How to Make Christmas Bath Salts

The answer? Well, it's up to you. If you're making up containers of bath salts as gifts, try to determine what Christmas means to them and set your sniffer to work.

Common Christmastime Scents

Christmas isn't just pine trees and cinnamon, though those are two very common scents associated with the holiday season. There are quite a few others to consider when you're making up your bath salts for yourself or someone else:

• Sugar cookies
• Gingerbread
• Peppermint
• Chocolate
• Chocolate peppermint
• Eggnog
• Amber

Aromatherapy Options

You may not want to give a seasonal scent to everyone once you learn how to make Christmas bath salts. In that case, take your cue from aromatherapy. After shopping, cooking, or being surrounded by a hefty number of loved ones and their screaming kids with noisy new toys, the recipient may be looking for a little relaxation in the form of a hot bath. They could also be looking for an energy boost to get them through the next day.

Aromatherapy in the form of bath salts can help with either extreme. Some of them actually do overlap with the distinctly Christmastime scents:

• For a calming effect, try lavender or vanilla.
• For an energy boost, try orange, tangerine, lemon, mint, or pine.

Learn How to Make Christmas Bath Salts

1. Pick your salt. You can use a range of salts—-fine, coarse, and all the sizes in between. You can use Epsom salt, kosher salt, table salt, or sea salt. Mixing different sizes together makes the most visually appealing bath salts. You'll need about 1/3 cup for each bath, so decide how big of a batch you want using that guideline.
2. Pick your look. Speaking of visual appeal, you may decide to add something extra to spice up the look of your salts. Try dried flower petals or food coloring. If you're using food coloring, you can mix red and green batches separately and layer them. Leave one layer without food coloring for a red, white, and green look. Another option is glitter. You'll want the kind used in cosmetics for the least irritation, so check out MAC Pro stores or even the drugstore.
3. Pick your scent. Use the list above for ideas when it comes to choosing a scent. You can find scented oils in craft stores. Check out Hayward Enterprises if there's a specific perfume you're looking for. Perhaps one of your loved ones associates a certain designer fragrance with the holidays. It won't take many drops of oil to scent your bath salts, so stir in a few drops at a time and test the intensity.
4. Pick your jar. Presentation is everything. You can use everything from a fancy jar from the craft store to a Mason jar. Tie a ribbon around the neck or slap a festive bow on the top for a final touch. If you're feeling especially creative, you could add a label that lists the scent, how to use the salts, and a special Christmas message.
5. Wait. Once you mix your salts with perfumed oil, extra ingredients, or food coloring, spread them out on parchment or wax paper to dry. If you're really ambitious and this isn't a last minute holiday gift, you can keep them in the jar you choose for a week or more to really let the scent set.

Packaging for Gift-Giving

If you're giving Christmas bath salts as a gift, you'll need ideas for packaging. Here are a few suggestions:

• Mason jars are big and easy to make holiday-worthy with the help of a red bow.
• Baby food jars are great for stocking stuffer gifts.
• Old perfume bottles are pretty, but if there's any residual scent in the bottle you'll want to make sure the scent of the salts matches.

Don't forget to add a small spoon for scooping out the salts! You can tie that to the jar in a baggie or with ribbon looped through a hole in the spoon's handle.

Other Things You Might Add

• Powdered milk or dried oatmeal: For relief from dry, itchy winter skin.
• Baby shampoo: Unscented is best, and you can use it to create bubbles so the salts don't just disappear and leave you with sweet-smelling bath water. It's not as simple as just throwing some in a jar, though. You need the salts and the shampoo to dry before packaging it. So once you get your scented bath salts together, pour in a bit of baby shampoo and lay out the salts on parchment paper to dry for a day.

Recipes

Want to follow a specific recipe? Check these out:

• Ellen's Kitchen has tips for making candy cane bath salts, refreshing bath salts, foaming bath salts, fizzing bath salts, and more!
• Sensual Salts has recipes for Aches & Itches bath salts and more. You can also purchase ingredients there.

Additional LoveToKnow Resources

For more great tips on preparing for the Christmas holiday, visit LoveToKnow Christmas.