D&D Potion of Healing (That Actually Does Something!)

There is no good way to make a magical potion. If it looks nice, it's inedible and useless, and if it tastes nice, it doesn't look right. This has bothered me for a while. As a collector of interesting bottles and jars, I wanted to be able to put magical potions in some of them! Especially the one you see here. So I looked in the Magical Artifacts section of the 2014 edition of the Dungeon Master's Guide, and I found a description of a potion of healing: a swirling, shiny red potion. And I thought, that sounds like a mindfulness jar! So I embarked on this project to make a potion of healing, that is actually a mindfulness jar.

Now, a mindfulness jar is basically a glitter snowglobe. The idea behind it is that if you get stressed, upset, or need to calm down, you would shake up the jar, and then take deep breaths until the glitter settles. So, it won't heal you physically, but it will help your brain. Now let's get into it!

Glass bottle or jar

a lid for this jar (mine didn't have one, so I used a different lid)

Distilled water

Glitter glue (I used red)

Food coloring (also red)

Loose glitter (mine is really fine gold glitter. Note: the larger the glitter, the faster it falls. Mine falls realllllly slow, so I would suggest something less fine.)

Cardstock

String

Brown paper

a pen

sealing wax and seal (optional)

hot glue gun

measuring cups

funnel

Mindfulness jars rely on the ratio of water to glitter glue to glitter being right to avoid being boring. So I had to look up a recipe for my jar. The recipe I used was the top Google search result, and was designed for a 2 cup jar, aka a pint mason jar. The ratio was a half cup of glitter glue, 1-2 teaspoons of glitter, and 1 and a half cups of distilled water. But because I am not using a mason jar, I needed to find the volume of my jar, which I did by filling it with water and then pouring the water into a measuring cup. Mine is 1 cup instead of 2, which means I halved all the amounts, leaving me with:

1/4 cup of glitter glue

3/4 cups of distilled water

1 teaspoon of loose glitter (This might do better with 1/2 a teaspoon of glitter, as mine has a lot sitting on the bottom of the jar)

Then you can prepare your bottle. That means removing any labels (a sesame seed oil label would ruin the D&D aesthetic. Thankfully, labels can be easily removed by heating the glue with a hair dryer.), and washing out the inside. If your bottle, like mine, held oil, boil the jar in a pot of water, and then fill it half full with water and a little bit of dish soap and shake repeatedly. Once your bottle is ready, you can move on to the next step.

It is time to make the glittery potion to put in our bottle.

Let's get going.

First, measure 1/3 of the distilled water into a bowl. For me, that's 1/4 cup of distilled water. Note: use distilled water only! Regular tap water has minerals and other things in it that can make your mind jar get all moldy inside. Moldy potions are bad potions.

Put a little bit of food coloring into your water, just a drop or two. You could skip this if you like, as the glitter glue will give it some color, but I wanted mine to be very red, so I added the color.

Then, it is time for your glitter glue. Like a child, I get very excited about glitter glue, but I am bad at cleaning it up. So I purchased a bottle of glitter glue that was as close to the amount I needed as I could get. Walmart had 1.8 ounce bottles, which was almost perfect (1/4 cup is 2 ounces). This had the added benefit that I didn't need to measure it out, so I didn't have to clean up. Yay!. If you do need to measure it, use measuring cups and a spatula to help you.

Put all that glitter glue into the water and mix that glitter glue and water together like you're making a scrambled egg. In other words, with a fork, and fast.

Once your glitter glue and water are mixed together, add your loose glitter. Mix it in a little slower than you did with the glitter glue. If the glitter escapes the bowl, you will need to quarantine your whole house until you can get it under control. Glitter is a terrible infection.

Time to put this potion into a bottle and finish up! Using your funnel, pour your glitter mixture potion into your bottle. Add more distilled water to the bottle, filling it almost to the top. Leaving an air pocket in the bottle will make it easier to shake up.

Time to put a lid on it. Using your hot glue gun, fill the lid of your jar with glue. If your jar is large, simply put glue on the outer rim of the jar and around the outer edge of your lid, so the hot glue will make a seal on the bottle. Screw your lid on while the glue is still hot!

Then, rip out a square of brown paper to cover the top of the bottle, hiding the lid from view. Wrap some string around the bottle, just under the lid, to hold the paper down. Tie the string, but leave at least one long end.

Cut a tag shape out of cardstock and write “Potion of Healing” on it. You could letter this in Tolkien Elvish, in the runes or characters of your liking, or in plain English like I did. Punch a hole in your tag, and slip the string through it. Don’t tie the string directly around the tag, or it will probably tear. Instead, tie the string onto itself, forming a loop around the tag.

If you like, you could add a wax seal to the top of the bottle like I did.

Congratulations, adventurer! You have a potion of healing. I am pleased with my mindfulness jar, and I hope you will be as well. You could easily adapt the colors of the glitter to make different potions. I am tempted to try to make Felix Felicis, the luck potion from Harry Potter. Let me know if you try more colors! I have never seen an “I made it!” post on any of my instructables, but I would love to see yours. Thank you for reading, and may your dice roll true!