Friday, December 28, 2007

Invisible Ink


I have been heroically avoiding holiday clean up. I don't want to avoid it but my slacky nature has won and I've been filling my time with Wii, knitting and D9's new science kit. Today we made invisible ink. Very simple and fun. All you need is 1/2 lemon, off white paper, paint brush (q-tips work great too) and a flame. oh yes, and adult supervision of course.




1. gather supplies




2. juice 1/2 lemon



3. think of a top secret message



4. lightly paint message with lemon juice. Allow message to dry...about 5 minutes.


5. Have an adult do this part. Use a heat source (flame, hair dryer, embossing heat gun) to make message appear. I used tongs and the stove burner. You need to keep moving the paper so it doesn't ignite.

Voila! D9's message. She rocks!

She didn't like my message so much...



4 comments:

Natalie, the Chickenblogger said...

A hot light bulb works too... it's slightly less dangerous than the flame. Thanks for the reminder about this bit of magic. My 9 yo is looking for creative and intriguing mystery-adventure!
BTW Maria's dress is only ever one of 2 places... on her or in the washer! She loves it, and so do we all. Thank you X 10,000!

Lynne's Somewhat Invented Life said...

Just wandered in from someone else's blog. LOVED your lemon juice message to the kiddies. A very clever Mom you are.

I wonder if a hair dryer would heat the juice enough to show up on the paper?

I have been looking at your photos and they are really beautiful. I MUST learn how to download mine.

Loral said...

ROFL!!!! you're one funny momma! I'm sure A thought it was heeee-larious :D

Julie said...

Cool kit! We got an electronics kit and potato clock along with other creative and scientific things. I love that my boys are now old enough to use them on their own but excited enough to show everything off to us.