Summer is here, the weather is warm and your kids need some entertaining. Have you heard of water blobs? They are an easy and inexpensive way to keep children busy and cool outside.

Water blobs are literally big blobs of water. Typically, they are made of two plastic painter’s tarps duct taped or fused together, then filled with hose water and sealed up. (Tutorial here) The blobs are great for laying and jumping on, and even exploring for the smaller kids if you put some colorful foam toys inside.

You may have read our blog about what to do with empty wood pellet bags. For summer, we thought of a way to use your pellet bags for this popular water blob trend!

See below for a step by step tutorial on how to make a water blob out of those empty wood pellet bags you might have laying around from the heating season.

What you’ll need:

• At least 8 empty pellet bags. You’ll need more for a larger blob of course.
• Iron and ironing board
• Parchment paper
• Duct tape

You’ll be patching together your pellet bags like you would a quilt. So a first step will be to cut open each bag to be a single layer of flat plastic. We cut the bottoms and the tops of each bag first, then cut one side to make a big plastic rectangle. (See #1)

To make the plastic a uniform size, we stacked all the bags on top of one another and cut the tops and bottoms again, simultaneously. (#2)

Next, cut out a piece of parchment paper. About 2 feet long gives you enough space, but is easy to move around. Fold it in half length-wise and draw a line about 2-inches out from the fold. This is a guide for you on where to stop your iron.

We will be making two large plastic sheets out of the “quilted” pellet bags, then melding the two large pieces together to make the blob.

Match up the edges of two pieces of the pellet bag plastic, the outsides of the bags faces in towards one another. Place this edge in between the folded parchment paper. Make sure the paper is between the ironing board and the bags, and the parchment paper is between the bags and the iron. (#3)

Use your iron on its hottest setting to slowly melt the plastic together by running the iron across the parchment. Make sure to stay within the confinements of the line you made. Also make sure you do not touch the iron directly to the plastic of course! Press firmly, but not too much. You can always go back and reseal if needed.

Repeat this motion on each uncut seam in the pellet bags to seal the bag vents. The vents are small holes made in bags during the packaging process to help keep the pellets safe and properly ventilated. Keep sealing edges together in the quilting fashion until you have a rectangle of attached bags. Repeat this process with the bags until you have two sheets. (#5)

Match up the edges of your two large sheets, and continue the parchment paper iron sealing on three sides. Then flip this now pocket-shaped plastic creation inside-out to put all the seams on the inside where the water will go. Continue the iron sealing on the fourth side, leaving a small hose-sized hole.

Bring your empty water blob outside to start filling it up! Insert the hose in the small open hole and prop it up so it won’t fall out when filling. If you decide to add some food coloring and/or little foam toys for the kids, now is the time to do it. Turn on the hose and let your blob start to expand! If you see some small holes leaking water, you can either leave them to slowly spit out some cool water while the kids play, or simply seal them with some duct tape.

When the blob is full, remove the hose and secure the opening with your duct tape. Congrats! You’ve made a water blob out of your empty wood pellet bags! The blob should hold up pretty well through the day. After some rough jumping, our blob started to open up after a few hours. After we were finished with the blob, we opened up the hole that started to form instead of patching it, and used the nicely fused together bags as a lawn mower tarp!

Are you going to try this at home? Do not let children play on the water blob without adult supervision. Also, the blob should only be assembled by adults. Woodpellets.com is not responsible for any injuries sustained. We hope your children have hours of safe and supervised fun on their own wood pellet water blob!