There are a few aromas I could actually get blissfully high on. With NO possibility of a hangover! Some of these aromas are from edible items, others from the plant world. Makes no difference ~ they're all utterly intoxicating. Here are my main fav's...
Lilacs, cilantro, roses, fresh-brewed coffee, lemongrass oil; pumpkin pie, home-made bread, and gingerbread cake baking; annnnd plumeria, a beautiful flower! Mmmm-mmm, my goodness! SO heavenly!
When we were in Hawaii, I remember walking into an elevator and smelling this amazing fragrance! It was too fresh-smelling to be a room freshener, yet I didn't see a bouquet in the elevator. I looked all over the walls, and finally spotted one little plumeria sprig, which, amazingly, filled the elevator with a blissful happy fragrance!
I won't be surprised if these aromas are in Heaven! I'm hoping to have a room in my mansion for each of them! Maybe there'll be a Gingerbread Room, Cozy Coffee Corner, Cilantro Suite, Rose Room, Lavender Veranda, Breadroom, Pumpkin Pie Parlor... you get the idea! But I digress...
Lemongrass is another little bit of Heaven on Earth! Lemongrass Bath Salts, in particular! These are sooooo quick and easy to make! I made mine without a recipe. I just winged it as I went ~ and they turned out great! But...
...not everyone is comfortable going recipe-less, so, just for you, I made one up!
Basicly, I just use plain Epsom salts, a little food coloring, and doTERRA Lemongrass oil. Specifics coming right up...
(This blog post contains Amazon Affiliate links. The Honeycomb Oasis Blog is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com at no additional cost to you. All items that I have given a link for can obviously be obtained elsewhere, plus other styles or gifts can be used just as well. I'm just linking you to what I myself purchased and used for this.)
RECIPE
2 cups Epsom salt
3 drops doTERRA Lemongrass essential oil
3 drops yellow liquid food coloring
1 drop green liquid food coloring
Put the Epsom salt into a large bin* that will hold at least 4 cups ~ to give you some "shaking room" ~ put the lid on securely; (you don't want a bath salt shower all over the room!), and shake until the color is evenly distributed throughout the bath salts. Takes a minute or two of shaking.
Start light on the food coloring ~ you can always add more, but you can't take it out. If it's not green enough to your liking, add another drop of green. Shake shake shake. Still not green enough? Add another drop.
It's worth it to just add a drop at a time cuz if it gets too dark, which it can do very quickly, your only option, again, is to add more Epsom salts.
When everything is shaken together and nicely blended, sniff... Is the lemongrass aroma strong enough? If not, add a couple more drops. Essential oils are very concentrated, so you don't need a lot, but this is a bit like salting your food ~ add as much as is pleasing to you.
* Use a disposable bin that you don't want to use for anything else again as the plastic will absorb the fragrance, so you won't want to use it for food. I used the largest-size Cool Whip bin. It's fine to use glass or metal, but just be sure it has a securely-fitting lid so that you can shake it without having to hold the lid on. It could be stirred instead, but shaking is much more thorough, quick, and efficient.
CONTAINERS
I put my finished bath salts into a cute container of some sort, and give them as part of various types of gift bags. Here are a few cute options for what to put your bath salts in. I will start with the tiniest container and work my way up in size.
TINY GLASS VIALS
If you want to go really tiny ~ only 1.5 inches high ~ these tiny bottles with cork stoppers are perfect! The one by itself ~ in the top left section of the photo below ~ appears bigger than it actually is, so I added a picture of it in my hand to give you feel for how tiny it really is. It would basically be sample size. One bath or foot soak.
The 24 little cork-topped bottles in the bottom section above is what you actually receive in the set if you order it through my link on Amazon ~ which is what I ordered. (Please note that the cork tops are not perfectly even. Cork, by its very nature, doesn't cut perfectly when this tiny, so I just wanted you to be aware of this, and not think your corks were imperfects.)
