Create a gorgeous ‘Citrine Crystal Star’ for your Crystal Collection.
Create a gorgeous ‘Citrine Crystal Star’ for your Crystal Collection. All tools and ingredients included.
In nearly all cases the cascading of small crystals is due to tiny impurities: extra ‘nucleation’ points in the water or the dish or the air or the cup or spoon etc. This will starve the ball or geode of material – so yes they will take much longer to form up on the ball, if at all. Sorry, we cannot control water quality or air quality.
A Fix: ‘Mum’ tips the solution with all the tiny crystals into a clean pan and reheats and stirs them with a clean spoon until all are dissolved. Do not boil. And please do not boil in the Microwave. WARNING: a solution like this if boiled can get hotter than boiling water – so an ADULT MUST DO IT! (If the bath was covered continuously before, the solution might now have too much water in relation to crystals if some crystals did form on the ball or geode. So keep the solution hot e.g: for about 10 minutes to steam off some of the water to re-saturate or strengthen the solution.) Cool it to just ‘hot to touch’ temperature = about 50° C. Then tip it into the very clean bath and put the Ball or geode in … and cover. You may need to lower the Ball to be just under the liquid. This will not get rid of dust there from the start but the Ball ( geode) will have crystals already formed which are the preferred nucleation sites 2nd time round.
If you dissolve lots of small crystals in water until no more will dissolve, you have made a SATURATED solution. The hotter the water, the more chemical crystals you can dissolve before it gets saturated. The solution is usually a lot denser ( or heavier) than plain water, so our Magic Rocks ( in some kits only) will float when the solution is saturated. It is one scientific way of knowing if a liquid is plain water or has dissolved chemical in it. Then as the solution cools or dries out, the water just can’t hold that much chemical in solution. So crystals start to form. And they are usually a LOT bigger than the ones you put in.
Maybe the water is dirty or the dish is dusty! Also our experts say PLEASE don’t disturb the dish or swirl it about to see what is happening. Leave it totally still in a dust free place to cool naturally, and then evaporate. Tip the saturated solutions in very very gently.
If you have a dust cover and bath in your specific kit – please put it on the bath. Some kits do not have dust covers and that is just fine. You can take the dust cover off after a day or two when the main crystals are established. Then evaporation will speed up the crystal growth. BUT do keep them in a dry dust free place.
Crystallization rate depends largely on temperature and humidity in the home, no matter what we specify in the booklets. Temperature and humidity play a great part in the speed of crystal formation. Crystals form – but slowly and usually they are bigger. But it may take a week or more. We suggest re saturating your liquids with more chemical in very hot solution. Hotter than hand warm – which is the safe temperature for children. So try putting the bottle in a bath of newly boiled water, until more dissolves. Carefully decant the very hot saturated liquid into the well. Let the saturated liquid to cool in a dust free place. You will get crystals growing as it cools, unless the laws of solubility and temperature are broken. Then as the liquid evaporates the crystals will enlarge. Dusty air or impure water can also lead to extraneous nucleation points leading to cascades of smaller crystals. So clean water and clean air for best results.
The base chemical is ammonium monophosphate which is itself colourless and harmless. ( It is also an agricultural fertilizer.)
