Learn how to make soap with just three ingredients! Personalize your homemade soap with the scents and colors of your choice.
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I have been wanting to learn how to make soap for years. By making soap, I mean buying lye and letting it sit and “cure” for days. But lye just scares me so I never attempted making soap from “scratch.” I’m super uber picky about the soap we use and I pay way more than I should for really nice soap. When we ran out of soap a few weeks ago and my normal brand was sold out, I saw an opportunity to figure out how to make soap without making soap.
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Soap Making Supplies:
It turns out that you can buy soap, melt it down and “make” soap. This is not really making soap. It’s more like re-configuring it and it is super fun and easy. This is a fantastic project for kids.
Basically you need white or clear soap to melt down, essential oils for scent and soap colorants to make it pretty. The soap I used was white and would have been fine without color, but I was going for an Easter basket treat. Just don’t use food coloring. You definitely need special soap colorant (but it’s cheap!).
Soap Base:
You need to buy a special soap base to be able to melt the soap down and remold it. This is basically a craft supply. It is a bit sticky for some reason. I opted for the goats’ milk soap. I used about half the chunk to make one tray of bunny soaps.
Fragrance:
For the scents, I used essential oils. I’m having way too much DIYing with my oils. I used:
- Peppermint and Rosemary oils for the green bunnies,
- A citrus blend for the orange bunnies
- Lavender oil for the purple bunnies.
Soap Mold:
The soap needs a mold and there are lots of fun options for making soap. I chose to use my favorite Wilton silicone bunny pan. The same one I use to make homemade gummy candy. It’s so versatile and I love it for Easter.
But I’ve also used Star Wars JELL-O molds to make Star Wars soaps, too. As long as you find a way to get the soap out of the mold, you can pretty much use it.
How to Make Soap
Cut off the desired amount of soap from the big chunk o’ soap. I did three different batches, which required washing everything in between batches to get rid of the fragrance from the previous batch. Melt the soap according to the directions on the package. I melted mine in a small pot on the stove.
The soap cools and sets quickly. Melt the soap on the stove and then turn the burner to very low. Add the color and oils once it’s melted. Pour the melted soap into a liquid measuring cup and then quickly pour it into your molds.
Move fast! If you aren’t fast enough, just put it back in the pan and remelt it. This is a very forgiving DIY project.
For the scents, I used 1 drop of peppermint oil and 4 drops of rosemary in about 1/4 of the soap block. I used a good 6 drops of citrus blend and just 1 drop of lavender because it’s super strong.
Put the soap coloring in until it reaches the hue you like.
The soap takes about 20-40 minutes to set up. It popped right out of the molds, which I apparently used for something chocolate last because my lavender bunnies have a light cocoa dusting.
Aren’t they adorable?! I wish you could smell them. Yum!
I wrapped my bunnies up two at a time into clear cellophane bags and closed them up with some glitter tape.
And they totally fit in plastic Easter eggs if you want a non-candy idea for an egg hunt.