new bath cube recipe

I have always loved one of Lush's bath bombs that has coco butter in, so I thought I'd make up a recipe of my own.

• 1 part citric acid
• 2 parts bicarbonate of soda
• small chippings of coco butter (as much or little as you want)
• essential oils (roughly 2 tsp per cup of bicarb)
• heather flowers (if you want!)

First thoroughly mix the citric acid and bicarb together then chop the coco butter. I found if I used a sharp knife and cut it thinly, it kind of crumbled into fine pieces. I also cut some into small chunks. As I use an ice cube tray as a mould, I wanted the chunks to be small so they still stuck together. If you use big moulds you could have bigger chunks.

I guessed the amount of coco butter. I didn't want them to be very oily, just enough to make your skin soft. I think 2 tablespoons per cup of bicarb would be fine. Mix it into the citric acid and bicarb mixture.

Add your essential oils and mix them in thoroughly and quickly. I love the smell of coco butter and think it works well with vanilla, but if you are not using much coco butter it won't add much smell to the mix. Getting the texture right can be a bit hit and miss, I press the mixture with the back of a spoon then cut it with the spoon. If it leaves a solid mass and doesn't crumble it's damp enough. Other wise spritz it lightly with some water.

Work quickly to press the mixture into ice cube trays. In this case I stuck with a regular shaped tray, I wasn't sure the lumpy mix would work with stars or other shapes.

Half way though I had a bit of a brain storm and put a thin layer of heather flowers into the bottom of one cube, then filled it up with the mix. I wasn't sure the heather would stick but when I turned them out it had made a really pretty layer of flowers on the top. I wish I had made them all like that now!

tagging

We took our decorations down early to get some decorating done, so I thought it was time to make the Christmas cards into tags for next year. I really enjoyed using last years home made tags.

It is really nice to reuse cards and not just put them into the recycling. It is also a nice process, as Corrina said, it's great to take time and to get into the detail of the cards. You don't need to use the whole picture, maybe just the words or a part of the pattern. And you don't need to stick to squares either. I have great oval cutter that is just the right size, but you could make round tags by drawing around a jar and because a jar is see through it will be easy to position where you want.

The other thing you can do to jazz them up a bit is use scissors that cut patterns, I have some that cut a scalloped edge and some that make a ziz zag. You can normally pick them up cheap in the kids section of craft shops or stationers. You don't even have to use them on all of the edges, I made some long thin tags and did the zig zag on just one short end.

If you are punching holes into them for ribbon remember to leave room when you are cutting them out! I leave the ribbon until I come to wrap the presents, I never know what colour to use until nearer the time.