Bath Bombs

This morning we've been making bath bombs.

The children love making these but we haven't done it for ages. We did them for Christmas presents and enjoyed the making, and the fizzing end result, so much that we got more of the ingredients to make further batches for us over the year. They're very simple to make and not too expensive. We got our ingredients from Just A Soap, but I think there are quite a few places out there that sell everything you need.

This is the recipe we used: 

1 cup granulated citric acid

2 cups bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

1 tsp essential oil/fragrance oil

1 tsp herbs and/or colour

1 tsp oil

Binder – water, witch hazel or floral water in a spritz or spray bottle.

First put your citric acid in a roomy bowl. Add your bicarb soda, sieved...

... and then any dry ingredients, eg herbs (since these will end up floating around your bath tub you might want to chop them up finely so they don’t clog up your plug hole!). We chopped up some lemon balm and mint leaves fresh from the garden and used some lavender that Venetia had harvested into a jar back awhile.

 

Now sprinkle in your colour and fragrance, that's if you want to use these, just leave them out if you want to keep it more basic.The colour, in particular, might fizz up, if it does just cover the fizzing with dry mixture.

 

Start mixing with your hands – watch out if you have any cuts because the citric acid will make them sting. If you have clumps then rub them between your fingertips.

 

Time for the oil, we just used olive oil, but you can get proper bath supply 'butters' that you can melt.  And then spray with your liquid of choice – we used witch hazel. Don’t get it too wet, just like slightly damp sand so it clumps together and you can squeeze it into a ball between your hands.

You can just stick with balls, like these, as Maria did.

Or if you have any basic ‘moulds’, try using them. We had a couple of different ones from when we made Christmas presents – the snowflakes were our favourite and since they worked brilliantly who really cares if it’s August!

  

Just push your mixture into the mould firmly, leave for a few minutes then gently pop out. If you’ve got your consistency right, it seems to come out quite easily – as long as the mould isn’t too fiddly. We’ve found patterns on moulds show up pretty well but fiddly bits tend to fall off when we try and get them out.

If your mixture is a bit too wet then your shape seems to expand, after it’s made, as it dries.  If your mixture dries up a bit while you’re doing the shaping/moulding then just spray with a bit more of your liquid. And if you don’t have a spray bottle then just try dampening your hands before mixing, until you get the right consistency.

Once you’ve finished, spread your bombs out to dry thoroughly – or take your children up for a bath, drop in the bombs straightaway and enjoy!

Back tomorrow, with a photo, Sally.