Do you need a female gift, but are very short on cash? Are you making gifts from your kitchen and garden this year? Do you need a quick to make gift? This one meets this criteria, and is lovely to receive!
For my bath tea, I calculated my costs -- about 25-26 cents per bath tea bag, including decorative envelope, for presentation. If I made a gift or stocking stuffer of 2 bath tea bags, my cost would be about 50 cents.
I usually give my cost breakdown at the bottom of a post. But as this gift idea is billed as a low-cost one, I wanted to give cost breakdown, upfront.
My cost breakdown:
- flower petals and buds -- free from garden
- oats -- about 2/3 of a cent per tablespoon, purchased at 55 cents per pound, so under 3 cents per quarter cup (lavender bath tea), and 2 cents per 3 tablespoons (peach-rose bath tea)
- essential oils -- about 40-50 drops is .067 ounces of essential oil. My lavender oil, 4 ounces for about $14 on Amazon, so my cost on the lavender oil was about 23 cents, enough for 2 bath tea bags
- or, rose and peach soap-making fragrance oils, purchased w/ coupons (50 and 40% off coupons, respectively, for Michael's and Hobby Lobby), $2.50 for .5 oz of rose fragrance, and $2.40 for 1 oz. peach fragrance, using a combined amount of 40-50 drops, or .067 ounces, for a cost of about 25 cents of soap fragrance oil, if mixed 50/50 peach and rose.
- paper tea bag, using coffee filters, purchased at Dollar Tree, 150 filters for $1, 1 filter needed for each bath tea bag, at a cost of 2/3 of a cent each
- tea-stained paper envelopes and ribbon for presentation, about 5-6 cents each envelope/ribbon
Bath tea is a blend of aromatics and skin soothers, neatly packaged in a little bag, to infuse your bath water for a heavenly soak. You drop the entire bag into the water as the tub fills up, and allow to steep throughout your soaking. The bag itself keeps the contents from making a huge mess in your tub.
what you'll need:
- disposable, large empty tea bags (to hold 1/4 cup of loose bath tea)
- dried flower petals/buds or herbs, from your garden, or leftover from a bouquet of flowers
- essential oils
- regular, uncooked oats
- a spice mill, blender, or coffee grinder to grind the oats, flowers/herbs
Gather your ingredients, make or obtain your tea bags.
You can purchase large tea bag empties, from a tea shop or a retailer like Amazon, such as Finum 100-ct large tea bags, for about $6 (6 cents each bag, a decent price if you want to make large quantities of bath tea as wedding shower favors).
Or, you can make your own tea bags out of paper, basket-style coffee filters. I use filters from Dollar Tree (150 filters for $1). Each filter makes one bag.
To make a tea bag from a coffee filter:
Flatten out the filter, and press with an iron on the lowest setting. It won't iron completely flat, but will flatten enough to make cutting and sewing easier, as well as give a better presentation.
Fold the filter in half. Use a ruler to mark a 3 1/2 inch wide section of the folded filter. 3 inches for the pocket of the filter, with 1/4-inch seams down each side.
Cut out the 3 1/2-inch wide section of the filter.
Sew up the sides, using 1/4-inch seam allowances, but leave the slightly curved opening un-sewn. Clip the threads. You now have a bag to fill with your bath tea!
Lavender Oatmeal Bath Tea
To make lavender and oat bath tea (recipe taken from the
Aura Cacia pure essential oil's website ):
for 2 bags of tea --
- put 1/4 cup of regular oats into a coffee grinder or blender. Process until you have a coarse meal. Pour into a glass bowl.
- measure and add to the oats, 1/4 cup of lavender buds, mix together with your fingers
- add about 40-48 drops of lavender essential oil to the oats/lavender buds, and stir together.
- divide between 2 bags, and staple/seal closed (put 3 staples across the top of each bag, I know the photo at the top of page only shows 1 staple per bag, but 3 will prevent bath tea from leaking into the bath tub)
- store the bath tea bags in an airtight container or ziploc bags until use
Rose Petal and Peach Bath Tea
(As rose petal tea is heavier on the rose petals than the oats, you may find you can use less essential or fragrance oils. A lot will depend on how fragrant your petals are, naturally. Just an FYI.)
To make a soothing rose petal bath tea:
for 2 bags of tea --
- put about 3 tablespoons of oats into a coffee grinder and grind to a coarse meal
- in the coffee grinder, process dried rose petals, in 1/2 cup increments, until you have about 1/2 cup of packed, chopped rose petals.
- mix the oats and rose petals in a glass bowl
- add 35-45 drops of rose oil, essential or soap-making fragrance oil, or blend of peach and rose fragrance oils. ( You can experiment with other fragrances, here. I used a blend of peach and rose soap-making fragrance, as that's what I had.)
- divide between 2 bags, and staple closed
- store the bath tea in an airtight container or ziploc bags until use.
Include a tag with instructions for use:
To use, place one bath tea bag into the bathtub, as it fills with hot water. Allow to steep for the duration of your bath.
It's a good idea to try one of sachets, before filling all of them. You can keep your bath tea mixture in an airtight container, loose, until you are certain of the strength of fragrance you want. An easy "tea bag" for testing the mixture is simply one coffee filter, with mixture in center of flat filter, then sides pulled up together, and held closed with a rubber band.
Decorative packaging, the paper envelopes, next week. . .
