Bath Balls a la Martha Stewart

This is a bit late, but still worth posting. For Christmas, I made the mistake awesome decision to have a DIY Christmas. Just about every gift given by yours truly was handmade-ish (handcrafted?) in my very own apartment. But right now, I'm just going to post about the bath balls and packaging that I made for the ladies in my family. I used this bath snowball tutorial from Martha Stewart's website. A word of warning, though, only do this when you have enough time to try again and definitely wait longer than 24 hours to remove the remaining half from the bath ball. The first time I attempted these, I only let them sit overnight and trying to reshape them is a huge pain, trust me. A trick that I learned (and could not find online) after breaking many of these in half for removing the second half of the mold is to lightly tap the plastic mold, while holding it upside down in your hand, and then carefully twist the mold off of the bath ball. For these, I used blue food coloring with lavender essential oils and orange food coloring with pomegranate and vanilla essential oils. I used large mason jars, colorful tissue paper, and ribbon for the container. Then, instead of wrapping, I wanted the recipients to be able to reuse the packaging, so I painted each person's initials on blank tote bags, sewed on a flower, and painted their names on Christmas ornaments instead of using tags. 

Luckily, I have an awesome family who loved (or at least pretended to love =P) their handmade goodies. I've heard horror stories of people who have made wonderful handmade gifts (which, as I have learned, typically cost more than store bought gifts and take much planning and hard work) only to be told things like "We understand, everyone is having money problems right now. It's the thought that counts." I can't imagine telling someone something like that. Even that hideous handmade sweater from your granny with the hot air balloons painted on with puffy fabric paint. Just smile, say "thank you" with enthusiasm, and shove it to the back of your closet in case you ever have to prove that you liked it enough to keep it.