Next on my homemade Xmas gifts we’ve got bath bombs! These make great gifts and are super easy to customise. I love bath bombs and have always meant to have a proper go at making them but the kiddie set I used didn’t work out well. I made candles last time which turned out pretty nice. Hopefully these bath bombs will come out well too! Here’s what you’ll need (amazon affiliate links used):
- Sodium Bicarbonate 2Kg for £6.50
- Epsom Salts 1.3KG for £5
- Citric Acid 1KG for £5.50
- Molds set for 6
- Soap Colourants 5 for £5
- Essence 1 for £3
- Oil (olive or witchhazel)
- Water
- Bowl x2
Making the Mixture
Making bath bombs is quite easy on paper. You add two parts Sodium Bicarbonate to one part Citric Acid and a final part of Epsom Salts. Mix these all together in a bowl (ideally a glass one) and put to one side.
In another bowl or jug mix mix two tablespoons of oil with a table spoon of water and a tablespoon of your fave essence oil. This is also when you add in your soap colorant! Slowly add this into the bowl of dry ingredients. Make sure you keep stirring as you do or your mixture may fizz or go uneven. Stir until it’s full combined and at a consistency where you can mold the mixture with your fingers.
It’s worth noting than using metal molds will require a slightly wetter mixture whereas plastic molds want a drier one!
Getting the Shape
The hard bit! I found this pretty trial and error as I wasn’t too sure what I was doing first time round. I was using metal spherical molds for a typical bath bomb shape.
You need to fill both halves of the mold and then push them together to set. Make sure you shake or pat down each side to ensure no gaps left in the mold.
Try doing each half different colours or once you’ve got the knack, smaller bath bombs inside bigger ones!
How did they come out?
Here’s how my batch came out! I did a mix of gingerbread, lavender and candlyfloss scented bath bombs in a few colours.
The smaller bath bombs were set within 20 minutes, but the bigger ones I left overnight. If in doubt, leave it for longer as you don’t want the bath bomb crumbling when you take it out. In general, if your mixture stuck in the two halves and didn’t combine, you need to mix the mixture more, if it crumbled it was too dry and if it’s fizzing already, you made it too wet.
Hopefully these go down well wrapped up as gifts. I’ve used some of my friend’s favourite scents so they’ll be more personalised. I’m looking forwards to making more combos and experimenting with ingredients! You can check out my candle making post here.
A Very Homemade Xmas Mini Series
Laters,
Ruthy xo
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Looks great, will have to get making. Never tried before