HEXAGON
MINI GLASS JARS
These hexagon-shaped mini glass jars are 1.5 ounce and come in a pack of 24 ~ I got them on Amazon. I used a little scallop punch to punch out the label. (But a circle punch would work, too!)
You get 24 in this set, and there are lots of fun things you can put in them besides the bath salts:
They're perfect to put home-made jam or jelly in and include in gift packs.
I make re-brined pickles, cut them up tinier and put them in these little jars to give as samples.
These are perfect size for a travel-size jar of cleansing cream and/or moisturizer.
You could put your most commonly-used spices in some of these and have them near or on your stove.
Or put small candies in them and use as party or shower favors.
As you can tell, I had NO problem getting ~ and figuring how to use ~ 24 of these little gems!
TEST TUBES
Plastic test tubes also make a fun container. I recommend plastic over glass because, if it breaks ~ which it could easily do in the bathroom ~ glass is dangerous.
This bottom picture of all the test tubes in a rack is what I got. It's a little more expensive to get the rack, but because the test tubes do not stand up ~ they just lay on their side ~ this was very handy.
If you're only going to do one at a time, you can just put it in a glass, and maybe stuff a paper towel around it if you need it to stand straight up. But I was doing LOTS of them at one time and was very glad I had the rack!
Here's what else I did with the test tubes... The top one is obviously filled with the bath salts, but then...
...the other two I filled with bath pearls (from a large container I had of them), and mulling spices. I included these, along with several other little gifts, in Christmas gift bags, birthday gift packets, and in this Bride Blessing Gift Bag*:
Believe it or not, the amount of product in each of the above test tubes ~ be it the mulling spices, the bath salts, or the store-bought bath pearls ~ is only one tablespoon! And the test tubes are about 5 inches long!
To fill these, make a little funnel out of paper or clear plastic. I cut up a plastic sheet protector so that I'd be able to see how/whether the salts were going in to the tube. Twist the paper or plastic into a cone, making the small-end opening the right size to fit inside the tube a bit, and the top opening of it large enough to pour your tablespoon of contents into easily. Tape it together.
* The Bride Blessing Gift Bag ~ which I show you how to make here ~was part of a Bless-the-Bride Blitz, but you could also bless a busy bride totally on your own, just as a thoughtful little gift from you to her as the wedding day gets close!
MINI CANNING JARS
You could also put the bath salts in a regular canning jar. Any size would work; it just depends on how much bath salt you want to make and give away! These tiny 4-ounce jars are absolutely darling!
I punched the largest label with the 1.5-inch circle punch and used one of the scalloped circle dies for the outer layer. (You could punch out the label with the 1-1/8-inch scallop circle punch used above, or one that's a little (1/4 inch) larger, a 1-3/8-inch circle punch.)
TAGS & LABELS
I have a Free Printable for you with many different sizes of labels to accommodate whatever type of container you use!
You can punch out the one you want with a circle punch that fits it. (Here's a little-larger 1-1/2-inch plain circle punch and a 1-3/4-inch plain circle punch.)
FREE PRINTABLE:
Lemongrass
Bath Salts Labels
(editable but unstable)
(stable but not editable)
USING OTHER
FRAGRANCES
If you prefer another oil or fragrance, go ahead and use it! And change the coloring to match your oil fragrance, of course. I don't have any labels for other types, but you could make your own starting out with my Word document (editable) as a template.
I found this set of 6 fragrance oils on Amazon that you could use to make bath salts in 6 other fragrances: Violet, Jasmine, Rose, Lilac, Freesia, and Gardenia. (Two of my favorite fragrances!) I haven't tried these, but if I get tired of Lemongrass (highly doubtful!), this is what I'll get!
Note that these are fragrance oils, not essential oils. The difference is that fragrance oils are as close as they could get to the real things, while essential oils are used for their therapeutic properties, and don't necessarily smell like their namesake plant. (The only essential oil fragrance I like is lemongrass.)
So there you have it! Let me know if you make your own bath salts, and how it went!
I'd love to hear
if you make yours in
a different container,
or different aroma
and color!
