Make Your Own Fizzing Bath Bomb

Last night, I was toast. I wrote and edited 7 articles and two essays in 8 hours, while making sure my stream (a river rather) of coffee kept flowing. This is how life gets back at you when you’ve been trimming your work load all week.

The little stuff doesn’t seem significant at first, but then it piles up into a mountain that has to be dealt with, at the last minute. So I dealt with my mountain and took a 2 hour long bath after I finally got home.

What took me so long? Well, let’s just say that I’ve found a fun way to add a bit of luxury to the absolutely mundane. What am I talking about? Fizzing bath bombs of course.

These little babies can seem childish at first (believe me they are), but what’s a little bit of water, sumptuous soaking, untroubled relaxation, and overflow of fizz and bubbles? Besides, you probably deserve something to look forward to after a hard day’s work.

How do you get your hands on these babies? Why not make your own? The ingredients are incredibly easy to come by and with a little bit of help from me and your imagination, you’ll be making personalized bath bombs in no time.

All right, before we get started, let’s talk about the science behind the bombs. The most important attribute that these bombs have is that they fizz like crazy when you throw them in water.

That fantastic fizz is due to a chemical reaction which I’m sure we’ve all read about in high school. The reaction is a typical acid-base reaction with intense effervescence. In non-nerdy language, citric acid and baking soda mix to form bubbles. As long as your bombs have those two basic ingredients and an oil to hold them together, you’ll have fizz. Beyond that, you’re free to personalize and customize as much as you want.

Here is a slightly advanced recipe for enthusiasts:

Ingredients

• 1 cup Cornstarch
• 2 Citric acid
• 4 Baking soda
• 1 tsp. Epsom salt
• 1 tsp. Sea salt
• 4 tsp. Water
• 1 tsp. Borax
• Essential oils (2-5 drops each)
• A few drops of  soap colorant (depending on the color intensity you want)

The baking soda to citric acid ratio should be 2:1. Everything else is a matter of preference, including, color, fragrance, additional ingredients, etc.

Instructions

• Put all your dry ingredients into a bowl after a thorough sifting. Make sure that no lumps remain. Otherwise the bombs could break apart.
• Add the coloring, which should be in powdered form. You can use food coloring, but a soap colorant is a better and perhaps safer option.
• Add borax to a squirt bottle filled with water and shakle the bottle thoroughly.
• Add the essential oils and the fragrance oils and shake the mixture well
• Take a whisk in your hand and add water to the center of the dry ingredients at a uniform rate.
• Start mixing immediately with the whisk to incorporate the liquid into the dry ingredients. You must mix as soon as you pour in the liquid, because the mixture will start to fizz as soon as the liquid is added. The whisking should stop this.
• While you keep the liquid pouring, mix continuously and vigorously. The mixture should start to thicken as you go along.

One needs to strike the perfect balance between moisture and dryness when it comes to making good bath bombs. Otherwise you’re balls will just crumble and fall apart or swell and fizz even before they are thrown into the tub. Stop when squirting when your mixture appears to have reached a good consistency, even if liquid still remains in the squirt bottle. It is particularly difficult to fix the mixture if gets too wet.

The desired consistency is like that of wet sand – just barely wet enough to stick together. Squeeze your mixture into a ball and see if it stays ball-shaped. That is the acid-test, I’d say. If the balls are too dry the spray water on them. Just a few sprays of water please. Don’t go crazy here. Two or three sprays can make a big difference. Good Luck and enjoy soaking.