumi took of herself posing with straws:

And finally – all our creations at once – including the ones i had to snatch back from the photographer!

So cute! Now you have something to do with all those toothbrushes Wicked has been telling you to throw away. Lumi also thinks ALOT could be done with these and would love to see anyone’s pics! WE will blog them! What other crazy things are people making bracelets out of? Oh ,and as Lumi mentioned, this idea actually came from a friend(thanks again, Dyan!) who read the blog and thought this might be the kind of thing we would do! And yehs it was! We love getting ideas because then half of the work is done! So if you have ideas for blogs send them! Comment them! Send a carrier pigeon! Anything. We love ideas!

You can find us in ALL THESE PLACES:

The Aunties on facebook

The Aunties on twitter

The Aunties want you to ask them questions on formspring

Yehs, the Aunties are on myspace

The Aunties especially love and also live on tumblr

Thank you as alway,s and check back all you lady lovers! Wicked and Lumi are going to blog on two ladies we admire very much …you will never guess in a million years who they are!