As I mentioned in my last post I had a lovely afternoon of craft in the garden, making comfrey salve. One of the other things we made was bath bombs. I had read about them, and used them, but in fact never made them, so I was keen to give it a try. Moms made them with their pre-schoolers, so it couldn’t be that hard, surely! When I host crafternoons, I to try things out first, iron out the problems so to speak.
One thing each of the recipes that I tried was very emphatic about was to not add too much liquid. I carefully measured all the ingredients out until it was supposed to look like damp sea sand. Well I live by the ocean, so I know what damp sea sand looks like…………so I added a tad more water. then I added the citric acid, and no it didn’t bubble up so I thought I was doing just fine. I pressed the lovely purple lavender mixture into moulds (my muffin pan), then carefully tipped them out onto some wax paper….There was already a little fizzing…
I walked away for about an hour and came back to this ……
Oh dear, when they say do not add more liquid they mean it! I made some more with the correct amount of water, and this time I used rose essential oil and pink colouring. I made them small and in patty pan cases since we would not have the 24 hours needed to dry and harden before wrapping.
On the actual day of crafternoons we made some more lavender ones, and they turned out perfectly. This time we placed the cellophane paper directly into the muffin tins, and that was a great idea as they wrapped up perfectly.
This is the recipe I used, adapted and changed from many different recipes.
I cup bicarbonate of soda
1/2 cup Epsom salts
1/c cup cornstarch
1 tsp water
10 drops essential oil
2 tsp coconut oil
tiny dab of gel food colouring
1/2 cup citric acid
Mix dry ingredients – except citric acid, into a bowl. Mix liquid ingredients together and knead into the dry ingredients. Add the citric acid and then press firmly into moulds, lined with cellophane. Tie ribbon around the top and leave for a couple of hours, they will harden over the next 24 hours.
Drop into the bath, and enjoy a long soak in perfumed soft water. It might just be easier to add a half cup of epsom salts and a bit of essential oil to the bath water……
have you ever made bath bombs?
