DIY Natural Bubble Bath Recipe
Simple and luxurious DIY natural bath bubbles recipe that's free of artificial fragrances and dyes! This takes only a few minutes to make and is the perfect gift to give the ladies in your life.
Baths are a way I fill my cup every day. I have grown to love and even crave them! As a mama of four littles, I have found that I have to find ways to take care of myself each day in order to be the best mama to my kiddos. But I think it's important for everyone to do things each day that bring us joy, that fill our cups as we are all giving to others whether it's in your job, at home, to your friends, family, spouse, etc.
For more self-care tips, check out these articles here on my blog:
- 5 Self Care Tips for Moms
- Top 10 Tips for Emotional Freedom
- 5 Simple and Natural Ways to Get Amazing Sleep
Why I Stopped Using Store-Bought Bubble Bath
Many of the bath bubbles in the stores contain ingredients like parabens, artificial fragrances, dyes, and detergents that are very irritating to the skin, eyes, nose, and lungs. I only use essential oils to scent my home and beauty products now, and have gotten to the point where I can spot artificial fragrances a mile away and they often make me feel nauseous and give me a headache!
And the natural bubble baths in the store are pretty pricey, so I knew I could make it at home a lot more cheaply!
I highly recommend using the Think Dirty app (it's free!) to scan or type in the products you have or are thinking of buying to see what their toxicity rating is. You might be shocked!
Let's look at one that's commonly found in drugstores and big box stores, and is deceiving because it has lavender and chamomile in it (which are artificial) – Baby Magic. It gets a rating of 7 out of 10 for toxicity. Why?
Is it any wonder that more and more children are getting cancer and have autoimmune diseases that only the elderly used to have? I think not. It's sad, but with some education, we can change what we put on our own bodies and give our children!
Here's the cost breakdown of DIY Natural Bath Bubbles:
- 1/2 cup of Castile Soap – $1.25
- I buy 1 gallon of Castile Soap (about $40 on Amazon) at a time = there are 32 1/2 cups in a gallon. So that's $1.71 for that half cup. I buy a gallon because I use it to make homemade baby shampoo and hand soap, too, and it lasts about 1 year in my house!
- 1/2 cup vegetable glycerin – $1.50
- I buy 16 oz of vegetable glycerin for about $6.00 on Amazon. That's $1.50 per half cup.
- If you buy a gallon, it's about .15 cents an ounce, so that'd be even cheaper at $0.60!
- 10 drops of lavender – 94 cents
- ($23.50 for a 15 ml bottle of lavender, which has approx. 250 drops) = $0.094 per drop. That's 94 cents for the oil! Super cheap
- 1/2 cup water – pretty much free!
- TOTAL COST: $3.69 for 12 ounces compared to the natural bubble baths online which run about $10-$12 for 12 ounces
DIY Natural Bath Bubbles Recipe
DIY natural bath bubbles recipe using Castile Soap, vegetable glycerine, essential oils and water for a luxurious, relaxing and nontoxic bath experience!
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup vegetable glycerine
- 1/2 cup castile soap or try using Dr. Bronner's Sal Suds for more bubbles (but not recommended for sensitive skin)
- 1/2 cup water
- (optional) 10 drops or so of your favorite, relaxing essential oils (see below)
- Cute swing top glass bottle in the picture – get it here on Amazon
Instructions
Pour the water in first, then the vegetable glyercin, then the soap, and last, the essential oils. Gently swish to combine. Put anywhere from a few tablespoons to a 1/2 cup or so in your bath and enjoy!
Essential Oils to Use in your Natural Bubble Bath Recipe
There are many relaxing scents that are perfect for a bath. Steer clear of spicy essential oils like cinnamon, basil, oregano, black pepper, peppermint, wintergreen and any citrus oils as these will likely irritate your skin and can even cause a rash when used in the bath! My favorites are (all from Young Living):
Essential oils affect the limbic system in the brain, which controls memories and emotions, so they really do work to help you calm down and relax after a stressful day.
I only use Young Living essential oils – they are my fav! They are the highest quality and most effective oils I've ever used and believe me, I've used a ton of other brands! You can get them through me as a wholesale member or as a customer, here.
I made the recipe exactly as stated and even added a bit more to the tub and I did not get ANY suds! I added it directly to the stream of water as I filled and no bubbles. I next got my shower wand and turned it on high thinking some agitation may help to no avail. I was so hoping it would work! My 5 year old is really missing bubble baths!
This recipe didn’t produce any suds. I made it exactly as listed. I was really excited to try this because I love making natural products and have been making my own shampoo bars for a few months now.
Did you ever get a response?
I’d really like to see the replies to the no suds issue. Why no reply?
I found this recipe on another site and also didn’t get suds. Just white water. I think it is the vegetable glycerin. I think for it to actually work you have to use a much higher quality or synthetic glycerin. Can’t find the real answers myself. But she probably just copied the recipe from somewhere and wrote about how great it is but never did herself, or she would have known it doesn’t actually work.
The glycerin is never the problem. It’s the soap. And the water. Most waters have enough “hardness” in a bathtubful to convert any reasonable amount of soap (actual-soap soap, like castile) entirely into curds and then scum, no suds at all. If after you lather up with bar soap in a bath and rinse it off into the bath water it changes from lather to curds, then forget about trying to make a soap-based bubble bath. You CAN make the bath sudsy with ENOUGH soap (which can be a huge amount in “hard” water), but then you have a very soapy, grease-cutting bath, like dish or laundry water; at least it’ll get you clean, but you’ll want to rinse under the shower to avoid itching afterward. Too bad this recipe gets around so much, because it doesn’t work for most people, and is inferior for the rest.
Successful bubble baths don’t react with water minerals and have a higher suds-to-detergency ratio than soap does. They don’t aim to get you clean, but they can make suds while very dilute. You can make such a product too, but you’ll have to use the real, non-soap, bubble bath ingredients, from which you can choose the least objectionable by whatever criteria you have. I did, and came up with a very densely foaming formula that was very low in urogenital irritation, but it never succeeded commercially; see my (legacy) Web page for it.
Smashing response and research ?