Mother’s Day Spa

bath salt12Mother’s Day is May 10! Give Mom a relaxing spa day at home with these spa science gifts you can make yourself using mostly household items. Bath salts add luxury to an ordinary tub while teaching about hard and soft water. Fizzy bath bombs delight the senses through a skin-safe chemical reaction. Homemade sugar scrub introduces exfoliants and humectants and their effects on the skin.

What you need:
• Plastic mixing bowl
• Plastic mixing spoon
• 1 cup Epsom salt
• 1 cup sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon glycerin
• Fragrance or essential oils (craft or health store)
• Colorant (craft store)
• Liquid soap
• Jar with lid, baby soda bottles* or other airtight container

What you do:
• Mix together the Epsom salt and sea salt in the mixing bowl.
• Add glycerin to the salt mixture and mix through. (The glycerin is not necessary, but it helps the colorant and oil get dispersed evenly through the salt.)
• Add a few drops of fragrance or essential oils.
• Add a few drops of colorant. We recommend getting oil-based skin-safe colorant from a craft store or else leaving out the colorant.
• Wet your hands with tap water, add a drop of soap to your hands, then rub together to form a lather.
• Observe how much lather forms, then rinse off your hands.
• Fill a sink with water and add about 1/8 cup of salt mixture to it.
• Use your hands to stir the water to help the salt dissolve.
• With your hands still wet from the salt water, add a drop of soap to your hands and rub them together to form a lather.
• Store the remaining salts in a jar, keeping the lid on tightly to keep moisture out. Use about 1/4 cup of the salts in your bath.

What Happened: Most likely you found it easier to form lather (and more of it!) when using the water with salt rather than the water with no salt. This is because of the difference between hard water and soft water. Most households in America have hard water. Hard water has a high mineral content, usually with calcium and magnesium, whereas soft water contains less of these minerals. Calcium and magnesium ions in the hard water react with the soap, forming insoluble gray flakes called soap scum rather than a lather. This means you need more soap to get clean and the bathtub gets a grimy ring around it from the leftover soap scum. One way to soften hard bath water is to add bath salts. The calcium and magnesium ions in the water are replaced with sodium and potassium ions from the salt, allowing the soap to lather much more easily. (If your home has soft water, you may not notice too much of a difference in how well the soap lathers in the water with your bath salts and the water without the bath salts. However, the salt and essential oils will still have a beneficial effect on your skin.)
Another benefit of adding bath salts to your bath has to do with osmosis. Osmosis is the movement of water through a membrane (such as your skin) to achieve equilibrium. Your body contains water and salt, whereas an ordinary bath contains mainly water and very little salt. Therefore, water passes through your skin in an effort to balance the concentration of water and salt in you and in your bath. This excess water causes “pruning” (your fingers and toes wrinkle). Adding bath salts to the water causes a more equal balance of salt and water in both you and in the bath, so less water enters your skin and less wrinkling occurs. Salt is also thought to draw impurities and toxins out of your skin and soothes sore muscles!

DIY Soap
DIY Honey Scrub
DIY Fizzy Bath Bombs
DIY Lip Balm

DIY Reed Diffuser

What you need:reed-diffuser-instructions
• Glass bottle or vase with a small neck opening
• Diffuser reeds (or bamboo skewers)
• 60 ml alcohol
• 60 ml water
• 50-100 drops essential oil (orange is the best)

What you do:
• Make sure your reeds or skewers stick out several inches from the top of the container for maximum scent.
• Mix together alcohol, water, and essential oil in the container.
• Stick the reeds or bamboo skewers inside.
• After about an hour, flip the reeds over to saturate the top part of the reeds that stick out above the oil level. (This helps to speed up the process of the oil soaking up from the bottom diffusing through the entire reed.)
• Rotate the ends of the reeds or skewers once a week to refresh and prolong the fragrance.

Tip: You can substitute alcohol and water with 120 ml vodka.

Bok Choy Roses

What you need:Bok Choy Roses
• Canvas
• Paint
• Bok Choy
• Cutting board
• Knife
•  Brush

What you do:
• Using the knife, cut off the bottom of the bok choy.
• The bok choy leaves  can be saved to make a dinner. (The closer to the bottom you cut, the tighter the “rose petals” will be.)
• Paint the back ground.
• Let it dry.
• Use the  brush to apply a light coating of paint to the cut side of the bok choy.
• Use this as a stamp to make roses on the canvas.
• Use green paint and the paint brush to make rose stems and leaves.
• When finished, wash off the paint from the bok choy and compost it.
• Let you artwork dry.
• Display!

3D Flower Art

What you need:3d flowers1
• Canvas
• Acrylic paint
• Egg carton
• Scissors
• Beads
• Green pipe cleaners
• Bow
• Tacky glue

What you do:3d flowers2
• Paint the egg carton white.
• Let it dry.
•  Cut  apart egg carton sections.
• Trim each “flower” to have petals.
• Paint the egg carton sections yellow and orange.
• Let them dry.
• Paint the canvas with any color of your choice.
• Let it dry.
• Trim pipe cleaners to the right length.
• Tie them together for a stem.
• Glue to the canvas with tacky glue.
• Glue a bead in the center of each flower.
• Glue the flowers to the canvas.
• Display!

