Bath Oils

Make your own Luxury Bath Oil

Making your own bath oil is easy. Very easy. At it's most basic, a bath oil is simply a small quantity of oil poured into your bath. Done!
 
Yes, I know, as soon as you get in, all the oil sticks to the edge of the bath and stays there! Well we can do something about that... but lets keep it basic for the moment and then move on from there.

If you have chronic dry skin, there is nothing more wonderful than an oily bath. The combination of the warm water and the oil is amazing. If you keep massaging the oily water over your skin while in the bath, when you step out (carefully of course because the bath is slippery) your skin glistens. It's lovely! And it's so simple.

And don't think that you need to spend a lot of money on special oils. Sunflower oil from the cooking oils section of the supermarket will work perfectly well and so will rapeseed. Add a little lavender essential oil to it and you have a product as good as any you can buy. It really can be as simple as that.

Lets take the simple oil one step further. What if you want to infuse a medicinal herb in the oil first? Yep you can do that. Make sure that you know exactly which herb you are going to use and remember that it is important to correctly identify the herb since mother nature gives us nasty stuff as well as nice. Directions for macerating herbs in oil will be find in my previous posts under the herbs label.


If you choose an aromatic herb or flower to macerate you will get some scent in your bath oil too. But it is usually very delicate - which is fine but if you want a little more of an impact then combine your macerated oil with a complimentary essential oil blend. It is very important to make sure that you dry the herb or flower prior to macerating. Otherwise the water content in the plant ends up in your bath oil where it can start to breed germs and bacteria. Not good.

Here are a couple of basic bath oil recipes to get you started:

Rose Geranium & Ylang Ylang
Ingredients
250ml Sunflower Oil
3ml Rose Geranium Essential Oil
2ml Ylang Ylang Essential Oil

One pretty bottle (can be recycled if you wash well and sterilise first - either boiling for 5 minutes or use Milton baby sterilising tablets. Make sure it is perfectly dry before decanting the oil.


Method
In a clean glass jug or bowl mix the oil and essential oils together. Pour into a clean bottle and label. Leave for at least 24 hours before using. A teaspoonful or two is enough for an average sized bath. Don't forget to clean the bath really well when you are finished as essential oils (in any product, not just this one) can discolour your bath over time.

To Vary
Choose a different blend of essential oils. There are suggestions for essential oil blends here in some of my previous posts.



Grapefruit and Lavender Bath Oil


Ingredients
250 ml Sweet Almond Oil
2 ml Grapefruit Essential Oil
3 ml Lavender Essential Oil

One pretty bottle (can be recycled if you wash well and sterilise first - either boiling for 5 minutes or use Milton baby sterilising tablets. Make sure it is perfectly dry before decanting the oil)

Method
In a clean glass jug or bowl mix the oil and essential oils together. Pour into a clean bottle and label. Leave for at least 24 hours before using. A teaspoonful or two is enough for an average sized bath. Don't forget to clean the bath really well when you are finished as essential oils (in any product, not just this one) can discolour your bath over time.  Decorate your bottle with a spray of lavender tied with raffia and you have a wonderfully unique gift.

To Vary
Choose a different blend of essential oils. Choose a different vegetable oil.

Next Post:  Using a dispersant to blend your bath oil - no more oil stuck to the sides of the bath.