Bath Bombs Archives

Posted on November 5, 2017 by Vicki — 6 Comments

The Week in Soap: 5th November, 2017

Sometimes a week goes completely differently to expectation. This last week the kids have been home from school for the half-term break (already! Yikes…) and I honestly thought it was going to be a toughie. I’m right in the middle of the pre-Christmas rush and I knew Dean was crazy busy with his work and not able to take any time off, so was resigned to night time working. I was able to arrange one reciprocal playdate with a friend who has similar aged children, so i had a houseful of children on Tuesday, and Thursday was to be my one and only ‘work’ day.

Still, on Monday and Tuesday I managed to escape over to the office at 4pm when Dean finished work to pack up a few orders. When I got back, I found out that he’d managed to take the following day off as a holiday so that I could work. He’s a good ‘un.

So of course on Wednesday I took full advantage of an unexpected work day and made a load of bathbombs, as well as making a serious dent in the orders that needed to be packed and dispatched.

Thursday was my kind of day. Once the kids had been safely delivered to their friends’ house, I made over 16kg of soap – the first time I’ve ever used all my moulds at once:

I think I may need more moulds! Clockwise from top left these are Serenity (Patch, Ylang Ylang, Lemon & Sweet Orange EOs), Botanica (Lavender, Lemon & Lime EOs). Blodau (Lavender & Ylang Ylang EOs) and Luscious Lavender.

Later on Thursday Dean said he’d managed to get the Friday off too – result! I managed to get another few batches of bath bombs made, and then I indulged in a little experimentation I made another test batch of lip balm – this time in packaged in a tin:

This one was made with beeswax, cocoa butter and rice bran oil, and turned out harder than the last test – this one would probably have been better in a tube rather than a tin. I didn’t flavour or fragrance, and I think I prefer it that way…

I also tried making whipped body butter – two separate batches, both made with unrefined shea butter and coconut oil, with a touch of evening primrose oil. I added lavender and rosemary essential oils to the first batch, and ylang ylang and benzoin essential oils PLUS 1tblsp of arrowroot powder to the second batch.

Amazing how much final product came from a relatively small amount of oils – these are far from dainty containers (I popped a pound coin in the photo to give some idea of scale):

I used unrefined shea butter, and I’m definitely not a fan of the fragrance – I’ll use refined next time, which is what I usually use in my soap. I also didn’t add enough fragrance, although it might be that the shea was overpowering the essential oils.

On first trying it I found the body butter to have quite a greasy texture. Being used to commercial body butters, this version does feel oily on the skin, but having used it for a few days now I find I’m liking it more and more – it sinks into my skin quite nicely. The arrowroot is supposed to reduce the greasiness of the body butter but I can’t discern much difference between the one with, and the one without.

On Saturday I took over family duties while Dean did some work on the house – the children and I visited the library and went swimming, then had fish and chips at the beach.

On Sunday Dean and the children went to visit friends for the afternoon while I went to the office and unmoulded, then cut, the soap from Thursday’s soaping session. I’m conscious that I often share photos of freshly poured soap and then forget to share the cut pictures, so I made a special effort to get a snap of the freshly cut soap – do bear in mind that they’re still soft here and haven’t been tidied up yet. Clockwise from top left – Luscious Lavender, Blodau, Botanica & Serenity:

Finally, some exciting news on the home front. Since moving into this house over three years ago now we’ve lived with a really grotty bathroom while we upgraded other parts of the house and it’s meant that I haven’t been able to share the kind of in-use product photos I would have liked. This week work begins on our new bathroom – woop! I can’t wait to share pictures, just as soon as it’s done.

Thanks for reading, back soon!

Vicki

Posted on October 13, 2017 by Vicki — 14 Comments

13 Top Tips for Making Bath Bombs (Blogtober 13)

bath-bomb-tips

When I put out my appeal for Blogtober topics here, Jo asked for hints and tips for making bath bombs. Now, I’m absolutely not an expert but I did learn a few things while I was knee deep in frustration trying to crack the bath bomb enigma. Everyone else seemed to be effortlessly cranking out these beautiful bath bombs, while I was crying into my bath bomb mix, WILLING the two sides of my balls to stick together…

Here’s a few points that might help you if you too if you find yourself in bath bomb purgatory…

