Craft: Scented Water Beads

I heard about Water Beads on FB last month and since I'd never heard of them and had no idea what they were, I looked them up. I found a few articles that said you could make things with them including gel air fresheners and that sounded really interesting to me. So I bought the stuff and did it.

You'll need a packet of Water Beads. I found this at Amazon and it was just under $7 for 20,000 beads.

A glass jar.

3 cups of water.

Essential Oil. I bought a jar of Cinnamon Essential oil for this. 

I added 1 tsp. of water beads to the jar. Then added 20 drops of Cinnamon Essential oil and 3 cups of water. They had grown this much after just 2 hours.

After 6 hours I drained off the remaining water and this is what they looked like and they smelled so good!

I love the colors and they feel so neat to play with. After the first bowl of them was such a great success, I made a 2nd container of water beads with some Christmas Garland Essential Oil that I had and that smelled so good too. 

I found that this works best in small rooms like a bathroom or bedroom and I had to stir the beads ever other day and add 1-2 more drops of the essential oil in order to get more scent. The scent doesn't last long though. If you don't stir the beads and add more essential oil every other day there's no scent that you can smell unless your face is right over the bowl of beads. I'm actually really surprised this doesn't work well because there are so many articles, videos and posts about it but for me it's a fail. You're better off buying one of those .99 Renuzit air fresheners. lol 

I plan on making another big bowl of these beads with no scent so the scent doesn't get all over my hands when I play with them. lol They are quite fun to play with and handle and I love how they feel when I squish them in my hand. If you've never seen these before and like doing crafts, you might like this one. It was easy, fun and there are other things to do with them like make pretty colored beads filled glass jars.