Homemade Bath Bombs

There’s nothing that can beat the simple luxury of a hot bubble bath, in my opinion. When the cold has seeped into your bones, you’ve had a long and stressful day, or you need some help drifting off to sleep, a bath is always the answer. I’ve been a huge fan of the Lush bath bomb range for a long time. I can’t actually use bath bombs anymore – they irritate my sensitive skin – but James loves them and I still enjoy how they make the whole house smell divine. I often buy James bath bombs for Christmas, but to shake things up this year I decided to make my own. If you’re a bath bomb addict, this is a much cheaper way to ensure an unlimited supply, and it’s really fun coming up with your own scent combinations.

I’ve taken the basic recipe from this A Beautiful Mess tutorial, but I’ve tweaked the quantities and added my own scent combinations and extra coconut oil for an extra moisturizing bath.

You will need:

Bath bomb mould
300g baking soda
150g corn starch
150g citric acid
150g Epsom salts
3 teaspoons of water
6 teaspoons of coconut or almond oil
3 teaspoons of essential oils
Optional: food colouring
Optional: dried flowers for decoration.

I made three different types of bath bombs. One used red food colouring and coffee essence (which smells phenomenal). Another batch used blue food colouring, sandalwood oil and ylang ylang oil. For the last, I mimicked my favourite Lush bath bomb (Lord of Misrule) by combining patchouli oil, black pepper oil and vanilla essence. I prefer earthy to sweet scents – you can probably tell!

It is much easier to make these bath bombs in a warm room (or climate!) I tried to mix my ingredients outside to save making a mess on the carpet, and the coconut oil kept re-hardening before I could mix my ingredients together so I had to retreat back indoors. Combine the baking soda, corn starch, citric acid and Epsom salts in a large bowl, mixing well to get rid of clumps. Melt the coconut oil into a small bowl and add the water, essential oils and food colouring. Pour the liquid into the big bowl as slowly as possible, mixing the whole time. If you pour too quickly, the baking soda will react and fizz up now, instead of in the bath, which is not what you want.

Mix the ingredients well and press it into one half of the bath bomb mould. Leave this for ten minutes until it is dry and set. Very gently, remove the mixture, fill up half the bath bomb mould again, and lightly press on the half of a bath bomb that is already dried. Leave to set for another ten minutes. If the bath bombs are crumbling too easily, add a little more water and coconut oil.

If you are having trouble removing the bath bombs from their moulds, add a layer of cling film *before* you press the mixture in, and you can remove it again by gentle pulling either side of the cling film. The ingredients are not usually harmful for skin, but I wore gloves as my hands are easily irritated by things like baking soda and essential oils.

Leave your bath bombs to dry overnight, if possible, and then you can wrap them up in tissue paper and ribbon to make beautiful presents! I can’t wait to try these again and see what “flavour” combinations I can come up with.