What’s the difference between bubbles, froth, foam, and fizz? Mainly, size. Fizz is the fine effervescence you get from seltzers and soda pop while bubbles are the larger kind that kids blow with bubble makers. Froth and foam are in the middle and have similar consistencies.
But froth is mostly used to describe beer while foam is more often mentioned when you’re talking about soap suds. DIY bath fizzies must contain an acid – usually citric or succinic – and a base in the form of bicarbonate (baking soda). So let’s check out some fizzy recipes.
1. Burst of Sunshine DIY Bath Fizzies
The basics of bath fizzies are simple – an alkali, an acid, and an oil. You can use plain fragrance oil, but if you’re adding essential oils, you need a lighter carrier oil to dilute it. DIY bath fizzies may also have starch to bulk them up. For this recipe, the ingredients are citric acid, baking soda, and corn starch. Coconut oil is the carrier and grapefruit is the essential oil.
2. Shirley’s Homemade Bath Fizzies
You can’t make DIY bath fizzies without causing a fizz. Any time a liquid touches the citric-acid-baking-soda mix, it will trigger a reaction. But if too much of it reacts, there’ll be nothing left for the bathtub and your fizzies will be flat. So add your liquids a little at a time and whisk vigorously to minimize the loss of fizz. You can add Epsom salt to soothe sore joints.
3. DIY Bramble Berry Bath Fizzies + Bombs
The main difference between bath bombs and bath fizzies is their shape. Bombs are generally round while fizzies don’t have to be. Also, you can make your fizzies with or without soothing salts since the focus is on the fizz. But you don’t have to decide – this video shows you how to make both! The bomb has cleansing clay while the fizzy has witch hazel and coco-citrus oil.
4. Savings Lifestyle DIY Fizzy Bath Powder
Baking soda cleans and exfoliates your dead cells, relieving itches and softening your skin. And that tickling fizz is nice too. So since you’re focused on frothy healing, you don’t need to force your DIY bath fizzies into a mold. You can just store the powder in a jar and scoop it straight into the tub. This fizzy powder has Epsom salt and a lemon-lavender blend of oils.
5. DIY Giant Bath Fizzies
DIY bath fizzies have to be stored in air-tight containers. Or you can wrap them in saran wrap or plastic. Reason being all air has unseen moisture in it. And that moisture can finish the fizz before you get to use your bath froth. As you can see, the result of this recipe is incredibly fizzy. So be extra careful not to waste any of that effervescence during storage.
6. Crissy’s Lemon DIY Bath Fizzies
If you’re nuts about Meyer lemons (and everyone that tries one is!), use their juice in place of citric acid for Crissy’s DIY bath fizzies. You can layer the recipe with roasted lemon rind floaties and lemon essential oil. This recipe uses both Meyer lemon rind and citric acid so you won’t use the actual juice. Instead, use spritzes of witch hazel and an ice cube tray mold.
7. Dean’s Repurposed DIY Fizzy Bath Powder
This bath fizzy recipe is fairly complex. It has polysorbate to emulsify the oil and water. It also has Kaolin clay to draw out toxins and Epsom salt for aching muscles. It foams as well as fizzes, so there’s a surfactant in there – SLSA. And the DIY bath fizzies uses sweet almond as a carrier oil. It’s bulky enough to skip the starch. Add a dash of essential oil for aromatics.
8. DIY Heart-Shaped Bath Fizzies
Heart-shaped DIY bath fizzies are pretty popular on this list. But you can use any shape you like, from Halloween to Christmas themes. Try putting a little oil in the molds to help the fizzies pop out easier. As for ingredients, you want baking soda, citric acid, Epsom salt, and a suitable essential oil. You can use grapeseed oil as a carrier and glycerine as a binding agent.
9. Floating Fizzing DIY Bath Bombs
Some bath bombs sink to the bottom of the tub before setting off fizzy explosions. Others float on the surface, spinning like a top and sending colorfully fizzy swirls all around the bath. This recipe is the latter. It mixes citric acid, baking soda, Epsom salt, corn starch, a moisturizing carrier oil (rosehip, almond, olive, etc.), and a mood-matching essential oil.
10. DIY Sherbet Surprise Bath Fizzies
The trickiest part of making bath bombs 9and round bath fizzies is forming the shape without it crumbling. Try using a meat-baller or mini meat-baller. It looks like a pair of scissors with a bath bomb mold at the end. This recipe forms DIY bath fizzies in a meat-baller. The ingredients include shea butter, jojoba oil, arrowroot starch, and fragrance oil.