While you only need baking soda and citric acid as your dry ingredients in bath bombs, it helps to add extra dry ingredients which can help prevent the premature reaction between those two main ingredients. I use both cornflour (cornstarch) and kaolin clay in my recipe. (Don’t use more than half the weight of the citric acid)
Use POWDERED anhydrous citric acid. You can buy the coarser citric acid and grind it yourself, but to be honest it’s a right faff. Just buy the powdered version. Also, be careful not to buy monohydrate citric acid, you definitely need anhydrous citric acid.
If you’re a beginner, or having problems with your recipe, don’t use Epsom salts or Dead Sea salts in your bath bombs. I have seen recipes using them, but they’re high in magnesium, which is a humectant (i.e. it attracts moisture from the air), and can prematurely set off the fizz
Sieve, sieve, sieve all your dry ingredients. Never, ever try to make bath bombs with ingredients that haven’t been carefully sieved to remove all and any lumps.
If you plan on making a lot of bath bombs, consider investing in a dedicated kitchen aid type mixer. Get it mixing all the dry ingredients, then combine your oils (cocoa butter and rice bran in my case), your fragrance and your colourant in a separate container, then drizzle it into the mixer and get everything really well combined with minimal effort.
Citrus essential oils can prevent bath bombs from hardening. I made three big batches of bath bombs using my ‘serenity’ essential oil blend (that contains both sweet orange and lemon essential oils) and couldn’t understand why the bath bombs never got hard. I suspected that the essential oils might be to blame but a lengthy Google didn’t come up with anything. I finally got my answer after posting in a bath bomb Facebook group. Citrus EOs can be problematic in bath bombs.
Use a water soluble colorant specifically designed for use in bath bombs. I use these from Soaposh. Mica in bath bombs aren’t recommended and can lead to a hot mess in and around the bathtub unless to you use Polysorbate 80.
Once everything is combined, spritz with a little Witch Hazel. Really, just a very small amount. For a recipe that starts with 900g baking soda I only need one or two spritzes of Witch Hazel. You really don’t want a ‘wet sand’ texture (certainly not the wet sand that I’m familiar with anyway) If you squeeze some mix in your hand it should hold together, but it doesn’t look or feel wet. This bit is notoriously hard to explain, and really, trial and error is the best way to become familiar with it (but it’s like riding a bike, once you’ve got it you’ve got it for life :-D). Too much moisture (of any kind) in your bath bombs can lead to lumpy, warty or cracked bombs as they dry out.
Don’t put any water anywhere near your bombs. Despite seeing plenty of recipes advocate a quick spritz of water, you don’t need it, and you’re risking setting off the fizzing prematurely. Also make very sure that your kit, implements and moulds are completely, utterly dry (be especially careful when you wash your moulds between making different varieties – dry them well)
Fill the two sides of your mould then press them down a little to compact it. Then pile more mix loosely on top of each side and press them together really hard. Don’t twist! I then use a teaspoon to tap all around one side of the mould, and the bath bomb then drops out into my hand. Turn it over, tap, tap, tap again, and the other side of the mould should come off. It’s taken me a while to get to the point where this works 99.9% of the time. If it doesn’t work – empty out the mix and give the mould a good wipe on the inside before trying again.
I never leave the bath bomb in the mould for any length of time. Soap Queen has a great Q&A on bath bomb making here, but while she recommends leaving the bomb in the mould for a few hours, I’ve never found it to be necessary with round bombs, but it might well be necessary for different shaped moulds.
I don’t mind a little bit of a flat bottom on my bombs, but if you’d like to avoid one then placing them on bubble wrap that’s been covered with some kitchen roll works well. (The wetter your mix, the more likely you are to get a flat bottom, so consider that angle as well if you want to avoid flat bits)
It’s worth considering the humidity of the air in your ‘making’ area. I live in a notoriously wet area and I genuinely haven’t had a problem making bath bombs when it’s raining. However, if you live in particularly humid area, or your kitchen is particularly steamy, then you might find bath bomb making becomes troublesome.

There you go, those are my tips for bath bomb making. If you have any tips to add please comment below!

Thanks for reading, back tomorrow!

Vickx

Posted on September 18, 2017 by Vicki — 9 Comments

The Week in Soap: 17th Sept ’17

It would appear that Autumn is well and truly here. There’s a chill in the air in the mornings, and we’re lighting the fire every evening. It’s also a reminder that Christmas is coming, and with it that big, three day Christmas Fair I’ve committed myself to at the beginning of December – eek! To that end, this week’s soapmaking was all holiday based: Double batches of Candy Cane, Frosted Christmas Tree and Warm Gingerbread:

Frosted Christmas Tree, Candy Cane & Warm Gingerbread in the mould

I’ve not taken ‘proper’ photographs of the cuts yet, but here’s a sneaky peek at the Frosted Christmas Tree:

And a quick (and rather rubbish – sorry!!) snap of the Warm Gingerbread (this is the previous weeks batch – this week’s moved even more quickly and I didn’t even attempt the drop!)