DIY Hyacinthus

What you need:DIY Hyacinthus
• Paper
• Pencils
• Popcorn
• Tacky glue

What you do:
• Using pencils create a background.
• Draw a stem and leaves.
•  Glue popcorn above the flower stem, in a Hyacinthus shape.
• Display!

DIY Necklace

What you need:DIY Necklace
• Clear Gel Tacky Glue
• Scissors
• Fabric scraps ( 2-2 1/2” wide and 15” in length for roses and what ever you need for the necklace plus 5 inches)
• Lobster clasp
• Two jump rings

What you do:
For Flowers:

• Fold the fabric in half and roll a tight center, about 4 or 5 rolls.
• Glue and start to twist your fabric.
• Keep working your way around by adding a drop of glue and twisting every half turn or so.  Just try to keep it tight.
• Once you reach the desired width of your flower just cut the strip of fabric with 1-2” of fabric left.
• Add a drop of glue to the bottom, center of your flower.
• Fold the  fabric strip over the bottom of your flower to secure it.  Trim if needed.
• Once you have made all three flowers and they have been able to dry for 24 hours, you can finish your necklace.
• Take 3 pieces of fabric.
• Pin the ends together and pin it somewhere so you can braid it.
• Attach the clasp.
•  Flip your flowers upside down and glue them to the necklace.
• Let it dry overnight.

Knot Bracelet

What you need:knot bracelet
• 1.5 foot leather cord
• bracelet clasp

What you do:
• Fold cord in half and thread fold through clasp ring.
• While holding folded end in one hand, thread tail ends through loop.
•  Pull ends to secure cord to clasp ring.
• Lay cord with clasp at top of work.
• Holding one cord in each hand, wrap left cord over and around right cord; then thread left cord end through hole above wrap.
•  Pull to make a knot just below lobster clasp.
• Repeat previous step to make knots to the end of the bracelet.
• When desired length of bracelet is reached, make one last knot and trim ends.
• To wear bracelet, attach  clasp between cords above last knot.

Yarn Wrapped Vase

What you need:
• An empty can
• A combo of yarn in a variety of thicknesses and colors
• All purpose glue

What you do:
• Attach the first piece of yarn with a dab glue at the end and start wrapping, adding very small dots of glue along the way.
•Change colors as desired, wrapping the whole height of the can.
• That’s it!

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Flower Basket

What you need:
• Two paper plates
• Watercolor
• Brush
• Glue
• Scissors
Paper flowers

What you do:
• Color one plate with watercolor.
• Let it dry.
• Cut it in half.
• Keep one half for the front of the basket. (Recycle the other half, or save it for another basket.)
• Place the half-plate face up, as if you were going to eat from it.
• Cut away half of the inner part of the other paper plate, leaving the outer edge for a handle.
• Glue the lower edges of the paper plates together.
• Insert the paper flowers.
• This makes a basket full of flowers.

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Rock Ladybugs

What you need:
• Flat rock
• Acrylic Paint (Red, Black, White, Blue)
• Brush
What you do:
• Completely wash and dry all rocks.
• Paint the rock white. (Red color is brighter when painted on a white background).
• Paint the rock red (Apply two or three coats of paint until you have solid coverage).
• Paint the head area black.
• Apply black dots to the body. Paint them with a round brush, or use your finger.
• With black paint draw a line down the center of the body.
• Paint the mouth.
• Using white paint paint the eye circles
• Make smaller blue eyes inside the white circle.
• After the blue paint dried, make a black dot inside of the eye.
• Make white dots in the black part of the eyes with the end of a paintbrush handle.
• Do the same for making antennas.
• Your lady bug is now perfect.

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Spring Flowers

What you need:
• Styrofoam ball
• Q-tips
• Food coloring
•Bamboo skewer
• Scissors
• Glue
What you do:
• Cut the Q-tips in half
• Poke them into the Styrofoam ball.
• Once you are finished, mix up some water and food coloring.
• Roll the ball around in the food coloring until all the q-tips are evenly colored.
• Poke the bamboo skewer into the ball. You may want to secure it with a bit of hot glue.
• Display it.

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Twig Trivet

What you need:
•Lots of Sticks
• Corrugated cardboard
• Natural jute, 4-ply, #72 (optional)
• Pruning shears or sharp craft knife
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Waxed paper
• Craft stick
• Tacky glue

What you do:
Step 1: Ask an adult to help you use pruning shears (or a sharp craft knife) to cut the sticks into three-inch lengths. Use sticks that are as straight as possible. You will need about 25 to 30 pieces.
Step 2: Measure and cut a piece of cardboard into a 6-inch square.
Step 3: Place the cardboard square onto waxed paper. Scoop glue from bottle with the craft stick and spread glue in a thick layer over entire cardboard surface.
Step 4: Lay the sticks in a parquet pattern (see photograph, below). Place the sticks as close to each other as possible. Let glue dry completely.
Step 5: Squeeze a thick line of glue around the outside edge of the trivet. Starting in the center of a side, place the jute in the glue and press firmly to the edge of the trivet.When you reach the beginning of the jute, overlap the ends slightly. Let the glue dry