11. Fizz Factory DIY Bath Fizzies
Here’s the thing about DIY bath fizzy kits – your children will enjoy them even if they backfire. Because even if the balls crumble or refuse to fizz, the kids get to make a mess with water, oil, shapes, and colors. Watch Alyssa experiment with Fizzy Factory. But if you have a perfectionist, tantrum-adjacent child, help them get the balls right or it’ll suck for you both!
12. Sarah’s DIY Bath Fizzy Bombs
This mum’s DIY bath fizzies are scented with food oils. Particularly, orange and vanilla essentials. Fractionated coconut oil serves as a carrier and holds the bath fizzies together. Other than that, it’s the usual citric acid and baking soda with corn starch for bulk. Try the coconut oil in both solid and melted form – some people find solid oil easier to work with.
13. DIY Fizzy Bath Soak
What you want from DIY bath fizzies is that feeling of tiny bubbles playfully flicking your skin. So it’s understandable is you don’t want the fuss of forming and freezing your bath molds. In that case, just mix the ingredients carefully, dry them completely to remove any moisture. Then store it in powder form using a pretty air-tight jar or sealed plastic envelopes.
14. Handmade DIY Fizzing Bath Bombs
DIY bath fizzies need to be dry enough to prevent premature fizzling. This would leave them flat by the time they touch your bathwater. But they also need to be damp enough to retain their molded shape. One tip is to use witch hazel as your binding agent. It’s an astringent so it tightens your skin cells and makes you look younger, but it fizzes way less than water.
15. DIY Fizzing Bath Salts
Another trick in keeping your bath bombs from over-fizzing is to use a spray bottle. These spritzed droplets cause far less reaction than a tit dropper or teaspoon. Spray bottles are especially helpful if you’re storing the DIY bath fizzies in powdered form. You’ll need way less liquid so the spritzer will help you maintain the right amount of water or carrier oil.
16. DIY Mermaid Bath Fizzies
Essential oils are quite concentrated. That’s why they come in those tiny bottles. Also, some of these oils can burn through plastic, so if you’re making powdered DIY bath fizzies, store them in a glass jar. Or use a smaller plastic envelope with a one-bath portion so it won’t stay in the plastic long enough to break it open. The ‘mermaid’ here is the ocean-themed colors.
17. Zombie Dust DIY Bath Fizzies
Emulsifiers (like polysorbate) and surfactants (like Bubble Up soap) serve practical purposes in DIY bath fizzies. They break up the oils into tiny droplets. These mix more evenly into the bathwater instead of pooling on greasy blobs. These blobs will sometimes cling to the tub, leaving messy stains, so no blobs = easier clean-up! But emulsified fizzies do fizzle out faster.
18. Lavender-Peach DIY Bath Fizzies
The third reason for using polysorbate or other emulsifiers is to preserve your DIY bath fizzies, since mixing oil and water can sometimes form mold. Salt, emulsifiers, and surfactants (like SLSA or liquid soap) reduce that possibility by dispersing and diffusing oil droplets within the water. These fizzies are stacked and balled into pretty tricolor stripes.
19. DIY Bath Fizzy Alternative (aka DIY Shower Steamers)
Rubbing alcohol offers multiple advantages in DIY bath fizzies. One, it’s a safer binding liquid than water, so it triggers less loss of fizz. Two, it has antiseptic benefits. Three, it kills premature bubbles that might flatten the mixture. But you’ll need strong fragrance oils to counteract that ‘boozy’ smell. So if you can’t stand the scent, use witch hazel instead.
20. Muffin Mould DIY Bath Fizzies
Using solid soap dye or food dye is a clever way to reduce the amount of liquid in your DIY bath fizzies. But powdered dyes are often more concentrated so if you’re using colored powder, add a surfactant like Bubble Up, Castile soap, or liquid soap to make clean-up quicker. This recipe uses minimal food coloring and a muffin pan as a bath fizzy mold.
21. DIY Magic Fizzing Bath Powder
The simplest DIY bath fizzy recipes leave the oil out. This is fine for kids who just want to play in colorful water. And you can assemble the mixture in minutes as the kids jump into the bath. For this version, you only need food coloring, citric acid, baking soda, salt, and corn starch. Try soap coloring (or use very little food coloring) to reduce bathtub stains.
22. MakeUp Dummy’s DIY Foaming Bath Bombs
If you add bubble bath, liquid soap, or a surfactant (like lathanol) to your DIY bath fizzies, they’ll emit foamy bubbles when they hit the water. But you still need citric acid and baking soda to form that chemical fizz. Also, once you’ve added soap to the mix, it helps to mix in a moisturizing oil like Vitamin E and carrier oils like almond oil. They prevent over-dried skin.
