Making Gift Soaps

I’ve always liked the idea of making my own soap but the thought of using strong caustic chemicals in the process has put me off.  My friend Ann has tried it and thought it was great fun so perhaps I will try it one day.  But I have discovered that you can make fabulous hand-made gift soaps without the hassle of starting from scratch – and it is really quick, easy and fun.

All you need is:

• some Melt & Pour Soap base
• Essential oils or fragrance oil(s) of your choice
• Colourant (if desired)
• Moulds of your choice (this could be a simple as a cardboard milk container or purchased moulds)

These products are all easily available on-line.  I’ve used Go Native, Soapcraft and Candle Creations.

Melt & Pour Soap base comes in a whole range of different options: pure white glycerine soap, clear glycerine soap, goat’s milk and sometimes options like oatmeal.  You buy it in 1kg lots and then cut it into pieces and just melt it in the microwave or in a double boiler.  Wrap finished soaps in cling film to prevent sweating.

Essential or Fragrance Oils – you only need a few drops and there are so many different oils to choose from.  You can stick with old familiar favourites like rose or lavender, or make up more exotic blends of your choice (sometimes you can buy ready-made blends).  Essential oils are natural oils extracted from plants and have all sorts of beneficial properties but can be expensive and may have a short lifespan.  Fragrance oils are synthetic oils that are often cheaper and last longer.

Colourants – there are a whole range of different dyes available in seemingly every colour under the sun.  These can be in powder or liquid form – I find liquid easier to use.  Some are oil-soluble and others are water-soluble, so make sure you get ones that say they are suitable for soap.  Generally you adjust the amount of colourant you use to create shades of colour e.g. a few drops for a pale pink and many for a deep red.  Mica powders can also be used and are best in clear soaps.

Moulds – here’s where the fun starts!  If you want to keep it really simple, you could start with a clean empty milk carton.  Open the top and pour the soap mix in.  Once it sets, peel the cardboard away and slice the soap into pieces.

I’m not one for keeping such fun things simple and have bought a whole heap of different soap moulds in a range of themes.  In general these are relatively inexpensive but it is better to get silicone moulds if you can rather than harder plastic ones as they are much easier to use.  The sites listed above all have moulds of different sorts or there are hundreds (thousands?) available on Etsy.

So here is the ‘recipe‘ – just so simple:

Cut melt and pour soap base into pieces.  Heat in microwave (30 seconds at a time) or in a double boiler until melted.  Add a few drops of fragrance.  Add colourant and stir to create your desired colour.  Pour into moulds* and allow to harden.

*If using a hard plastic mould, make sure you coat it liberally with Vaseline petroleum jelly before pouring in the soap otherwise it will be impossible to get out.  Even when you have done that, it can sometime still be difficult.  Silicon moulds don’t need any preparation.

There many ways of decorating your soaps.  If you have used colour in the mix, then you will likely not have to do anything else.  Use different amounts of colourant to get different shades of colours. You can experiment with just streaking the colour through rather than mixing it in completely to get some different effects.

If you have a suitable mould, you can use two colours of soap. In this example, I used white soap for the butterfly at the bottom of the mould, then added pink to the remainder and topped up the rest of the mould.  I didn’t wait for the white to harden but you might want to experiment with this.

You can use a metallic rub-on paint to just highlight parts of your soap.  I used gold here to accent the bee and honeycomb.

I experimented with using mica powder on the outside of the soap (rather than in it) with mixed results.  It looked absolutely amazing when first applied but it peeled off with the cling film.  I tried spraying it with hairspray as I often do to fix mica on my cards but without much success.  I also tried painting on a liquid varnish sealant but that didn’t work.  Perhaps a spray varnish might work.  It can be okay if you wipe the mica off the top surfaces and just leave the colour in the crevices.