I had a bit of a mishap with the Candy Cane – there was a knock on the door mid-pour, and instead of ignoring it I went to answer it, thinking that the soap batter was nice and fluid and I could leave it a moment or two… There’s a lesson learnt – I was away from the soap just that little bit too long and when I came back it had thickened up too much to finish off the drop swirl, arrghhhhh….

Bath bombs are a relatively new thing for me and I’ve always found them a little tedious to make to be honest. Last Friday I made 90 of them, and I seemed to be quicker this time. I guess practice does make perfect (still need a LOT of practice though :-D) They were pretty trouble free, except for one variety, but that’s a story for another day…

I also packaged up another 100 guest soaps, and bevelled a load more – there’s confetti soap on the horizon I reckon:

On a personal note, the highlight of the week was earning my green belt in kickboxing on Monday night:

Unfortunately I didn’t feel quite so kickass when I got to training on Wednesday night and discovered exactly what I’m going to have to do to earn my blue belt – there’s some hard work ahead of me!!

If you have a soap (or bath & body) blog, please do join our Soapmaking Bloggers facebook page (and maybe even consider taking part in Blogtober Soapers? ;-D)

Have a great week everyone, I’ll be back soon.

Posted on July 2, 2017 by Vicki — 4 Comments

Well, that was June…

I can’t be the only one who’s gobsmacked that we’re halfway through the year? The days are already getting shorter and I’ve started thinking about Christmas specials – and all this before the summer holidays officially begin 😱

At the beginning of the month I posted some goals for June – here’s how I got on…

1. Research, and make some test batches of, lip balm ✅ After a bit of research I came up with a few recipes that I wanted to try, and made up a first batch:

I already love this one, but I’m only keeping one for myself – the rest are going out to testers. I still have a couple of recipes to try.

2. Finish making the summer specials ✅ I’m considering keeping one of them – ‘Yr Wyddfa’ – all year round as I think it’ll be pretty popular, living as we do at the foot of said mountain!

3. Create a ‘Core Range’ post for bathbombs ✅ This link is proving so handy to send out to potential stockists!

4. Post at least nine times here on the blog – oh so close! Still, I posted 8 times, and if I’d got my backside into gear and posted this on Friday night like I should have, I would have hit my target.

Not bad going eh? Thanks for reading 😊 back soon!

Posted on March 26, 2017 by Vicki — 4 Comments

The Week in Soap: 26th March ’17 – BATHBOMBS!!!

Yesterday (Saturday) brought the first craft fair of the year, and a lot of last week was spent wrapping and labelling in preparation. It also saw the first outing for my bathbombs, which are FINALLY available for sale. I’ve been so busy dispatching wholesale orders and restocking the curing shelves that creating labels for my bathbombs was never a priority – until the night before the craft fair 😮 I took just four varieties – Clarity, Serenity, Lavender and Bewitched (was LoveSpell):

I was busy Mon, Tues, Wed evenings this week, so couldn’t make soap until Thursday night, and then realised that I was so low on Olive Oil I could only make a two batches of Boho Baby (fragranced with Patchouli & Orange essential oils):

Boho Baby (Patchouli & Orange) — Boho Baby

Friday evening was spent wrapping bathbombs for the fair on Saturday, so I wasn’t able to make more until this evening, but I made up with it with two double batches of Serenity (Patchouli, Ylang Ylang, Orange & Lemon essential oils) and Botanica (Lavender, Lemon & Lime essential oils):

I now officially a yellow belt kickboxer! I went through my first ever grading on Monday evening. I had no idea what to expect and it was intense – I arrived home bruised, exhausted and ravenous, but I absolutely loved it, and I’m ridiculously proud of my yellow belt:

Orange belt, I’m coming for ya!!

Posted on February 19, 2017 by Vicki — 1 Comment

The Week in Soap: 19th Feb ’17

I have at least 6 draft posts half written, but somehow it’s got round to Sunday again and I’ve not managed to even think about finishing any of them…

It has, however, been a busy week… I’ve been busy wrapping and labelling the bars for the shop in Didsbury, all 150 of them. It’s a big order for me, but I’ve got a week or two to get it all together.

