Homemade Holiday Gifts – Bath Salts

This year I wanted to try my hand at making holiday gifts for my family. It didn’t seem like a very daunting task since I only have about 6 people that really “need” presents, and about another 5 that I would “want” to give something to.

I have a pretty odd family when it comes to gift giving though. My dad for example only wants flannel shirts, and they have to have come from the thrift store. Umm… He found a few 99 cent shirts at his local store and now wont buy them anywhere else. When I told him that was fine, they were about $5 at my local Salvation Army (and I could always go on 25% off day) he said “5 Dollars! I got mine for 99cents! Oh well, I guess that’s still better than the $12 they would be at the mall.” Ha ha! Once Ant heard those words come out of Dad’s mouth, he stopped wondering why I’m so cheap thrifty.

Anyway… Four of the six people on my have-to list are the real girlie-girl type, even though they range in age from 9 years old to 40.  So after brain storming with Ant, we figured that the easiest thing would be to make something that everyone would like, and just make multiples.

Beauty products seemed like just the thing. “It’ll be easy.” Ant says. Yeah right! So this week I’m going to share with you my adventures in Bath Salts, Fizzy Bombs, Sugar Scrub Cubes, and Soaps. Maybe you can all learn a few things from my mistakes and make your home-made beauty gifts a lot more easily than I made mine!

I’m starting with salts because it has been the easiest to make so far. After looking through dozens of salt recipes, I’ve decided that you can pretty much mix any of the following ingredients and have your very own “special blend” bath salts.

Epsom Salt  – (high in minerals)
Sea Salt – (helps ease pain)
Rock Salt – (like the kind for making ice cream)
Baking Soda – water softener, neutralizes skin acids
Citric Acid – Makes fizz when combined with baking soda
“Carrier” Oil -sweet almond, olive, grape seed, jojoba, etc. (not too much or it will turn from a salt to a scrub)
Glycerin – moisturizer
Cornstarch – skin smoother
Borax – soften the water, suspend soap particles so they don’t stick to your skin
Finely Ground Oatmeal – Skin soother (remember chicken pox?)
Powdered Milk – skin softener, helps remove dead skin cells
Food Coloring
Dried Herbs or Flower Petals
Essential Oil (or fragrance oil specially formulated for bath products like soap – brambleberry.com)

The only restriction seems to be that you need to use fragrance oils and food coloring sparingly in order not to irritate your skin, and dye your bath tub (or yourself) a funky new color.

For my salts, I started with this basic mix ratio from Martha and then added in a few extras from above.

(Insert pregnancy joke involving pickles, but Reli actually ate them all.)

We just spray painted the jar lids white, slapped on a label, and added a piece of ribbon.
Then you have a quick and easy gift made from ingredients easily found at the grocery store!

Use push pins to lift the lid off the cardboard so you can paint without flipping.

This is pretty much a project that anyone can handle since the only thing that is difficult is getting the “right” color. It’s so nice to be able to just toss whatever you want into a bowl and mix it up. Ta Da!

Random side note… I absolutely HATE trying to print on mailing labels!! They were by far the hardest part of this whole project. I haven’t figured out yet if the problem lies with the printer, the labels, or the user, but I don’t ever want to make them again!