I am using a beginners kit I bought from a local candle company, the kit included the following recipe:
1 cup Baking Soda
3/4 cup Citric Acid
2 Tbsp White Kaolin Clay
1 Tbsp Grape Seed Oil
2 Tsp Polysorbate 80
5 Drops of Vitamin E oil
1 Tsp Fragrance Oil
1/4 Tsp Borax Powder
1 Tsp Mica
The instructions said to mix all dry together, all wet together, and then mix the wet into the dry (Hey, that's the muffin method!) - and everything went fine up until that point. The instructions then said to spray the mixture with 91% rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle 3 times, mix, and repeat that for a total of four times..
I don't know if their spray bottle is more misty than mine, or what.. but there was no way it was forming anything close to a bath bomb after 12 total sprays. I kept spraying and testing for a good hour and wasn't making much progress.. so I said to hell with this misting thing and started pouring in small streams of alcohol, mixing in about 2 ounces (total) of alcohol before it would form clumps.
I got one bomb to form and then life hit me upside the head and I had to abandon it part way through for three hours. I did cover the mixture. When I came back to it, it had dried out a lot and that one that I made was rock hard. At that point it was past midnight so I just threw everything into a Ziploc and hit the hay.
I have a few questions:
1. That first one is looking pretty sad - I'd like to crumble it up and add it back to the mixture. Except it is rock hard, how do I do it?
2. Can I just continue where I left off, adding more alcohol until I have something more like wet sand?
3. Short of having it start fizzing in the bowl, is there anything as "too much" alcohol? I confess, I know it depends on air humidity and elevation, but as I poured in the last of the alcohol from the spray bottle it occurred to me that I might be adding too much and that the bombs will be duds.
1 cup Baking Soda
3/4 cup Citric Acid
2 Tbsp White Kaolin Clay
1 Tbsp Grape Seed Oil
2 Tsp Polysorbate 80
5 Drops of Vitamin E oil
1 Tsp Fragrance Oil
1/4 Tsp Borax Powder
1 Tsp Mica
The instructions said to mix all dry together, all wet together, and then mix the wet into the dry (Hey, that's the muffin method!) - and everything went fine up until that point. The instructions then said to spray the mixture with 91% rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle 3 times, mix, and repeat that for a total of four times..
I don't know if their spray bottle is more misty than mine, or what.. but there was no way it was forming anything close to a bath bomb after 12 total sprays. I kept spraying and testing for a good hour and wasn't making much progress.. so I said to hell with this misting thing and started pouring in small streams of alcohol, mixing in about 2 ounces (total) of alcohol before it would form clumps.
I got one bomb to form and then life hit me upside the head and I had to abandon it part way through for three hours. I did cover the mixture. When I came back to it, it had dried out a lot and that one that I made was rock hard. At that point it was past midnight so I just threw everything into a Ziploc and hit the hay.
I have a few questions:
1. That first one is looking pretty sad - I'd like to crumble it up and add it back to the mixture. Except it is rock hard, how do I do it?
2. Can I just continue where I left off, adding more alcohol until I have something more like wet sand?
3. Short of having it start fizzing in the bowl, is there anything as "too much" alcohol? I confess, I know it depends on air humidity and elevation, but as I poured in the last of the alcohol from the spray bottle it occurred to me that I might be adding too much and that the bombs will be duds.
