Do you remember those really awesome early 2000s commercials about the glory of moon sand and the life changing effect it could have on your playtime? I do. I thought that stuff was the coolest thing since sliced bread. And now that I’m a broke adult with an apartment, I can make this dream a reality!
My best friend from home, Lilly, came up to visit and help me out with this craft. It is honestly one of the easiest crafts to put together if you’re on a tight budget and schedule. All you need is 4 cups of flour and 1/2 cup of baby oil. THAT’S IT. It couldn’t be any easier.  Lilly and I mixed our ingredients in a bowl before we dumped it out on the coffee table and we learned a few things that we should’ve thought about before but didn’t. So I present to you some advice called… Lillytips!

Lillytip: Take off your jewelry. Flour and baby oil is everywhere.

Lillytip: If you’re going to dump the moon sand out onto a flat surface, make sure it’s in a shallow bin with edges. Again, flour and baby oil EVERYWHERE.

Both of which were true. We dumped it out onto my coffee table and if you’re not careful, it will get on the floor. Fortunately, it really is just baby oil and flour, but if you’re making a more high grade moon sand with fancy ingredients, I can’t guarantee the safety of your carpet.

Anyways, all is fine and dandy in the world of moon sand. We were living our childhood dream. Lilly being the art major she is out created me on every level (picture to the right). She constructed this dragon head in about ten minutes and in that same time I made a sad box (picture was mysteriously deleted before it made it to this blog post). We even judged it on a 5 star scale with the following criteria: process of creating the moon sand, moldability, texture, cleanup and overall experience.

• PROCESS
  • Dana- 5 stars “My dog could make this and he’s an idiot.”
  • Lilly- 5 stars “It’s so simple to make you’ll probably think you’re doing something wrong.”
• MOLDABILITY
  • Dana-2.5 stars “I think I’m just bad at art.”
  • Lilly-3 stars “Unless you’re a genius, you won’t be able to sculpt a great work of art with it. Still, considering it’s literally made with flour, it’s impressively moldable.”
• TEXTURE
  • Dana-2 stars “This is just flour and baby oil. It does not feel like sand.”
  • Lilly-2 stars “It feels like the inside of the good kind of stress ball.”
• CLEANUP
  • Dana-4.5 stars “I hate cleaning but this wasn’t horrible at all.”
  • Lilly-3.5 stars “It was harder to clean up than I thought it would be. Maybe I’m just a messy person, but flour was (*cough* still is *cough*) all over my clothes.”
• OVERALL
  • Dana-3.5 stars “Above average but barely.”
  • Lilly-3.4 stars “It was fun and we spent way longer playing with it than I thought we would. I definitely recommend it.”

Lillytip: If you’re going to go rogue, don’t add water.

Lilly and I were going to make a second moon sand recipe and compare it to the first but we ended up buying the wrong type of sand. We had all these leftover ingredients (tea tree oil, corn starch, etc) and they were STARING at us. So we added them. Everything was going great until we foolishly added water (part of the other recipe) and created a horrifying crumbly dough. If you were wondering, I do not recommend going rogue. And if you are, be smart about it (unlike us) because flour is not sand and flour does not mix well with water!

Until next time,

Dana