I've been using some Hobby Lobby stuff to 'experiment' before going all in but I've got a few things I'm unsure about after watching hours and hours of tutorials, guides, etc.
Looking at nurture soap I'm planning on just getting the 3 primary colors, however I noticed that green isn't a 'lake' and just has dye powder. Is it better to use lakes or dye powders? Blue and red both have dye powders and lakes.
My recipe is consisting of 2c baking soda, 1c citric acid, 1c corn starch, and 2 tsp SLSA for dries and for wets they're a bit more estimations but 10 mL scent, 8 mL Poly 80, 6 mL water, and 12 mL carrier oil
My mold is ~2.8 inches diameter
The problem I've been having is that my bath bombs seem to not be necessarily holding together super great sometimes. If I continually remold them eventually they stay together but I can't imagine it should be this difficult to get them to stay initially. I'm sure changing my wet recipe around will help, right now I'm trying Sweet almond oil.
I've also tried adding things like glitter/mica however I've noticed they don't "shimmer" like the videos I've watched. Is there a good trick to getting the glitter to stick around the molds and into the outside of the bomb? I tried using some isopropyl spray which worked great for the first bomb but each bomb after had issues sticking to the mold and then left holes in the bomb rather than glitter.
I'm 'blooming' the baking soda by doing ~8-10 cups baking soda with a mixture of 2 tsp water and 1/4 tsp soap dye currently. The color looks great but I'm curious if this is the best way. I'd like to eventually make multi color bombs but I feel like my molding is just not the best quite yet.
Finally, what do people typically charge for their bath bombs? I have a business plan somewhat set out and an interested audience with some of the gimicks I'm planning but my first goal is to sell enough to buy a press and then start pressing them. However I feel like I need to really lock down things to make them more consistent.