The other phase of teacher gifts: some will get a tube of bath salts and a small handmade glycerin soap. All, of course, at least partially handmade by the kids, and thus delightfully imperfect in many ways. (Not that I'd've necessarily done better on my own, but it gives an excuse...)

After the various experiments,here's the bath salt blend I came up with:

Milk Bath Salt recipe

 

2 cups Epsom salts

1 cup coarse sea salt

1 cup powdered milk

4:2:1 essential oil ratio, Lavender:orange:rose geranium

48:24:12 used in this blend

I could probably have scented more heavily, but I didn't want to kill anyone. (And I'm stingy with my eo's!)  Turned out very yummy; I tried some as a scrub in my shower today, and I think the milk really made it much gentler and less oily somehow--that's a keeper.

We also did a glycerin soap thing, which went a bit crazy as the previous version did--I added too much scent (not realizing that the scent intensifies as it cools--live and learn), and then had to re-melt and dilute it a bit.  We tried marbling white with clear, but it didn't work out as well as we hoped, and the kids went a bit nuts with color so it's a slightly bizarre minty-green color.  But it is lovely to wash with, manages to not be dry like lot so many other soaps, and even my husband approves. We scented it with lavender and roman chamomile; the chamomile overpowered more than I expected! But it's a very soothing blend now that it's relaxed and diluted down a bit.

I finally got the hang of it on the third go with the soaps--tried a very simple melt and pour goat milk/glycerin base with some lavender oil and a few lavender flowers mixed in.  The trick seems to be to take it off the heat and keep stirring it till it begins to cool (felt like it took forever!) and suddenly in about 2 seconds takes on the consistency of elmer's glue--THAT'S when it pours really nicely, doesn't bubble, and has that creamy-soap kind of look and feel.  That is one gorgeous bar of soap--so now I know how to make a few more with the rest of my white base, and I'll probably do that for the women in the family.  Or the kids will. Whatever.:-)

Oof! And now it's time for school...gotta run!
peace,
J

Okay, tried a simple pre-version of the bath salts. (I never give crafty stuff like that to folks for gifts unless I've tried them myself.) (Ye Wise Saltmakers, I would welcome editorial comments!)

I made up a cup of salts, 2:1:1 Epsom salts/borax/sea salt. (All I had was the fine; I just got a thing of course sea salt that I'll try for the next batch.) Added I think about 20 drops of oils (based on Rosemary again--she suggests that if you want a really nice smelling bath, the salts themselves should be just a little overwhelming)--10 drops lavender, 5 rose geranium, 5 sweet orange. If I do it again, I'll decrease the rg and increase the orange a little; it overpowers the mix.

Very nice, but a little underwhelming; I guess I'm just not a bath salt person. Admittedly I'm 5'10" and verging on plus size, and our tub is "normal" size, which means a hot bath for me needs to happen with different parts of my body in shifts. (I want a deep tub something fierce!) But aside from the smell, which was lovely, it felt like any ordinary bath. I think I would want some oil in the water too for anything interesting to happen.

So, part deux: I didn't know about the borax in a scrub, since its purpose in a salt mix is mostly as emulsifier and water softener and there are reports of skin sensitivity with it, but I then mixed up a little epsom salt with grapeseed oil (didn't measure) and added some lavender and tea tree oil (also didn't measure)--scrubbed it all over my feet first, which felt so good that I did the rest of me. THAT was lovely, and then rinsing it off in the already sweet-smelling bathwater made the bath very soft and oily. Almost killed myself getting out, because of how slippery the tub was from the oil, but it was still nice.

So my new plan is this: regardless of Rosemary's suggestion, I'll leave the borax out completely, just use a combo of epsom salts, sea salts, and maybe baking soda. (I didn't have any issues with the borax, and from my research it doesn't seem to be any MORE toxic than most of the other salts--the Dead Sea ones, for example, are seriously deadly if you ingest them, but it didn't really add anything.) The gift package can include directions for EITHER bath salts in a bath OR salt scrub with a little oil, as the recipient prefers.

I find I really like the lavender-orange-rose geranium mix for a scent. A really nice mix, and when I get the proportions right it's honestly hard to pick out one of the three as dominant. I love how lavender blends in so nicely with everything else...

So, that's part I! Next comes soapmaking and my initial forays therein...
peace,
Jem

Okay, not really much of a science experiment, but another thought I'm having about gifts for teachers and stuff...I still have several of those bail-lid jars I bought a few years ago, and I was thinking of different things to use them for.

Bath salts seem like a really good bet, except that I'll need to actually try making them before I post anything here about it.  There seems to be a lot of debate among homemade bathsalt people about what kind of salts to use, and in what proportion...Rosemary Gladstar uses Borax as her main ingredient; most other online folks I've checked out don't use it at all, but use sea salt or epsom salt or baking soda, or some combination of the above.  Rosemary suggests lots and lots of essential oil, and most of the online recipes I'm finding suggest only a little bit...so, experiments to come.

Anyway, it occurred to me that another really nice and easy gift would be to make a nice tea blend and give it, either in one of the bail top jars or to go to  secondhand store or yard sale (if we had winter yard sales in Chicago; i can try this spring and have some for next Christmas anyway) and find pretty old teacups to put a bag of a personalized tea blend in, with a little muslin bag for brewing.  The easy route would be some bulk black  or oolong tea from Whole Foods mixed with some of the "Cardamon Cinnamon" loose herbal 'tea" from Republic of Tea--it's basically just mulling spices, and I brew my own pot of tea every couple of days with a spoonful of that to three spoonfuls of plain black tea.  It's really yummy.  Or one could be cheaper still, get cinnamon chips and dried orange peel and cardamon seeds and maybe a little ginger, and make a nice tea blend.  Add black pepper and it's a chai blend.  Possibilities are endless.

Then there's the whole melt-and-pour soap thing, which I'd never heard of until my friend told me that her friend does it all the time--buys a big brick of glycerin soap base and just slices off pieces for herself, but then melts, colors, and scents the stuff as gifts for other people.  Could be lots of fun...

Okay, now I'm just stalling...it's time for me to go to bed.
peace,
J