Big Woman loves making herbal crafts as much as her mama and when she was assigned to make a homemade gift for a gift exchange in her Liberty Girls homeschool group, she knew exactly what she wanted to make - a spa basket! We had a few recipes up our sleeves, experimented with a few others and had a couple tried and trues. The end products she decided on were bath salts, lip balm, body wash and bath melts.
The next step was coming up with a great scent for our recipes - enter the Orange Cream or Dreamsicle or Orange Creamsicle, whatever you may want to call it, a simple mix of orange and vanilla, giving our products a heavenly scent. This week will be all about our spa basket recipes and today we will start with the bath salts.
The next step was coming up with a great scent for our recipes - enter the Orange Cream or Dreamsicle or Orange Creamsicle, whatever you may want to call it, a simple mix of orange and vanilla, giving our products a heavenly scent. This week will be all about our spa basket recipes and today we will start with the bath salts.
Orange Cream Bath Salts
Bath salts are so fun because you can customize them to fit your needs just by changing the essential oils you add or coloring them. I have made many bath salt recipes but always come back to this very simple and effective mix of equal parts sea salt and epsom salts.
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For our little jar we used 1/4 cup Epsom salts and 1/4 cup sea salt. When scenting bath salts, you want them to smell slightly stronger than you would like them to be in the bath. We used 20 drops of orange essential oil and 10 drops of vanilla essential oil or extract.
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We had planned to add an orange coloring to the salt but after mixing the essential oils into them, they became a creamy color that we loved, so we decided to keep them as is. Let the salts sit for about an hour to let the liquid evaporate out, otherwise your salts will be hard. Pour into a jar and label, I loved all the labels Big Woman made for her products, she is so creative!
Bath Salt Variations
If you would like to customize your own bath salts, here are a few tips.
- Add 1 part dry milk to 2 parts salt mix for a moisturizing bath.
- Add an equal part Redmond Clay for a detox/re-mineralizing effect.
- Customize your bath salts for a specific purpose using essential oils that support what body system you want to be affected. See the essential oil properties page, here.
- I like to use natural coloring for my salts, you can use herb and food powders like spirulina for green, beet powder for pink, and turmeric for yellow. Experiment and see what works.
- Dried herbs are also a fun addition, they not only add texture and color to the salts they also infuse their healing properties into the hot bath water. The only draw back is they float around in the bath water, not a problem for me though.
Other Spa Basket Recipes
 Bath Melts |  Orange Cream Lip Balm |  Orange Cream Body Wash |
