If you find this content useful, please consider helping me keep the site ad free by making a contribution.
We love bath bombs over here. We love making them, we love using them, we love playing with the toys hidden inside them. They make bath time more fun, and creating them is a creative process my three year old and I both enjoy.
We have tried a lot of recipes over the past year, and after fine tuning our process, have landed on this equation as the BEST way to make bath bombs at home. They harden relatively quickly, are easy to pack into molds, and all the ingredients are fun and safe for kid baths.
Materials
- 1 cup baking soda
- 1 cup citric acid
- 2 T-1/2 cup of your favorite oil (we use Burt’s Bees belly oil—you can use any oil you feel comfortable putting in your kid’s bath and add quantity based on preference. We also use melted coconut oil from time to time. We have a septic system and try using as little oil as possible in our bath bombs.)
- 1/4 cup cornstarch OR epsom salt
- Optional: to help these harden more quickly, you can add a Tablespoon or so of water based ingredient, like a flavor extract or witch hazel. We like adding about 1 T of vanilla extract for scent and to speed hardening.
- Optional: bath confetti, sprinkles, liquid soap color, essential oils, TOYS (I use small animal figurines).
Instructions
- Mix the cornstarch, baking soda, citric acid and any optional dry ingredients together.
- Add your liquid soap color and any water based additions to your oil and mix as well as you can. (The soap dye is water soluble, so it won’t mix completely).
- SLOWLY add your oil mixture to your dry mixture. It will have the consistency of wet sand.
- Pack your mixture into molds, hiding any toy surprises in the center. We use silicone cupcake liners. You can add some sprinkles, epsom salt or bath confetti to the bottom of the liners for decoration.
- Put your bath bombs in a cool, dry place to harden for a day or two. Enjoy!
This is a sure fire way to keep bath time fun. I hope you find some time to try this recipe out with your little artists! Have fun!
Can you just use like lemon juice or something or do you need to buy actual citric acid? Thank you!!!!
Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry I missed your comment from like a year ago!!! I’ve never used lemon juice, but that’s a very interesting idea! I think the acid in its liquid form would set off the reaction and you wouldn’t have any fizz left for your bath. But could be fun to experiment with!