Homemade Bath Salts

I found instructions on how to make bath salts at home and thought it would be a fun gift to make and give to my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law while we are all together for the holidays.  It was certainly simple enough, the whole thing took me under 10 minutes, and will probably be even faster next time, and all of the necessary components were pretty easy to find (I had to go to a natural foods store, but it wasn't out of the way).  Here is what I did:


Bath Salts


1 large box (4 lbs) epsom salt
1 small box (1 lb) baking soda
60 drops (about 0.25 oz.) essential oil
desired amount of food coloring 


-Mix the epsom salt and baking soda together in a large bowl and stir to combine.
-Mix in the essential oil drop by drop, stirring until it reaches the fragrance level you like (I chose lavender because I like the smell and the soothing properties it has for a bath).
-Transfer about  1/2 cup of the mixture into a smaller bowl, and mix in the food coloring until the mix is a darker version of the color you would like.
-Mix the colored salt back into the rest of the salt and stir until well combined.
-Repeat the process with the food coloring until the whole mixture has turned the color you want.
-Divide into 4-5 batches and pour into individual glass jars with lids (these can be mason jars, or lidded jars found at a craft store, whatever is fun for you!).
-Use about 1-3 Tbsp per bath, or until desired fragrance is released into the water.


The best part about this was the price!  Compared to what I would have to pay to buy bath salts, this was a great deal.  Here is the breakdown as it pertains to me.

Epsom salt: $1.99
Baking soda: $0.69
Essential oil: $5.99
Food coloring: $2.99
Glass jars: $8.99/12

Pre-made lavender bath salt: $10/20 oz.

For this project I only used about half of the oil, maybe 1/8 of the food coloring, and 1/3 of the jars.  So my cost was: $1.99 + $0.69 + $3.00 (oil) + $0.37 (food coloring) + $3.00 (jars) = $9.05 for the whole project, or $2.26 per individual jar.  This is awesome because the retail of each jar is about $10!  That means for my entire project I saved about $30.95!  This was great too because I was able to customize it to the scent and color I wanted.

I really liked the way the salt turned out, however I haven't yet taken a bath with them, and there are still a few changes I will probably make for next time.  The first is that I would like a slightly chunkier salt texture, so I think if I used half epsom salt and half rock salt I would like that better, but I'm not sure that the rock salt would ever dissolve, so I will have to experiment and see how it goes.  The next thing is that the fragrance was really nice at first, but it became really overpowering by the time I was done mixing everything, so I'm not sure if I just used too much or if it will be great now that it is in a jar, just something to keep in mind.  The last was the coloring the mix was more laborious than I had anticipated.  I think it is because we only had some weird gel food colors, and the traditional liquid might work better, but I'm just not sure.  The end product for me had a very light purple color, but it was barely noticeable, however there were lots of flecks of blue and red, which was fun, just not quite what I had expected.  Then again, I didn't spend a whole lot of time coloring it, which I would do next time.  I'm super excited to see how they work out when I go home and take a nice relaxing bath however!