23. Lush-Style Foot-Soak DIY Fizzy Bath Bomb
No list of bath products is complete without a Lush dupe (or five!) So here’s how you can recreate Lush DIY bath fizzies at home. The liquid binders used are coconut oil and witch hazel. This fizzy is intended for feet but you can use it in a normal bath too. Remember the fizzy basics – always put twice as much baking soda as citric acid, that ratio must be 2:1.
24. Bathtubber’s DIY Fizzy Bath Bomb Embeds
Colorful DIY bath fizzies are fun. And while striped molds and bottles look pretty in storage, embeds give you a far more dramatic effect in the bath. Basically, make a smaller bath fizzy in a different color and flavor. Hide it inside a bigger bath bomb for a surprise scent and color mid-fizz. The embeds here are placed off-center to trigger a spinning effect.
25. Dinosaur Egg DIY Bath Fizzies
How well do you know your coloring agents for DIY bath fizzies? You can use natural silicate mica, soap pigment oxides, insoluble lake powders, or water-soluble dyes. Soap pigments stain less. Lake powders offer even oil dispersion that ends up looking more vibrant. Use whatever is available and add polysorbate to ease your post-soak clean-up.
26. Easy Peazy Fizzy DIY Bath Bombs
The reason lake pigments work so well is their manufacturing process. They’re made by merging soluble hues in metallic salts, with the salts acting as binders. The salts act as a built-in emulsifier. So the resulting shade won’t dissolve but it will uniformly disperse within your bath oils and sugars. You may still need surfactants to stop the lakes from clinging to the tub.
27. Emelie’s Embed DIY Bath Fizzies
The shape, size, and color of DIY fizzy embeds are up to you. But if you leave a little gap in the middle, the bath bomb will fizz off-kilter, creating that pretty spin. Another tip is to match color with flavor. So you could mix peach essential oil into a peach-colored embed and lavender oil (and lavender Epsom salt) for the lavender-colored outer bath bomb shell.
28. Fizzy Floating DIY Bath Bombs
Pro-tip to prevent premature fizzing: don’t mix citric acid with baking soda then slowly add the liquids. Instead, add the liquid ingredients to the plain baking soda first, with or without your other dry ingredients. Mix these thoroughly then add the citric acid last. That way, there’s no ‘loose liquid’ to trigger a fizzing reaction once the citric acid gets into the bowl!
29. DIY Unicorn Bath Fizzy Powder
Most DIY bath fizzies use one part citric acid with two parts baking soda and one part starch. The starch can be corn flour, tapioca, natrasorb, or arrowroot. But if you don’t want starch (or Epsom salt) to bulk up your bath fizzy, (or if you’re making a highly concentrated embed to slip inside a larger bath fizzy) then you can use equal parts of citric acid and baking soda.
30. Vanilla Rose DIY Bath Fizzies
You know how you can use herbal teabags to flavor DIY bath fizzies? You can use them as your binding liquid too! Just make a concentrated tea by steeping the teabags in hot unsweetened water. Use that tea in place of distilled water or essential oil. You can also use herbal extracts (like vanilla, orange, rose, or coconut extract) in place of pricy essential oils.
31. Colourful Canola DIY Bath Fizzies
Another tip for making DIY bath fizzies – cream of tartar. Or lemon juice. Or succinic acid. These are all viable fizzing triggers if you can’t find citric acid where you live. As we said before, add the acid portion last after adding your other liquids to the rest of your dry ingredients. Adding the acid last means your bath fizzy is less likely to flatten before use.
32. Cream of Tartar DIY Bath Fizzies
If you’re using cream of tartar as the acid source for your DIY bath fizzies, it shouldn’t be the same amount as citric acid. The basic ratio of baking soda to tartar is 4:1. So 4 cups of baking soda would go with 1 cup cream of tartar or 2 cups citric acid. This is because tartar is two to three points below citric acid on the pH scale, so you have to balance out your proportions.
33. Courtney’s DIY Vanilla Bath Fizzies
Yes, vanilla exists as an essential oil. But it’s concentrated. And expensive! So if you have sensitive skin (or a sensitive pocket), you can try cheaper alternatives for your vanilla DIY bath fizzies. You could use whole vanilla beans, though these are pricy too. Or you could try vanilla extract or vanilla teabags, as we mentioned earlier. Slip in some sea salt as well.
What’s your favorite DIY bath fizzy? Show us how you make it in the comments!
