Everyone's making pretzel bath bombs these days - but have you noticed? Most of them don't even have the holes. It's just a pretzel impression on a solid slab. Go check other shops - seriously, no holes! I'm floored!!
That's where I wanted to be different. I didn't just want to copy what's out there, so I went big. Like really big. Bigger than the "giant" pretzels I've seen elsewhere. My only limit was how large a cast my vacuum-form machine could handle. Even with that restriction, I'm pretty sure I've made the biggest pretzel bath bomb out there without crossing into gag-gift territory.
Funny thing - I realised I'd been looking at pretzels my whole life without ever knowing how they actually folded. I had to pull up reference photos just to get the shape right. The real challenge, though, was lining up the back half of the mold with the front. I've made plenty of two-part molds before, but never one with so many unevenly placed holes, and it ate up nearly two-thirds of my total build time. Once I finally nailed that alignment, though, everything clicked into place - and my first proof absolutely blew me away.
Next came the fun part - colors and scents. I didn't want this to be just another mold reused for endless scents; it had to stand on its own. So I went all in with a proper scent blend (if you know me, you'd know I love my solo scents). Florals are always crowd-pleasers, so I layered geranium, ylang-ylang, with just a touch of lavender (all essential oil of course). Geranium and ylang-ylang sit in that sweet, almost candy-like territory, but lavender keeps it grounded, I find it's scent to be closer to fresh linen than sugar.
I quickly settled on the idea that the colors would have to reflect the scents. So naturally, lavender brings blue and purple to the table, geranium brings along pink, while ylang-ylang presents as yellow and orange. Instead of solid colour layers, (which I feel is the common default when it comes to making bath bombs with more than 1 colour) I sprinkled crushed up colour embeds into a white bath bomb base to create soft gradients.
After taking a moment to sit back and take in my handy work, it quickly struck me that the pretzel might feel too plain in the bath since the base is, afterall, mostly white. That's when it struck me! I remembered those pretzel holes that I struggled with for my dear life. I packed their edges with embeds, so when it fizzes you get not one, but three rainbow volcanoes erupting in the tub. One colour for each hole - Violet - Pink - Orange!
The result? My proudest bath bomb yet - a pretzel with real holes, a gigantic presence, unique colour palette, a bold floral blend, and bath art that's an absolute show stopper!
