I had a little fun this week making up some Gnome, Santa, Bear and Snowman mugs into gifts! Dollar Tree find again that turned out so fun. Each mug comes with 13 ounces of bath bomb/bubble frosting in them. A very easy to make Christmas gift.
Retail price is $10 to $12 but I went $6 on wholesale pricing. My cost to make was under $2. I really like when I can go higher than the 2 times cost for wholesale and 4 times cost for retail. I prefer to base my price on the looks, quality of the packaging and ingredients of the item.
In this instance the mug is ceramic. Done in a nice glaze and dishwasher safe. Using ceramic in the bath raised the question if customers would break the mug. I am putting a few warnings on the gift tag about that very thing. Hoping that will be enough for customer safety. I do have a good liability policy but would sure hope customers will realize that the mugs are breakable.
If the customers uses the product properly I cannot see them breaking the mug. The bath bomb mix was made with no binder. Still a bit of a wet mix so I packed it loosely. Should come out of the mug easily. Overall, I think the customer can dump out the inside mix. The bubble frosting should be used under the running hot water as the tub fills. It creates lots of bubbles.
Making these was a very easy project. I started with a white uncolored batch of Rock Hard bath bombs. I whipped them up in the mixer so was easy on my hands. You can hand mix the bomb mix and it will turn out well.
I did not put the binder in the recipe. The mix was still quite wet so I loosely packed it in the mug. I filled the mug to the top loosely. Pressed down gently to put the mix under the rim. I use that rim to stick the frosting to.
I poked two fingers into the mix. This allowed me to put in an embed or in my case, a bit of Red #40 lake. If someone splits this bath bomb between a couple baths, that way the interior mix gives red bath water. At 13 ounces two baths would work well.
For the Santas I was using the mix in a ceramic mug so did not use binder. I wanted the bath bomb mix loosely pressed into the mold but not tight. If there was any expansion to the bath bomb mix it could crack the mug. The bomb will also geyser out of the mug better if it is not pressed in tight.
Bubble Frosting
I put a dab of frosting in the middle of the top bath bomb mix. This dab helps to keep the height on the frosting swirl. I used a 1M piping tip for the red frosting. Red #40 exactly matched the red on the top of the mugs. I did use quite a bit of the Red #40. The red was nice and dense and such a great match.
Pipe the top of the mug making sure to pipe the frosting onto the rim of the mug. This will help the top frosting adhere well.
I topped the hat with a white bubble frosting ball. Piped a white flower and added a contrasting center. These were so fun to make and so fast.
There is a gift tag template available with 11 different designs. They match these mugs and other Christmas goodies we make at this time of year.
You can find the template at this link: https://www.bathdivas.com/product-page/christmas-gift-tags-11-templates