Geranium rose bath (oil) melts tutorial

Bath melts are a wonderful way to to add scent and skin nourishing oils to your bath. They are essentially bath oils made up in a solid form. All you have to do is drop 1 or 2 of them into a nice, warm bath and they will melt dispersing the oils and scent into the bath water. The melts pictured below are made from a combination of cocoa butter, shea butter, and sweet almond oil. The are scented with a Geranium Rose essential oil and topped off with some red and iridescent glitter, because sparkles make everything better!

Geranium Rose Bath Melts

A simple recipe to make your own bath melts is given below.

1. Melt 1 part cocoa butter and 1 part shea butter in the microwave.
2. Add to the melted butters 1 part liquid oil.
3. If needed, let the oils cool to below 120 degrees F and then add your fragrance (1-3% for fragrance oils and 1-2% for essential oils).
4. Mix and pour into small molds (about 1 oz mold size is good)
5. Allow to cool and harden either at room temperature or for a faster cooling place in your fridge until solid.

If all these "parts" are confusing, here is an example using oz.
1 oz cocoa butter
1 oz shea butter
1 oz liquid oil (sweet almond, hazelnut, hemp oil, or pretty much any other liquid oil would be fine).
17 (1%)-50 (3%) drops of fragrance

You may want to play with the ratio of hard oils (butters) to liquid oil to find what looks and feels best to you.

Coloring bath salts

Bath salts can be colored quite easily with a liquid dye or clays. In this experiment, I tried both methods to see what I liked best. I used FD&C dye for the purple, blue, orange, yellow, and green colors and pink clay for the pinkish/salmon color. I really liked the clay colored salts, but after a bit of research I found people complaining that the clay leaves a hard to clean circle on your tub. Have any of you experienced this in your trials?

All my color trials

You can see that the FD&C dyes create a variation of colors in the salts based on the type of salt it is coloring. The sea salt crystals seem to be darker and the Epson salts color lighter.  I really like the color gradation that ends up in the final product.

Mixing up purple bath salts

The color differences are really evident in this picture.  I think they end up looking like gemstones.  So pretty!

Mixing up green bath salts

An assortment of colors

Orange, yellow, blue, and green

New products at Ladybug Soapworks

I have been trying to expand my line of offerings beyond soap as a way to expand my clientele. I used to make bath salts, but then decided to focus on soap. Well they are now back and better! I have whipped up a few batches to have a bit of variety. They are made from a mix of Epson salts, sea salt, and baking soda. I have added a touch of color and fragrance to make your bath time truly relaxing.

Geranium Rose Scented Salts

This bath salt mix is scented with geranium rose essential oil and the pink comes from Bolivian pink salts that I included in the salt mix. I just love how nice these photos came out with the salt in little wooden buckets.

Lime Scented Bath Salts

 This batch was scented with Lime essential oil and colored a light green. It smells so refreshing.

Lavender Scented Bath Salts

Lavender is probably one of the best scents for relaxation. These salts were lightly colored a pinkish-purple.

All packaged up!

Pick yourself up a package of our new salts here and take some time to relax. Each bag holds 18 oz of salts which is enough for at least 8 baths if you use 1/4 cup of salts per bath. In the future, I plan to package the salts in jars, but for now they will come in the same biodegradable bags that I use to package my soap.