On Thursday I agreed to supply a local guest house with soap on an ongoing basis. It’s self catering accommodation, and they want to leave both full sized and mini bars for their guests. The first lot of regular bars has been delivered, and this coming week will see me cutting and wrapping the mini sized bars for delivery before the weekend.

I’ve made another five batches this week, three on Monday – First Kiss, Love Spell & Peace:

That little heart was added for Instagram as a nod to Valentine’s Day, as I didn’t get around to making any Valentine’s specials this year.

And two batches of Tutti Frutti on Friday – I’ve been waiting on more fragrance oil for this one for quite a while, and I’m nearly sold out, so I got a couple of batches done at once.

The colours on the top of the finished batches look a little muddy, but I’m hopeful it’ll be fine inside *crosses fingers*

And tonight I made more bathbombs – I literally finished cleaning up 10 minutes ago, so these are very rough and ready photos, but you get the first peek:

Bewitched:

I’ve not managed to take many soapy photos this week, but here’s the Blodau (Flowers) bar from last week:

The kids are off school for half term this coming week, so it’ll be interesting to see how much I get done (especially as we go away on Friday for a couple of nights) but hopefully I’ll get an update out on Sunday at the very least :-/

Posted on February 12, 2017 by Vicki — Leave a comment

The Week in Soap: 12th Feb ’17

I’m tired tonight. It feels like it’s been a long and busy week, and now, not even 9pm on Sunday night, I feel ready for bed. So I’m going to make this brief, and then tackle the ironing pile before bed. Oh, the glamour!!

I made four batches of soap this week, all restocks again. I’m struggling to get my stock back up to a level where I’m not anxious about whether I have enough, but I wasn’t able to make any for most of the week as my Shea Butter didn’t arrive until Thursday – arrgghhh! So Friday night saw me soaping all evening, and I made, from top to bottom, Blodau (Flowers), Luscious Lavender, Botanica & Clarity:

Ordinarily I would have cut them this evening, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow, so I’ll share some photos in next Sunday’s update. But here’s some close-ups to mitigate your disappointment 😀

I also made some more bathbombs – these are blue (although they don’t look so blue here) and fragranced with the same essential oil blend as I use for Serenity soap. A few people now have said that the Serenity blend smells like being at a spa, so the name is apt I think. (The scale here isn’t quite right, the bombs aren’t as big as they appear to be compared to the bars of soap – I need to keep that in mind the next time I take photos!)

I also spent a bit of time working on the packaging and labels for the bombs. I think I have a solution, though I’m not quite ready to share photos yet. Maybe next week.

I’m very happy to announce that as of March I’ll be supplying a brand new retailer, Sunnah Skincare who have a store at 88 School Lane, Didsbury, Manchester. This Skincare Co-operative was set up, and is run, by women in the local community, and their aim is to trade as fairly, responsibly and ethically as possible. Check out their Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Oh, more exciting news – I entered a competition on LJ Naturals’ Facebook page to win some of her gorgeous skincare products, and won! The prize was four items – a full sized bottle of OMG Facial Serum, and three mini products – Organic Scratchy Balm, Balancing Organic Moisturiser & Organic Deep Cleansing Balm. They’ve arrived already and they feel wonderful on the skin and smell truly amazing. I’ll be writing a review soon, once I’ve been using them for a little while, but here’s a quick peek at what they look like:

The weather’s not been the best for most of the week, but Tuesday dawned clear and sunny, so a little local walk was in order and I managed to snap this photo. This is Hebog. I suppose you’d call it the village mountain 😀 The path up to the top starts in the village, and I’ve been up to the summit many times, but not this week. Not, in fact, since before we had the children. Soon, soon…

Wednesday found me making Teisen Gri (or Welsh Cakes). They’re a bit like a flattened scone, cooked on a griddle on the hob. They’re utterly delicious, and there’ll be a blog post with the recipe coming soon:

Well, that was longer than I’d planned for it to be. If you got this far, thanks for reading. Back soon!

