Homemade Gift ideas

How to make bath bombs for gifts

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Bath bombs make great gifts for both men and women and can be made to almost any specification. Colourants are available in either liquid and powdered forms and once you have the primary colours they are easy to blend into your own shades. Feel free to add other ingredients to the bombs to liven them up. Lavender buds and rose petals look lovely but you should only use dried flowers otherwise they may start to rot and will reduce the shelf-life of the bombs. Making bath bombs is a fun hobby too!

Everyone loves to use Bath Bombs – but how are they made? Well, actually, the answer is that they are very easy to make. This article will show you how to start making bath bombs.

Bath Bomb Ingredients

3 cups Bicarbonate of Soda
2 cups Citric Acid
6 tablespoons Olive Oil
Essential Oil
Dried Flower Petals

How to make the bath bombs

Step one

Blend the Bicarbonate of Soda and the Citric Acid together. These are the two ingredients that will cause all that exciting fizzing and foaming in the bath after you throw them in. Citric acid and Bicarbonate of Soda react to water in this way because of a chemical reaction.

Step two

Mix through some dried flower petals of your choice. Lavender or rose petals are nice, but any petals will work. Add enough so that you get only a few flower petals with each bath bomb. If you add too many flower petals, the mixture will not hold together, even after it has been set. If you do not like the idea of flower petals going down your drain, then try homemade Bath Teabags. Why not collect some petals when you are watching the kids play outside?

Step three

Now mix through the oils. The oil will bind the bath bombs together but will not cause a chemical reaction the way water will. Any blend of essential oil can be used. The choice is entirely up to you.

Step four

If you have bath bomb moulds, fill each half up and over what will fit into them. Now press the two halves together. There needs to be plenty of product in each half. Otherwise, they will not join together in the middle.

Press them very firmly together and then carefully separate. There are different ways in which people like to do this. Some prefer to let them sit for a couple of minutes and then gently pull them apart. Others like to twist them slightly before separating.

It all comes down to personal preference as well as trial and error. If the bath bombs repeatedly come apart into two halves rather than staying together, you may need to add a little extra olive oil to the mix. Be careful, though; if you add too much oil to the blend, the whole lot may never set properly.

Note: If you do not have any bath bomb moulds, then you can use many different things as moulds – they just won’t be round. Flat bottom medicine cups can be used; so can small drinking cups.

If you want really small ones, you can press them into ice cube trays. The use of moulds is only limited by your own imagination. So go into your kitchen and have a look around to see what can be used.

Step five

Place the bath bombs onto trays and let them harden for at least 24 hours in the open air. If it is wet and raining or humid outside, this process may take longer, and putting the bath bombs in front of a heater or into a slow oven is advised.

Otherwise, there may be enough moisture in the air to set the bath bombs off. They will foam slightly before setting. This is fine, except that sometimes this foaming may prevent the bombs from ever setting.

Who bath bombs make great gifts for

A few people I think would be great recipients for bath bombs would be guests at a baby shower and when you have lots of people to get gifts for such as teachers and teaching assistants if your child is at school.

Whether you are saving money on your wife’s Christmas gifts or making gifts for the lollypop person your child has help them cross the road, these are a lovely gift idea.

Things to check before making bath bombs as presents

It is always wise to check if your recipient has any allergies. There are so many different scents you can use in the bath bombs it is easy to avoid something they have an allergy to if you know in advance.

Why not consider them for an older child too, perhaps as a gift to a teen who has had their tonsils out and is feeling under the weather?