My son loves taking baths and especially when there is a special extra thing for bathtime! One of his favorites is to have a color in his bathtub and we quickly went through our container of bath dropz. While searching for them in the store I had a thought- why not try to make them myself?! I have all the ingredients to make bath bombs at home and I realized that would be a good base for the bath drops!
I realized to make this work I would have to make a slight modification on the regular bath bombs recipe. Instead of spraying the mixture with tinted water, the only liquid in the color drops is food coloring. This helps give them a really intense color and when they dissolve in the tub it actually turns the color of the drops!
On the left you can see the red isn’t quite there, it needs more food coloring. On the right it’s a rich color, but I found this one I added a little too much coloring and it bubbled over in the molds like the picture below shows. It’s a balancing act!
After all the molds are filled, set the tray to dry in a cool and dry spot overnight. When they are all dry, carefully pop them out to use! It’s best to do this over a paper towel or similar, because some of them might have a few crumbs fall off.
I was so excited to try my drops to see if they worked and I wasn’t disappointed! This is the green drop! The drops bubble a little because of the citric acid and dissolved in the water! The green needed a little help, but the blue dissolved perfectly on it’s own.
This is blue and green together, which made the water a nice aqua color. The color did not stain the tub or my son’s skin. However, if you rubbed the drops directly on wet skin, clothes etc I assume it would stain a little so be careful!
They look like volcanic rocks! So there you have it, my recipe for homemade color drops! For the purple I just mixed together red and blue. If you have neon or other colors of food coloring those would be awesome, too!
As for cost, I haven’t done the breakdown per batch, but because you are using so little ingredients I am guessing it’s not that much! The most expensive ingredient is the citric acid, but even if you buy the smallest container you will have enough to make a ton of batches!
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DIY Homemade Bathtub Color Drops
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WOW, I did not realize how easy these were to make! I trust this recipe over the stuff in the stores. Looks like great fun for kiddos!
This is such a great idea! These would make a fun little extra gift in kids' Easter baskets! 🙂
SO fun!! What kid wouldn't love to make and play with these!
What a cool idea! My son would love these.
That's a great idea, Rachel! I may try that for the kiddos at some point!
Would the food color stain my tub?
Hi Emily- yes it can depending on what kind of material your tub is made out of. You can test it out on a small area first to make sure. It never stained ours though, but it is a risk so I would deff test it first!
Does it stain the skin if your really pale?
It did not stain my sons skin when we used them, although your skin may be different so I can’t say for sure. The water dilutes the food coloring a lot.
Thank you
My kiddos have sensitive skin so I have stayed away from the store bought color changers. Finding this recipe has made bath time so much more fun. My 4 year old lives making them with me.
This is great! I’m so glad you enjoyed making them!
Should they fizz up in the mold?
Yes they do tend to fizz a little in the mold, especially if you put extra liquid! Add the liquid slowly to help slow down the fizzing.
My son has become obsessed with the color black recently, and wants his bath water to be black after we started using the Sesame Street color drops, and I was wondering if you, or anyone on here has tried to make them black, and how to do it? Any tips would be helpful, thank you.
I haven’t tried black but they do make black food coloring so you could definitely try it! I’m not sure how dark it would be once it’s diluted in the water though. It might turn out to be grey? Let us know if you try it!
You weren’t kidding about it bubbling over with too much liquid! I’m loving experimenting with making these, but still haven’t nailed the right amount of liquid. How should the mixture look/feel before putting it in the mold? Still crumbly?
Ah sorry just saw this! Yes it should still be slightly crumbly but moist. Just enough so it stays together when you push it together!
It’s all good, I played around with it until I got it right. The colour comes out amazing and my twins loved it! Thanks for this!
This was the first recipe I clicked on for ‘DIY bath color change tabs’. My son is 3 yo and I typically buy these at the Dollar Store or 99¢ Store. Rachel’s recipe is great because it is true to word. While my red ttabs did not bubble over my blue ones did. Think muffins when filling your molds- 3/4 is more than enough. My problem was I kept packing it down while I was filling so it is no wonder why they muffin- ballooned over. I bought a bubble ice cube tray with silicone tops which made it super easy to ‘pop’ the tabs out. I liked this recipe because of its simplicity and the ingredients are typically what you have on hand, even in a pandemic. My son likes the recipe because he can mix, pack, color, and pop with the best of them. He wants to do it again even though we have enough tabs to last a month. Kudos to Rachel- she did an exceptional job describing, troubleshooting, and making this craft project user-friendly. This comment is longer than doing the project. My point: kid tested, mom approved. Well done.
Thanks for the nice comments!! I’m glad you liked it so much! 🙂
*Forgot to comment about skin and coloring.
Zero issues.
I used two tabs. One purple and the other blue (yes I am aware that red and blue make purple. There were not three tabs just the premixed purple and a blue tab). I consider my son to be Twilight® white because I think a tan child is unacceptable. There was still no change to his skin color. I use a plastic baby tub inside a soaker tub. Still no issues. I used Rachel’s recommended 20-25 food coloring drops so my tablets were vibrant and still did not effect my son’s skin color.
Totally safe. Totally homemade. Totally fun