These wonderful herbal bath soaks are great fun to make, fabulous for your health and well-being and can be tailored to suit the recipient.
Like many people, we enjoy making a little home made gifts to thank our teachers for all their hard work.
I’m sure everyone has different thoughts on teacher appreciation gifts, but mine are as follows;
I don’t want to spend a load of money.
It’s the kids who should be putting the majority of the effort into making them.
And of course, I want them to look gorgeous, and for the teachers to feel fabulously appreciated!
The kids used little muslin drawstring bags decorated with stamps using our Washable DIY Fabric Paint to make the herbal bath soaks. We love how they turned out, and even stamped little cards to match.
Click on the image below to check out how to make brilliant DIY fabric paint from acrylic paint simply by adding a couple of household ingredients.
What we used to make our Herbal Bath Soaks
We have been learning lots about herbs and their uses over the last few months. There are so many plants that have a positive action on your skin, making them perfect to use in bath products.
Our 21 Botanicals that are fabulous for your skin post doesn’t cover every single one, but will certainly give you a good starting point if you’d like to learn a little more.
We have 2 sizes of these little bags, so decided to make two different herbal mixtures to fill them. For the bigger bags we made a relaxation soak, and for the tiny ones we put together a beautiful skin renewal mix.
Cotton Muslin Bags (Amazon affiliate link)
A selection of dried herbs (Amazon affiliate link)
Relax Herbal Bath Soaks
Our Relax mix combines Oats, Hops, Lavender and Chamomile to sooth and moisturise the skin, and would be perfect to have as a relaxing soak at the end of a hard day, or just before bed to promote a fabulous night’s sleep.
Renew Herbal Bath Soaks
While our Renew mix contains Linden Flowers, Meadowsweet, Hibiscus, Lemon Verbena, Chamomile, Rose, Honeysuckle, Red Clover and Calendula for their beautifying, and anti-aging properties, as well as their wonderful fragrance.
We then popped all our herbal bath soaks into a larger cotton bag, with our home-made cards and a little note telling our recipients about what is in their gift.
- Remember it is important to always provide a list of ingredients for all home-made gifts in case of any sensitivities.
All the children’s teachers looked delighted with their home-made herbal bath soaks, and we think it’s a lovely way to show our appreciation for everything they do.
If you have enjoyed our Herbal Bath Soaks tutorial, why not check out some of our other 5-minute gift ideas. You can find a list of our favourites below.
How to Make Fantastic Homemade Peppermint Foot Scrub
This simple recipe for Rosemary and Peppermint Foot Scrub ticks every box. It is super quick, super easy and super cheap to make. You probably already have all the ingredients you will need at home.
How to Make Homemade Mulling Spice Bags
DIY Mulling Spice Bags make a lovely, thoughtful gift, and can be adapted to suit the taste of the recipient.
How to Make Super Cute Christmas Reed Diffusers
These Christmas reed diffusers use fillable Christmas baubles as diffuser bottles and Christmassy essential oils for fragrance.
42 comments
This looks so fun! What a great gift to make for friends!
Another question, I am going to make the bags. Will cotton work? I thought I could also sew it completely up then.
Thanks
Hi Sarah, Any light cotton should work fine and I think sewing them up completely is a great idea :)
Hi,
These look amazing, just about to start making them for Christmas pressies. Can they be dried and reused or are they just used the once?
Thank you
I’ve never tried drying them out and re-using them but I’d say its certainly worth trying. I’d love to hear how it works if you do try it :)
So I know I am really late to the party here but these look awesome! My only question is what proportions of herbs did you you for the different mixes? I am looking at buying herbs in bulk for this and I am not sure how much of what would even be needed. If I missed a link or that info somewhere, I do apologize. I love this idea though and plan to do it very soon!
Thanks for your question Jessie, the answer is I pretty much make it up as I go along lol. Mainly because liking how it looks and smells is a big part of the finished project for me as well as the health benefits. Dried herbs are by their nature light so I tend to buy 100g at a time of the bulkier herbs such as the hops, rose petals, calendula and chamomile and smaller quantities of the leaves such as the lemon verbena and linden flowers (maybe 50g at a time). Those sorts of quantities would give you plenty to make at least a dozen generous bath soaks with some herbs left over. Hope that helps :)
[…] https://craftinvaders.co.uk/home-made-bath-tea-bags/#_a5y_p=5707735 […]
Hi. What a gorgeous gift!
What size ate your bags and what are they called?