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Vicki — 5 Comments

The Week in Soap: 5th Feb ’17

Happy Sunday everyone! It’s been a busy week, so I’ll crack right on…

More Luscious Lavender and Welsh Rose were made this week. They’re very popular, and I always like to have plenty in stock:

Both were cut, but I only got round to photographing the Lavender:

I also photographed the two custom batches I made last week. This pic, of Potters’ Soap, proved to be my most liked ever on Instagram – so far! 😀

And this one is called Ar Lan y Môr (By the Sea):

I’ve spent quite a bit of time this week bevelling, packaging and labelling soap. It’s almost half term and before I know it the tourist season will be upon us, so I’m getting ahead of the game:

This evening I had planned to masterbatch a load of oils for the next couple weeks of soapmaking but discovered at the last minute that I’d run out of Shea Butter. Arrghhh!! I’m usually really careful to reorder as soon as I’m getting low of something so crucial. I didn’t because I was sure I had more, but nope, it’s nowhere to be found. So, first off I ordered more Shea, and then changed tack and made some Bath Bombs (or Bath Fizzies, or whatever it is I’m eventually going to call them – decisions decisions!!)

Before Christmas I got my assessment documentation through for 8 varieties of Bath Bomb (in the UK/EU it’s illegal to sell any bath & body product without first paying to get your recipe assessed and approved by a qualified chemist), and tonight I made three of them – Welsh Rose, Clarity & First Kiss:

Welsh Rose, Clarity & First Kiss Bath Bombs

They’re not ‘perfect’ looking, but they do what they’re supposed to – gorgeously!!

Eventually I want to be able to provide matching Bath Bombs for each soap in my core range, but at the moment I can only sell the three above, plus Boho Baby (patchouli & orange), Lavender, Bewitched (was Love Spell), Serenity and Oatmeal Milk & Honey. I’m waiting on more colourants to arrive then I’ll be making more (woo hoo!)

I had a bit of an interesting experience with Facebook this week. I’ve neglected my page somewhat recently as, if I’m honest, it sometimes feels like a waste of time. The Facebook algorithm means that very few of my ‘likers’ actually see my posts, and consequently there is very little engagement. Regardless, I decided that I should give it a go again, and wrote a post explaining why I hadn’t posted for a while and that I would be grateful if people could occasionally like, comment or even (gasp!) share a post. Then I added the photo that had been so popular on Instagram Well my friends, that post has gone bonkers! 165 likes, 54 comments and, and 47 shares at time of writing…

Soo…. I wonder if the same thing would work here? May I ask you to click that little like button below? Would you be amenable to writing a word or two to let me know you’ve been here? Lol, I can but ask, hey??! Thanks for reading, back soon.

Posted on November 20, 2016 by Vicki — 8 Comments

The Week in Soap: 20th Nov ’16

Despite the enforced slow down recently (update on the building work coming soon), there’s still plenty of great stuff going on.

1. The third and final stockist of our Christmas bars will receive their order tomorrow. They can be found in:

Glosters, Bank Place, Porthmadog
Lotti & Wren, Palace Street, Caernarfon
Woodcraft, Beddgelert

Christmas Soaps — Christmas Tree, Three Kings, Candy Cane

I have a limited number available for my local / Facebook customers – I’ll be posting them on the page this week.

2. I’ve finally got my bath bomb assessment – woo hoo! This means that I can now officially (and more to the point, legally!) make and sell handmade bath bombs. That’s one of my goals for the year ticked off too 🙂

3. The Dinosoaps are cured and will be posted for sale over the next couple of days. I’ve already received a few pre-orders and I’m confident they’ll sell pretty quickly.

4. I managed to make a few restocks this week. These are Boho Baby, Delicious & Botanica:

5. This week, I hit the 5K followers mark on Instagram. I know I bang on about it but I do luurve Instagram, and this week I was lucky enough to be featured by HandmadeintheUK. They reposted one of my photos, and if it received more than 125 likes (which it did), then I go forward to the grand final on Sunday (tonight!) At time of writing I’ve not idea how that will work, but I’m excited to see what happens this evening.

6. And finally, you should notice a few more posts coming through from me in future as I’ve committed to post at least twice a week (see this afternoon’s post here), probably on a Sunday and a Wednesday. Having successfully completed Blogtober I rested on my laurels for a little too long, but I’m back 🙂

Posted on October 14, 2016 by Vicki — Leave a comment

Happy Friday!

Blogtober Day 14

Yippee for Fridays! And today has been a particularly good day.

It’s my wedding anniversary. 11 years ago today I married my best friend, and today I’m counting my blessings just that little bit more.
I delivered the first order to a brand new stockist – more of that in another post very soon.
My ‘coming soon’ bathbombs received a glowing review.

Not a bad day eh? We’re off out this evening for a rare outing – dinner, just the two of us, without the constant interruption of children. I. CANNOT. WAIT.

