Foaming Orange, Frankincense and Sandalwood Mineral Bath Soak

This luxurious mineral bath soak is unique in that it will foam when sprinkled into the bath water, creating beautiful bubbles. It’s easy to make and creates a gorgeous and impressive product.

It has a high content of minerals thanks to the salt it contains and the milk powder adds a luxurious, moisturizing touch. The bath soak helps exfoliate, moisturize, soften, cleanse, detoxify, calm and soothe skin, plus it creates some lovely bubbles and provides a beautiful fragrance! What’s not to love!

The magic ingredient that makes this product foam is sodium lauroyl sarcosinate which is a COSMOS-approved, food grade, anionic surfactant derived from the sodium salt of fatty acids and sarcosine amino acids. It provides a light, foaming and gentle cleansing action, won’t strip moisture, and leaves skin feeling soft. It’s ideal for sensitive, dry skin types. It can be purchased from Ingredients To Die For (USA) www.ingredientstodiefor.com and Aussie Soap Supplies (Australia) www.aussiesoapsupplies.com.au.

When blended together, orange, frankincense and sandalwood essential oils create a warm, sweet, smokey and woody aroma that’s kind, cheering and uplifting. A lovely blend for winter warmth.

The fragrance from the essential oils and warmth from the bath water will also help relax and de-stress the body and mind. The bubbles help to give that all-important luxurious feeling with some much-needed time out away from our busy lifestyles. It is suitable for all skin types.

Directions for use:

To be used in the bath or as a foot/hand soak. Add around 1 oz or 30g to running bath water.

Potential substitute ingredients:

We’ve used sodium lauroyl sarcosinate as our foaming agent because it is very gentle. If you don’t have access to it you can replace it with sodium lauryl sulfoacetate (SLSa) which is of 100% natural origin, made from coconut and palm oils and is Ecocert-approved. SLSa produces more bubbles and foam compared to sodium lauroyl sarcosinate.

Neither of these ingredients are the same as sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS). SLS and SLSa might sound like the same ingredient, but that is not the case. SLSa is a much milder surfactant due to its molecular size being much larger than that of SLS. The small molecules of SLS surfactants can penetrate the skin more effectively and thus cause dryness, redness and irritation. SLSa still offers a rich lather but does not penetrate skin and mucous membranes as deeply, and is therefore not as irritating to the skin.

The difference in the properties of the surfactants lies in their chemical structure. What sodium lauroyl sarcosinate, sodium lauryl sulphate and sodium lauryl sulfoacetate have in common is that they are derived from lauric fatty acid, which is typically obtained from coconut or palm oil. All of them also contain a sodium atom at one end of the molecule. What makes them different is the manufacturing process and chemicals used to create them. Sodium lauryl sulphate is made using sulfuric acid (hence the “sulfate” part of the name). Sodium lauryl sulfoacetate is manufactured similarly to SLS, but instead of sulfuric acid it is made using sulfoacetic acid, which has higher molecular size and results in a milder surfactant. Sodium lauroyl sarcosinate is made using sarcosine, a natural amino acid derivative, and is even milder than SLSa, but produces less foam.

We’ve used milk powder but you could use goat milk powder, soy milk powder or buttermilk powder.

Storage:

Best stored in a glass jar or tin. Keep the container sealed and don’t allow any water to get into the container.

Approximate shelf life: 6 months.

Formula

Recipe

Instructions

IMPORTANT: We recommend wearing a mask when making this products as powdered surfactants have very small, airborne particles.

1. Weigh Phase A (the salt) and set aside.
2. Weigh Phase B (the sodium lauroyl sarcosinate and milk powder). Add to a mixing bowl and mix gently to combine.
3. Weigh Phase C (the essential oils), add to Phase B and mix thoroughly.
4. Mix all the ingredients together until combined evenly.
5. Pour into a suitable air-tight container.

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