MAKING BATH SALTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18885, 6 December 1924, Page 6 (Supplement)

MAKING BATH SALTS.

Bath salts are always an acceptable prosent, and quite easy to make at home. As the salts not only perfume the water, but soften it for sensitive skins, the basis of them is a mixture of equal quantities of washing soda and borax. Sometimes it is possible to buy carbonate of soda and borax in crystal form, but if you cannot get theso readily you must crush the two ingredients yourself.

Mix ono pound each of washing soda and borax together, put them on a pastiy board and crush by passing a rolling pin over them or tapping with a light hammer. Remember that the mixture must not be ground to powder, but merely reduced to small crystals, as uniform in size as possible.

As a receptacle for the salts use either an empty bath salt bottle, if you happen to have one, or a two-pound glass jam jar or fruit preserving jar, as a wide neck is needed. Fill the bottom of the jar or tin with the mixed crystals to a depth of two inches, making the layer as level as you can. From tho chemist buy the following ingredients, which give the scented element to the salts:—l dram each of oil of rose geranium and oil of lavender, and Aoz. of spirit of wine. .Mix them by shaking well together. Sprinkle the layer at tho bottom of the jar with this sweet-scented mixture. About twelve drops will bo enough. Cork the bottle containing the scent. Shake the crystals in the jar well, then stand it aside in a cool place for 24 hours. All you have to do after this is rcpitition. Every day add another two-inch layer of crystals and another twel\ drops of the scented mixture, till the bottlo is almost full, when all that remains of the scent should be poured in. Use a large cork or screw stopper to exclude all air from the filled jar and put it aside for several weeks, so that tho crystals will become thoroughly impregnated with the scent.