Minnie has recently discovered bath bombs! She had some as part of a pamper set for Christmas & has loved watching them fizz away in the bathwater. Sadly they've now all been used, so we thought we'd have a go at creating our own bath time fizzy treats. With only 4 basic ingredients these bath bombs are simple & also frugal to make.
To make them we used
150g Bicarbonate of soda (from a baking section of a supermarket)
50g Citric Acid powder (bought cheaply from a local chemist)
5ml of essential oil (we used lavender)
Water (in a clean spray bottle)
Optional - Few drops of food colouring (we added red)
We started by adding the citric acid & bicarbonate of soda to a bowl & mixing them together.
To colour our bath bombs we added a few drops of red food colouring & mixed well into the powdered mixture with our hands until there was an even pink colour. You have to act fairly fast after adding the liquid food colouring to prevent the mixture fizzing.
Again you have to act fairly quickly with this next step to prevent the fizzing effect. We added a few drops of lavender oil before spraying a little water over the mixture.
When we started to spray the water over the mixture we stirred the ingredients constantly until it started to hold together when squeezed in our hands.
Once the mixture starts to look like this when squeezed, add it to your chosen mold pressing it in firmly. We probably added a little too much water but the bath bombs turned out fine, they just started to fizz a wee bit when placed in the molds. Again you have to act fairly quickly before the mixture starts to set.
We had planned to use these flexible silicone molds, but realised when we pressed the mixture in that the mold lost its shape, so we ended up using the firmer plastic packaging the molds came in as they were close to hand! Next time we'll be using stronger molds!
As you can see our mixture made 6 small bath bombs. We left them for about 10 mins before gently removing them from mold.
Once they were out we *had* to add one to a bowl of water straight away to check that they worked... that's why only 5 appear in the pic below! To Minnie's delight (& my relief) the bath bomb fizzed away & smelt gorgeous!
We packaged them up in gift bags & added heart gift tags ready to give to friends on Valentine's Day.
Of course we've since made more for Minnie to add to her baths! Not only were these fun to make but they're also great for exploring a little science too.
Now we've had a go at making these we're planning to make a few more.