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Fizzy Bath Bombs

A while back I found this awesome tutorial on Little Birdie Secrets. I love this blog...three crafty friends who do cool things together. How fun is that?!! The site is full of inspiring and thoughtful projects to tackle and I have many bookmarked that I want to try. So, anyway, I found this tutorial, and later my co-worker, Casey, and I decided to host a Women's Christmas Craft night at Carol Joy Holling. The hope was to get a bunch of crafty-types in a room for a night of food, creating and childcare done by camp counselors. Genius. So this Friday night we have 20 women coming to make three different projects, one of which is the Fizzy Bath Bomb. Today I did a trial run of this project and basically decided that I have the best job in the world.

First I gathered all of the supplies. This was the hardest part of the entire process. I had to track down five cups of citric acid. And figure out what witch hazel was (it's not a vitamin, so don't waste your time looking in the vitamin section in countless stores across omaha...just head over to your local walgreens and go to their face wash section. who knew?!! not me, obviously.) But once I gathered all of the ingredients it was a pretty simple process. I told Rory that by the time the ladies actually come and do the crafts, it will only take them 10 minutes because the prep work has already been done for hours, and if I were really honest, days. It reminds me of watching someone on a cooking show and they say, "simply toss your chopped vegetables in the pan" and you think to yourself, 'well who chopped those vegetables?!! All recipes would be easy and simple if your ingredients were premeasured and ready to dump into your pot!' Basically, this is what I have done for craft night.
So from there it was a pretty straight forward process...mixed the dry ingredients first and then added the oil and coloring. Apparently the citric acid and baking soda are the two things that really make these babies fizz. Again, if you want the actual instructions with step-by-step pictures, click here for great easy to follow directions from Little Birdie Secrets.
Adding the witch hazel was maybe the trickiest part, but it would be hard to screw this up, so I use the word tricky quite loosely. The key is that you don't want to ever saturate your dry ingredients or it will activate the fizz prematurely. So you spray on the witch hazel until the mixture clumps easily in your hand.

Then I packed the mixture into the cupcake cups seen below. The stuff hardens really fast, so I filled them fast. I plan on making mostly cupcakes, but wanted to try the actual "bomb" like you would purchase at LUSH.

For the cupcakes, I made a lotion frosting to go on top. It actually is a pound of powdered sugar, meringue powder and cream of tartar. I was sort of weirded out about bathing in powdered sugar until I realized that lots of people use sugar scrubs, so it can't be that horrible for you.

It stiffened up really quickly, so we filled the icing bag fast and decorated our fizzy bath cupcakes. This is my friend, Gina, who showed serious skill in her use of the piping bag. Very impressive, Gina.

They hardened up within two hours. Hard as rocks, actually. I was still curious how they would react in the water, unsure if I had done everything exactly right. So we tested one. I can't explain how thrilled and relieved I was that it worked, because I have been promoting this entire event based on these things, raving about how cool they are when they fizz up, while thinking, "Lord, please let them fizz up!" Not only did it work...but it fizzed like a hottub jet shooting up out of the water. Well, I mean, like the little spits of water that shoot up from a hottub jet. Not really like a gushing fountain. I'm just trying to say the fizz was impressive!

We wrapped them up and are all set for Friday night. If you're in the Omaha area and want to come, drop me a line. We'd love to have you!

Rory's podcast

My husband's company has just launched the newest edition of Weather Defender. They are in the marketing phase of the release and last week Rory was featured on CodeRed podcast. If you don't quite know what Rory does be sure to listen by clicking here.

Final shout out for Jessica Sprague!

Once again, if you're looking to learn something new, want to stretch yourself creatively and enjoy gathering stories and memories, BE SURE TO GO OVER TO JessicaSprague and sign up for her FREE Holidays in Hand class.

You do not need to have photoshop for this class. And you do not even need to have time within the next week to complete the class. It is self-paced and the materials are yours forever, so if you don't get to the class until January, you'll be fine. It's free, and it's a beautiful introduction to Jessica, a fantastic teacher who has taught me literally everything I know about digital scrapbooking. Registration ends on Monday night at midnight, so jump on board. It's going to be a good time!

(this is a picture of the book we made last year in her free class. It was a lot of material that we printed off to make this fabulous book that has lists and lists of writing prompts, conversation starters and creative topics for scrapbooking. I am guessing the Holidays in Hand class will be similiar, except with a Thanksgiving and Christmas emphasis...)

Rich Mullins

"The Bible is not a book for the faint of heart- it is a book full of all the greed and glory and violence and tenderness and sex and betrayal that befits mankind. It is not the collection of pretty little anecdotes mouthed by pious little church mice- it does not so much nibble at our shoe leather as it cuts to the heart and splits the marrow from the bone. It does not give us answers fitted to our small-minded questions, but truth that goes beyond what we even know to ask." -Rich Mullins

My font is ready for download...

I have a few persistent friends who have been asking that I post my font so they can download it for their own use. This is pretty easy to do. (Well, actually it's easy if you're married to Rory Groves and he helps you put the process into easy step-by-step tasks. Thanks Rory.)


  1. Download file by clicking here: BeccaGrovesFont

  2. When asked whether to open or save it, save it to your Desktop.

  3. Then double-click the file "BeccaGrovesFont" on your desktop to open it.

  4. Click the button on your new window that says, "Extract all files"
    (Windows XP Users: Click on File > Extract all)
  5. You should see another folder with the BeccaGrovesFont in it.

    Windows Vista users:
    Right click BeccaGrovesFont and select "Install".

    Windows 2000/XP users must take a few more steps:
  6. Click Start > Control Panel, and double-click the Fonts folder
  7. Copy "BeccaGrovesFont.ttf" file from the extracted folder (step 4) to the Fonts folder





The next time you open Word or Photoshop, BeccaGrovesFont will be on your list.