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Inspired by a clip I saw on Good Morning America in October 2008, I wanted to try making helium soap bubbles.

The bubblemasters on GMA did not reveal much about their process, they showed pink shapes floating into the air at a festival. It was definitely soap foam and there was definitely helium involved.

It looked cool. I decided to give it a try.

I rented a short cylinder, with $40 of helium inside and bought a half-gallon jug of bubble solution. I believe that "bubble solution" is just soap, water and glycerin.

The plan was to use a short hose to blow helium up through a tub of soap solution. The bubbles I had seen on television looked tiny, so I grabbed a wire sieve from the kitchen to aid in keeping the bubbles small.

At first, the bubbles didn't go anywhere. I was being pretty stingy with the helium, and I was actually surprised that it wasn't working exactly the way I thought it should. Some bubbles popped and others stayed stuck to the surface of the solution.

The half-gallon of bubble liquid filled my tub up about two inches, which wasn't enough to submerge the sieve screen. The half-submerged screen did seem to help, or at least it gave me enough patience to wait out a few clumps of bubbles.

Just blowing single helium bubbles wasn't the effect Iwas going for, but I had to try it.

It worked a little.

Erik volunteered to inhale the helium and blow bubbles with his breath.