Anyway, back to that bathbomb review. A couple of weeks ago I posted a picture of my trial bathbombs on Instagram and one of my IG buddies mentioned on the post how much she liked them. I offered to send her one to try, on the proviso that she give me her honest feedback. Well, turns out she loved it, and wrote a glowing review on her blog:

“The colour is awesome ! Unlike some bath bombs I have used before it doesn’t leave a horrid layer around the bath after draining the water . Neither does the colour stain the bath.”

Please check out the full review on Beauties and the Bibs There’s even a video of the bomb in action – please check it out!

It’s been a great day so far. Hope you have a wonderful one too.

Posted on October 3, 2016 by Vicki — 2 Comments

Bath Bomb Progress – Blogtober Day 3

I’m not really a bath person. Every now and then, if I’m particularly tired or achey, I’ll luxuriate in a deep, hot bath with plenty of bubbles, but I’ve never been one for bath bombs. Many of my customers, however, most definitely ARE bath bomb people.

I posted a while back (here) about my first foray into bath bomb making, and during the intervening months I’ve continued to perfect my recipe abd practice the process and, finally happy, I applied for a CPSR (Cosmetic Product Safety Report) to enable me to sell bath bombs last Thursday. Now for those of you not in the know (or for anyone outwith the EU), in order to be able to sell any kind of bath, beauty or cosmetic product in the UK (and EU) you need to get yourself a CPSR for it. This needs to be done for every single product (and variety of that product) and isn’t cheap, so you want to be absolutely sure of your recipe before you put in that application.

These are what the final bombs look like. I was, admittedly, a little heavy handed with the colourant in this batch – I’m using these bath bomb colourants from Soaposh Ltd and they’re fabulously intense. There will be a little less going into the next batch 😀

Now, I just need to wait for the documentation to come through (it can take a few weeks) and I’ll be making some of my customers very happy indeed!

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Vicki — 3 Comments

Bath bombs – I dipped a toe…

We’re nearly a quarter of the way through the year (already!!) and I’ve not been making much headway with those goals, so I decided to give bath fizzies, aka bath bombs, a go. I’ve always called them bath bombs, but apparently Lush have patented the name and now everyone’s scared silly to call them ‘bombs’. I’ll continue to call them bath bombs until I come up with my own clever, witty and amusing name. Obviously…

So, bath bombs. I have a vague recollection of making mini bath bombs in a craft class I took once many years ago, but this was the first time I’d attempted to make them from scratch at home. I duly did my research, and one book and a bunch of Facebook groups later I was ready to give it a go. I started with the simplest possible recipe: 1 to 0.5 Bicarbonate of Soda/Citric Acid, water, colour & fragrance:

For my first try I added the fragrance oil to the dry ingredients in the bowl, and added the colour to the water:

I spritzed and mixed, mixed and spritzed, until I thought I had enough moisture in there, and, of course, I added too much, not that you can tell from this pic:

I used a spherical mould in two halves and went for it. It was pretty successful initially:

But as I made more, and left them to stand a while – uh oh!

For the second batch I added cornflour into the mix. This is supposed to give smoother bath bombs, and also helps keep the mix stable while adding the liquid (ie helps keep the fizz from happening too soon). This time I added the fragrance and the colour directly to the dry mix, and spritzed with water from the bottle. I got a bit of bubbling as they dried out, but these were much more successful:

For the third lot I used the same dry ingredients – bicarb, citric acid and cornflour, but tried spritzing witch hazel (with a little added yellow colouring) rather than water.

I crumbled up the first, failed, lot, added a little cornflour and remoulded them, which seemed to work just fine.

By carefully making sure all the flawed sides were facing back or down, I managed to get a half decent picture of all them together 😀 😀

Now, I’m not generally a huge bath bomb user, so I handed some out to friends to get some opinions, and I’m happy to say they’ve gone down well. I personally couldn’t see much difference between the second (cornflour / water) and third (cornflour / witch hazel), so I’m not sure yet which is the best.

I can’t start selling yet though. In the UK (and the whole of the EU) each bath & beauty product that we sell must be covered by a full Safety Assessment, issued by a qualified chemist. Assessments aren’t cheap, but they are a legal requirement and are there to ensure that members of the public can rest assured that the products they buy and use are safe. So, there’s more experimentation on the horizon (I’d like to incorporate a little skin loving cocoa butter next) and once I’m happy with the recipe I’ll get my Safety Assessment done so that I can start adding them to the range – woop!