Making Soap

Hannah had a friend spend the night last weekend and asked if we could make some soap. She had been begging to make soap for the last few months and I had kept putting her off. So this time, I said yes. The main reason I wasn't enthusiastic about making the soap was that it required bringing all the supplies up from the basement and having to deal with it all for a few days.

We set up a plastic table in the kitchen for overflow work space. Plus, I didn't want to do some of the steps on my nice granite counters.

The girls first decided that they wanted to make some embedded soap. Hannah had collected some small toys to put inside the bars of soap.


We started with some clear glycerin soap. The glycerin is pretty pricey, so I recommend purchasing it with a 40% or 50% off coupon at Michaels.

We sliced pieces of the glycerin and put them into a glass Pyrex bowl. I melt it in 1 minute intervals, stirring with a plastic spoon after each minute. When the soap was about half way melted, I added the scent. The girls chose strawberry. I didn't add the color until it was mostly melted.

For the embedded soaps, the girls put little toys in each of the molds, then we (I) poured the melted glycerin over the toys.

They didn't take too long to cool and harden.

Here are the finished embedded soaps.

After we had made the strawberry, purple embedded soaps, the girls wanted to make a pretty loaf soap.
We (again, I) used a vegetable peeler and shaved some white soap. Here's a picture of what I used.

It comes in blocks.

Here are some of the shavings. It kind of looks like white chocolate shavings, doesn't it?

The girls chose pink, bubble gum scented glycerin for the rest of the soap. Here they are stirring the melted soap.

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We (and this time I really do mean we) we dropped the white soap shavings into the mold. This mold belongs to a friend, but I've seen people (websites) use the Pampered Chef tube bread molds before. Then we poured the liquid glycerin over it. Then let it cool and hardened over night. 



Here is the finished loaf of soap.

And here is a slice of it.

Then the girls used some of the leftover pieces and made some 2 tone green soaps. Hannah calls it her "Wicked" soap in honor of her favorite Broadway musical.

Here are all of Hannah's friend's soaps. 

And her are all of Hannah's soaps.

I put shrink wrap around all of the pieces of soap to make them look more professional. Though I am not very good with that, so there's no mistaking that they were homemade! 

Later, after Hannah's friend went home, James asked if he could make some soap. The girls had just taken all of the supplies downstairs, but they hadn't put them back in the back storage room yet, so I told James that he could make some too.

James shaved his own white soap.

And he sliced his own soap.

His was tangerine scented orange soap.

So there you have, some old fashioned clean fun over the weekend!