Image provided by Mary

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at making my own wedding favors.  I stumbled onto two thing. 1: homemade soaps, 2: homemade bath salts.

I found some information from a few places and found that for soap making, there are 4 methods: Melt and pour-the easiest (but it’s compared to baking a cake using boxed ingredients versus cooking from scratch); cold process- mixing up your items from scratch, the lye, oils, ect; hot process- a similar variation of cold process; and rebatching- grinding up premade soap bars and adding in your own extra ingredients.   For the beginning of a new project I’d like to start with something a bit simpler, so I went with the melt and pour bases.   I found an inexpensive source for soap making supplies that had beginner kits (kits with small quantities of multiple items).  Within a week I received the supplies. I got a few different types of soap.  I got a few different oils for scent, and a few other items I thought might be a good idea.  I’ve always loved strawberry scented things, so I got some strawberry oil, seeds, and some pink soap dye to play with.

So on the next Friday, I was off work, thanks to pulling a 22 hour shift the night before. I started with making the strawberry soap.

First: I cut up a pound of Shea butter soap.  (A pound is a bit less than I thought it would be.  The mold I purchased holds exactly 2 pounds of soap and makes 8 total bars.  For my first batch I improvised with a Ziploc container lined with wax paper)

Second: I heated up my solid aluminum double boiler to melt the soap.  After the soap melted, I put a few drops of the strawberry oil in, I played with the amount until the smell was just right.  Then I used the soap dye and added it until the soap was a desirable color.  I also used strawberry seeds to add exfoliants to the soap.  Lesson learned: strawberry seeds float; they all ended up on what was to be the bottom of my soap.

Next I decided to make some lemony soap.  I used the goats milk soap and the honey soap.  Honey soap is a clear base, and goats milk is a solid base.  I melted the honey soap and used one scent on it – listea cubea. After the first layer had formed a shell on top, I melted down the milk soap and mixed a little yellow food color and verbena scent.  I am much more pleased with this attempt.

When looking online for small gifts I can use as favors at the wedding I found homemade bath salts…  To make them it’s surprisingly easy.  Pour in the salt of your choice- Epsom salt is the suggested.  Then you mix in your color- just 2-3 drops of food coloring.  Then mix in 2 tablespoons baking soda and the scent of your choice.  that’s it.  Simple.

I also accidentally found a body scrub that is only slightly more complicated.  It takes a whole 15 minutes to make a batch.  3 table spoons of: white sugar, turbinado sugar, 1 table spoon of glycerin, baking soda, and salt of your choice.  Then you add olive or almond oil to it until it’s about the consistency of a slushy. Last you add your scent, about 1-2 ml works perfect.  That’s it, and it works great!