If you search for Unbleached Cotton Drawstring Muslin Bags on eBay or Amazon they should come up Chantel. I think the ones we used here were 3 inches by 5 inches but they come in a whole range of sizes :)
Hi Sarah,
I just made homemade bath tea bags and give some to my neighbour as a present because they are new in the area and they loved it. I am planning to make more and give some to my officemates. This was a clever idea. Thanks!
What a lovely welcome for your new neighbour Jenny, thanks for letting us know you tried them :)
Where do you get such a wide variety of dried herbs and flowers? :)
I collect some of them from the wild and buy the rest online Evelyn, there’s lots of good suppliers out there and loads of sellers on platforms like eBay.
How do u use these please? I know it might sound silly but I have never heard of these and I would love to give them a try
You simply drop the whole bag into your bath Amanda and allow it to infuse the water :)
love the tea bag idea
Thanks, Carol, they make a great little gift :)
[…] Renewing tea bath. For this bath tea, you need a variety of dried flowers including, linden flowers, meadowsweet, hibiscus, lemon verbena, chamomile, rose, honeysuckle, red clover, and calendula. The linden flowers help with relaxation and the meadowsweet can help improve your mood, so it’s no surprise that this recipe is called “Renew.” For further directions check out this blog post. […]
Thanks for including us in your Herbal Tea Baths round-up Dr Kathleen :)
The bags you put them in are so pretty and the dried herbs and flowers are also very pretty. Maybe we can make art out of them… I love your blog!!
Thank you so much Mary, we love making our own gifts for people and we know they are always appreciated :)
Sounds like a wonderful way to the days end with a soak in the tub with a therapeutic tea soak. I love the gift bags with the leaf print, they are so cute!
I adore the leaf block. It’s funny to think that somewhere in the world there’s a person who carved it who has no idea how much we all admire it – wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to tell them!
Awesome gift for all occasions. I love how you combine your love for nature and make all these amazing things Sarah.
Thanks Michelle, I definitely feel more inspired when I am surrounded by it :)
Absolute great idea I just cant wait to make these as gifts for myself and my family thank you so very much
Thanks Victoria, they make fabulous gifts :)
I love giving homemade gifts and this idea is just lovely! What a nice way to say thanks to a friend or host.
Everyone was delighted with them Erin, and it’s another great idea for those who don’t want alcohol or sweets (which are the other things we often make :)
I’m really inspired to give these bath tea bags a try! Such a fab idea!
They are lovely to make – really therapeutic, and they smell wonderful :)
These look like so much fun. I think I’m going to make some for my kids and myself as Christmas gifts. How did you dry yours? In the microwave or by hanging them? And do you let the flower die first and then collect or while they are still alive? I am so curious! LOL There are some cute little burlap bags at Walmart, I wonder if I could use those? Or if they are treated with something that you wouldn’t want in your bath? I may have some leftover material from pillows that I could use. You place these bags in the bath directly, correct? Can you use them more than once? Obviously I am full of questions today!
Some I dried myself and some I bought online. Mostly the ones I dried myself, I dried in bunches, mainly because I wanted a decent quantity, and also I think leaves dry better than flowers in the microwave. I think that generally the flowers look better if you start drying them when they are in peak condition – looking at the hedgerows my dried Meadowsweet and honeysuckle looks a lot better than what I see outside, the colour in particular, and of course things like the elderflower have all matured into berries now, so cutting it stops that process. I do throw the whole bag in the bath. Muslin bags are good because you can actually use them on the skin if you want to exfoliate, and they saturate quickly. Burlap would be lovely for something like bath salts, which you could tip out into the bath. Of course there is nothing to stop you tipping the herbs straight in – it’s just a bit of a pain cleaning the bath after. I would say any thing cotton would be good for bags, muslin can be used again – I wash it when I use it for things like preserve making (or draining things out of alcohol) and it comes up ok, although maybe not perfect enough for gift giving :)
These sound absolutely divine! What a lovely gift idea as you said!
Thanks Sam, they make a great little gift :)
These are so beautiful, what a lovely lovely idea and homemade gift! I’d never use it because it’s so pretty but for sure have it up for decor!
Thanks Katrin. It’d be lovely to add scent to a room too, although we try and make our gifts useful so that we don’t add to the number of things they already have in their home :)
Hi Sarah, I remember buying little herbal bath soaks for my Mum back in the day and I’m sure homemade would have gone down better. Love the way your herbs have retained their colour.
xx
I think we might make some bath salts next, which is what I always remember from when we were young – they’ve got some fabulous benefits for your skin too, and are back in fashion now :) The flowers are beautiful aren’t they, we only dried some of them ourselves though, some we bought :)
So pretty. What a great little gift or party favor.
Our teachers seemed delighted with them, and the kids loved mixing up the blends :)