How to Make Christmas Bath Bombs
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How to make Christmas bath bombs with beautifully scented essential oils, colored minerals, and naturally fizzy ingredients. These are super cute and easy-to-make handmade gifts for the holidays! You use a simple silicone mold for the shape and gold mica for the accents. The recipe includes a full DIY video to help you understand each step.
These delightful little Christmas trees will win you major brownie points this holiday season. They’re simple to make, and if you stick to just one scent/color, then they can be inexpensive, too. You can even find many ingredients at the supermarket, pharmacy, or in your kitchen cupboard! Making Christmas bath bombs is also very easy, and seeing them come together will make you just as excited as their lucky recipients.
It takes just a day for the bath bombs to set, and after that, you can use them immediately. You can even pop them into cute little bags and give them away as gifts the next day. The way they work is that you drop them into warm bathwater, causing them to fizz and bubble. As they dissolve, they release gorgeously scented essential oil and shimmery gold mica. Who doesn’t love a little sparkle over the holidays?
Making Christmas Bath Bombs
Before you jump into making Christmas tree bath bombs, let’s talk about the ingredients. The most important ones are baking soda, citric acid, Epsom salt, and witch hazel. Everything else is for decoration or scent and includes mineral-based pigments, dried flowers and herbs, and essential oils. Essential oils are plant-based scents and completely natural.
Making them is straightforward! You sift and mix the dry ingredients, add the wet, then pack the mixture into molds when they’re just moist enough. The gold effect comes from sifting gold mica over the molds beforehand. Leave them to dry for a day, then you can pop them out and use them. It’s as simple as that!
More Creative Christmas Crafts and Makes
- Winter Solstice Crafts for Instant Hygge
- Honey Fudge Soap Recipe
- Make a Natural Christmas Wreath
- DIY Soy Candles in Cute Recycled Ramekins
Christmas Bath Bomb Recipe
Equipment
- organza bags (optional)
Materials
- 1 cup baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
- 1/2 cup citric acid
- 1/2 cup Epsom salt
- 1/2 tsp essential oil** Lavender, rose-geranium, peppermint, may chang
- 1/32 tsp mineral colorant Ultramarine purple, ultramarine pink, chromium green oxide, yellow iron oxide
- gold mica
- dried herbs and flowers Lavender buds, rose petals, peppermint leaves, calendula petals
- witch hazel in a spray bottle
Instructions
Add the dry ingredients to the bowl
- Place the sieve over the mixing bowl and pass the baking soda, citric acid, epsom salt, and mineral color (not the gold Mica though) through it and into the bowl below. Use a spoon to stir and press it all through.
Mix in the wet ingredients
- Measure the essential oil directly into the dry ingredients and then mix it in with your hands. Next, wet the contents with a few sprays of the witch hazel, then mix it all together with your hands. Repeat until the bath bomb mixture can hold form when you squeeze it in your hands. I used 18 squirts of witch hazel to make mine, though the amount coming out of other spray bottles may vary.
Decorate the mold's cavities
- Spoon about half a teaspoon of gold mica into the mini sieve (strainer) and then tap it over the mold cavities. It's pretty much like dusting a cake with powdered sugar. Next, sprinkle your chosen dried herb or flowers into each cavity. Just a little though.
Make the bath bombs
- Now fill each mold cavity with the bath bomb mixture and pack it in tightly. There's enough mixture to make six or seven Christmas trees. When it's all packed in, place the mold in your freezer, and leave it there for 45 minutes. This helps the fizzy mixture to set solidly and makes it easier to take them out of the molds.
Cure the bath bombs
- Gently pop the bath bombs out of the mold and set them on bubble wrap or a hard surface that's been covered in clingfilm. Leave them there to first defrost and then to harden up. This will take about a day.
Use and gift your DIY Christmas Tree Bath Bombs
- Once made, you should keep the bath bombs in a sealed jar until they are ready to be used or gifted. As gifts, I find that they look pretty tucked into organza bags. You can see them through the material and the strings on the bags make them easy to hang in your Christmas tree or to tie to Christmas stockings. To use a bath bomb, drop it into warm bathwater. Watch as it fizzes and dissolves before your eyes before releasing the essential oil and body-loving epsom salt.
I live this idea, so cute yet useful too! You are so inspiring Tanya. I’ve been with you since you began!
Wish I had a bath though. I’ll make these as gifts in my soap orders! ?? Thank you for the idea!
You’re very welcome Elyna and thanks for being with me for so long! :) The Xmas tree bath bombs are super cute, aren’t they? A lovely little side-gift or stocking filler :)
I really want to try and make them! The only problem is that i live in Germany and i can’t find Witch Hazel here. Can I use something else?
Thank you very much.
Hi Leona, you can get it on Amazon.de here https://amzn.to/2K6NnEl
These are super cute!
I have a question about the gold mica your link clicks to – I have that mica at home and it’s great, a little goes a long way! But I am selling my soap/bath products in Canada and I have to label the products with the INCI name of the ingredients. Do you happen to know how you would list this mica? Thanks!
Hi Krista, every mica will have a different INCI depending on how the mica was tinted. You’ll need to get the INCI from the supplier/manufacturer.
Dear tanya,
Im asking about a soap récipe for a new born baby, because im not sure about the ingredients.
Can you please help me ?
Mirta from argentina.
thank you very much.
your projects are so nice¡¡¡
Wow! these bath bombs look so pretty. They could be an amazing gift idea. I just cannot wait to make them. I made some Himalayan salt bath bombs recently. They turned out great! I am definitely going to try your recipe as well. I basically like Himalayan salt very much. I use it as bath salt and really love it.
I made this recipe today. It’s probably the easiest recipe I’ve tried this far. I’ve thrown so much product in a jar to use as bath salts because I can’t seem to figure out the right amount of witch hazel. This time it finally worked. Although it exploded outside of the molds and became round blob bombs…lol. so seriously, I followed this to a tea and found I still used too much witch hazel (hence the explosion, too much liquid I can only assume) but they have stopped growing and are finally getting hard. Nice, that was my goal all along, I really don’t care about the shape so much. I will follow up with a picture soon.
I had another comment from a friend who said the same about hers — it’s definitely a problem of too much witch hazel. I use about 18 squirts but I think that my sprayer squirts a lot less than most! Next time just add enough to get the dry ingredients to the right consistency. Check out the video to compare but in your hands it should be able to just hold together into a ball. It will still crumble a bit at that stage but it’s supposed to. Any more than ‘just holding’ and it might fizz up.
Man they look really Lush-worthy! I wish I had a bath ;-)