It’s been kind of a crazy winter around here, and we’re really glad to see the Spring weather headed our way.
Don’t you just love how your house suddenly seems bigger when your kids can play outside? We’re so glad to see warmer weather, that the kiddos got tired of waiting to get into the pool, and jumped right in last Sunday. And thus began pool season for us. I’m pretty sure the water is a not-so-balmy 55 degrees, and their mouths turned purple. But yolo. They enjoyed every minute, and so did we.
Of watching them. Every minute of watching them. I did not get in. Nor will I. Until the water is approximately 7oish degrees. Thankyouverymuch.
And when they decided to come in and defrost, we made a great little project they can enjoy for bath time.
Some lemon-lavender and peppermint scented bath bombs…
And a bit of a throw back to this project… handmade soaps in fun spring/Easter shapes!
They’re perfect for gift giving, or just the sweetest idea for fun with family.
Here’s how we made them…
For the bath bombs: {This would make about three very large bath bombs, or some smaller ones with the molds that we used.}
Dry ingredients: {It helps to have a measuring cup that converts the units for you}
• 8 oz. of baking soda
• 4 oz. of corn starch
• 4 oz. of finely granulated epsom salts
• 4 oz. citric acid
• dried lavender for a little flavor
Wet ingredients:
• essential oils of your choice – we used about 1.5 tsp and this was very strong {we made lemon/lavender with a dash of peppermint since allergy season has taken us by storm – more on this below – you can choose your own scents!}
• 1 tsp coconut oil (certified)
• 1 tsp of water
optional: food coloring to make them colorful- your choice {we stuck with colorless because we failed ;)}
You’ll also want: a large bowl, a whisk, + a mold {we got ours here + here for all things spring soirée} or bath bomb mold of some sort – and a large towel + a measuring cup
So, in a large bowl, add all of your dry ingredients + whisk them together.
Please note if you’re working with children, you may want to handle the citric acid. I’m no chemist but the warnings on the labels had me a little cautious since it can be an irritant. So I let our daughter mix all the dry, and then added the citric acid, last.
Pour all of your wet ingredients together in a separate {smaller will do} bowl + mix them together.
Side note: We tried food coloring, but it wasn’t enough to really change the mixture. Fail. That’s why it looks like ink in the bowl. You need much more than we had, and I believe perfecting these takes a little trial and error.
Whisk the ingredients {wet + dry} together, and it should start to clump a bit. You only need a little moisture here… trust me… we kinda blew it by adding too much water for the larger molds.
Press and pack them into your molds – and press them in as much as you can.
Let them dry for a bit, and then carefully remove them from your mold. It’s here on a towel that they can dry, preferably for a day before they can harden and be handled/used.
Store them in an airtight container to keep them fresh but TADA! BUNNY bath bombs!
I blew it on the flowers. These are a little trickier than the soap, so again, don’t add too much water. But we do love the little bunnies!
And now onto the soap… Making soaps is super easy. Once upon a time when I was looking into it, I found some big complicated chemically method and I knew it wasn’t for us. Lye is scary. Doesn’t that jazz burn people? So we decided to go the simple route: those soap molds + supplies at the local craft store always seemed simple enough… here’s {the basics} of what you’ll need.
Soap ingredients:
• goat’s milk soap base
• soap molds found here + here for all things spring
• we also used a plastic spoon and a glass measuring cup.
• any other ingredients you’d like to use – essential oils, exfoliants, etc.
For the base: Cut the soap mold into individual shapes, and put into the measuring cup. Our molds held exactly four little squares for one soap rectangle, and yours will vary depending on what you use.
Then we {carefully} heated the goats milk base in the microwave {or you could use a double boiler on the stove.} We went with so many different scents, it was easy to do one at a time in the microwave.
Be careful not to burn the soap, and watch it carefully. We did ours on 30 second increments.
When we were finished stirring the melted mixture, we left it in the measuring cup, and added all the extras.
See: the fun parts. {Essential oils, exfoliating ingredients, zest, etc.} Watch out with little hands, though the soap never got past an unbearable heat kind of phase for us, it’s always good to be careful.
We mixed it together, and poured it into the mold.
Note: If you change flavors in between, it’s easy to just rinse your measuring cup out before you go in the next round. If you have a glass one, simply melt the soap cubes there and then add your scents… and mix before pouring it in.
In a short while the mold will be hardened {I placed ours in the fridge to speed up the process} and it pops right out. Tada! You have your soap. Below are a few of our fave ingredients you can add in with the stirring phase – some of our favorites.
The beauty of this little project is that you can experiment and add whatever you want.
1. Lemon Peppermint: 5 drops peppermint + 7 drops lemon + lemon zest
2. Lavender Peppermint Poppyseed: 2 drops peppermint + 5 drops lavender + a dash of poppyseed + dried lavender.
3. Lemon Lavender {basically a different version of my very favorite sugar scrub} 5 drops lavender + 3 drops lemon + lemon zest + a touch of dried lavender
4. Pure Lime: Lime zest + 3 drops Purity essential oil
5. Lemon Poppyseed: 5 drops lemon + lemon zest + poppyseed
6. Cypress Lemon: 5 drops lemon + 2 drops cypress + poppyseed + lemon zest
You can add or subtract whatever ingredients you want to your own tastes and preferences… they’re just so clean and fabulous it’s kind of addictive to see what we can come up with next!
You can even set it out in the bathroom for guests…
We found all our cute little containers at the dollar spot via Tarjay.
For these, we used our little spring tags – you can find them and use them however you want for free – here + here
You never know what you can create with this project.
As always, if you try it… or have any questions, let us know! We’d love to hear from you.
Have an inspired day!
Amanda @ Love & Renovations says
What a fun idea! My toddler would LOVE to try some bath bombs – I’m going to have to do this with him!
Anna says
This is so great. Can’t wait to try making the soap. I didn’t realize you can melt a soap base down to put into molds and thought you had to do all the lye stuff. I tried that with a friend once, and we cut the whole recipe in half. However, we were so conscious of getting the lye part right (er hemm) that we did *exactly* what it said on the recipe. Obviously, this turned out to be a disaster, as we had cut the rest in half. So we when we were putting the mixture into soap shapes with bare hands, we both were scorched with bright red, burning skin hands and were totally freaking out about our double-the-lye mistake. The red went away without much ado, and our skin was soon totally fine, but I never revisited the project. But THIS soap version sounds so fun and easy and awesome and creative.
Karen says
The idea is really amazing. And beautiful too. Thanks for sharing this blog.
Kevin Ruth says
it is very creative and helpful for my project great job
tplinkrepeater.net says
Great post, thankyou so much for sharing