Pattie Postel has always been a bit of a science geek. The former elementary school teacher and nature center director discovered her new favorite pastime with her partner Jeanne Mackey three years ago: bubbling.

Postel had done bubble science with her students and at the center where she worked for many years before she finally decided to go big. On Earth Day three years ago, a woman came to the nature center to make bubbles with the children but forgot the glycerin essential for creating her big bubbles. The kids were so excited for bubbles that they spent the rest of the day trying to make a mix that would allow them to do so. Watching this effort prompted Postel to find a solution that did not have such a simple but substantial flaw.

To form their craft, the duo buys creatively dubbed commercial bubble mix, “Big Bubble Mix”, then adds a gallon of water and a cup of Dawn dish soap. The mix has synthetic polymers in it that give the solution a lot of elasticity. To shape their floating creations, Postel and Mackey use tri-string and garland wands.

“She’s become kind of a bubble geek and she used to be a science teacher so she’s the one who really knows about the science of bubbles like the right formula, the right weather conditions and then we found that it’s a bit of a social experiment,” Mackey said. “A little bit of performance art to just pop up and do bubbles and play with us.”

The pair has been living in Ann Arbor for 19 years and has a variety of sites open to their leisure for bubbling. They consider themselves the town bubblers, or more specifically, “Bubbleheads”.

One of the couple’s favorite spots to bubble is the front lawn of the U of M art museum.

“[We like it] because you get a cross section of students that are coming from the Union or going to classes and families coming out of the art museum and then what’s always fun is people feel like they have to announce what they’re seeing,” Postel said. “So we’ll be standing here and like half a mile down the street someone will go ‘BUBBLES!’ We’ll be like ‘Yes, yes they are.’ So that’s all the better to make them bigger.”

One crucial piece of information regarding the couple’s hobby is that it is just that. A hobby, not a job. “We don’t do parties, we don’t do bubbles for pay. We show up and it’s a giveaway,” Postel said. “Which is really important to us, because people are always trying to hire us, which we just think would kinda take the fun out of it. So we just do pop ups and consider it a community service.”