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!
Here is what you need:
- 1 tablespoon citric acid (you can find in the canning area of your store, or buy on amazon)
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon Epsom salts
- 2 tablespoons baking soda
- liquid (not gel) food coloring (grab at the dollar store!)
- several small bowls for mixing the colors
- a mold of some sort, I used a candy mold
What to do:
1. Mix all the dry ingredients together until well combined.
2. To make the different colors, scoop out a tablespoon of the mixture into a separate bowl, one at a time.
3. Now the fun part- adding the colors! Add food coloring to the tablespoon of mixture, 5 drops at a time stirring all the time so the mixture doesn’t start to bubble. I found that about 20 – 25 drops of color works best. Too much and the mixture will bubble over the molds (like the red did!), too little and your color drops won’t be vibrant enough.
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!
Enjoy! Let me know if you try out my homemade color drops, I’d love to hear from you!
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