Recently, the creative team at Natures Garden has been working on various bath bomb/ bath fizzy recipes. As with anything homemade it seems like there are endless possibilities. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that Natures Garden carries over 800 fragrances, so it is totally viable to really achieve some super unique bath bomb concepts.
Needless to say, in our quest to discover new and interesting concepts within the realm of bath bombs; we stumbled upon an amazing tips and interesting concepts.
For anyone that has never made a bath bomb, that oh so enjoyable fizz that the bath bomb gives off when added to water is produced by a reaction between the baking soda and the citric acid. Once these two ingredients are met with water, fizzing ensues.
A bath bomb recipe broken down into percentages is largely dry ingredients, usually around 95% or so. The other remaining 5% is liquids, whether that be distilled water, skin loving oils or butters, colorants, fragrance; or a combination of them. Depending on the amount of fizz that you are looking to attain in your bath bomb, the ratio of baking soda to citric acid is about 2 to 1. That means that for every 454 grams of baking soda, you will add 227 grams of citric acid.
Generally, for our bath bomb recipes, we try to keep our dry ingredients around 95-98% of the total recipe. This leaves a 2-5% liquid content. We have found that this ratio does produce a drier bath bomb mixture to work with; but it also produces a bath bomb that is packed full of fizz. When going this route, the key to remember is to spritz witch hazel into the ingredients only as needed to get the mixture to be a crumbly dough consistency.
When using a fillable ornament as a mold, spritzing both ends of the bath bomb with witch hazel before connecting allows just the right amount of reaction to occur in order to bind the two halves together. There are also many bath bomb crafters that unmold their bath bombs and then spritz with witch hazel. With this method, as the bath bomb dries, and the water portion of the witch hazel evaporates, a harder bath bomb is created. This little tip comes in handy for both display ideas and shipping reasons.
As for when a bath bomb recipe calls for the addition of water, there is also a little trick of the trade that can be used. Completing all of the bath bomb steps but withholding the addition of citric acid until the very end helps to reduce the amount of fizzing in the bowl prematurely. The end result is still the same; a hard bath bomb. However, since the citric acid is added after the liquids have already been introduced and incorporated into the mixture, only a very small amount of fizzy action occurs in the bowl; increasing that wonderful fizz for your bathtub.
For anyone that is interested in making bath bombs, or currently makes them; these little tricks do work.