Rounding the corner to Valentine’s Day, whether you’re feeling the stress of a new semester or tax season or you are in desperate need for an affordable, but thoughtful gift for a lover or that gaggle of gal pals, this peppermint soak is easy and cheap!

1. Gather Your Ingredients

First, there’s only a few ingredients absolutely required and some are optional. Most of these you can find at a Wal-mart or Target, but if you can’t find what you need there, a craft store will fill in the rest.

The only required ingredients are Epsom Salts, Baking Soda, and essential oils (which I recommend Peppermint both for its relaxing scent, but for it’s antibacterial and antifungal properties which makes it especially nice for feet, but you can use whatever scent you’d like).

Additionally, add in peppermint tea for a more rich appearance and additional strength in the soak. For visual appeal, I topped my my jarred soak with a fresh peppermint sprig, but that’s entirely optional.

For decorating, gifting, and storing your soak; you’ll need a container at minimum. You may also want some ribbon or twine with or without a label to mark what it is and dress it up a little.

2. Mix Your Base

Mix up the Epsom Salts and the Baking Soda, using three parts salts to each part of Baking Soda. Combine these two ingredients well before adding in the other elements to ensure that you’ve gotten them well-mixed and broken any chunks of Baking Soda.

Once those are mixed, add in your peppermint tea leaves (which should be pure, 100% peppermint dried) and your oils. I prefer a stronger scent so that I can experience still even if my feet are way down below me, so I use around 10-12 drops of peppermint and 4-6 drops of a complimenting smell (Eucalyptus, Lemon, or Lavender are options).

Mix well to combine all the oils into the soak, and then you’re ready to package it!

3. Package It Up

Spoon the mixture into a jar or bucket. If you’re gifting, try to find a cuter container, otherwise any airtight container will keep the soak. I found the bottles I used at Michael's, but for more unique options, explore your local thrift store for a lost gem.

4. Decorate

If you’re gifting, this is the time to class up your handmade gift. Use whatever you’d like, but twine and a wooden label fit well with the simplicity of the soak!

For my wooden labels, I tried two approaches. One, I wrote directly onto the wood and left it bare. The other I used Mod Podge to seal in the paper label to the charm and then painted the edges and back in a soft white.

Experiment, like I did, to find the look you like best to decorate the bottles. The best part is, no matter what you end up doing, it will look great and perfectly imperfect- which is exactly the charm of handmade gifts.

Once it’s been decorated, either use it yourself or gift it. Make sure that they will be familiar with a foot soak, or tell them how to use (which is simple).

Fill a tub or large bucket with hot water (as hot as you’d like) and add ½ cup or ¾ cup of the soak. Then, sit your feet in the water for 15-20 minutes or until the water goes cold. Also, you should be sure that you either warn the recipient or know beforehand if they have any allergies that could be triggered by the oils you use. It is not relaxing to have an allergy flare up when you want to soak your feet.