Everyone knows we are a “make it yourself” type of family. I try to do everything I can on my own, at least one time. A past few weeks ago we thought it would be fun to try our hand at making soap. We didn’t do it the traditional way with the Lye, we found something on Pinterest (original link here )that I thought would be easy enough and the kids may enjoy doing.
This particular method that I saw involved using ingredients that we have in the house already.
simple stuff we had around the house and we are making soap!
We used Tea tree oil and Patchouli for one of our soap smells and Dr Balmers Peppermint soap for the other soap. A bit of food colouring and some cookie cutter shapes and we were on our way.
The first step to making this soap is to use a bar of Ivory Soap. You must put it in the Microwave and heat it – that is the most fun part about all of this. Watching the bar of soap expand and grow to a huge cloud puff! totally awesome!
a two minute trip in the Microwave and your Ivory soap transforms into a cloud
After the poufy soap cloud cooled down a bit (it was a little hot straight out of the microwave) I Kneaded the mass and let the kids break it up. It crumbled, not at all what I was expecting. There was a big mess of soap crumbles all over the table.
I put a mixture of tea tree oil and about 10 drops of food colouring into a bowl and tried to mix it up while adding a bit of water. I added the soap crumbles to it and mixed it as best as I could. It was supposed to be mold-able. I was hoping to roll it out with my rolling pin and then make cut outs. That was not the case. This was a messy mixture. My hands were covered with soapy “dough” - if you could call it that.
i mixed the soap into small batches and added more and more soap to the mixture
The best way to tackle this mass was to “smoosh” it. I mixed it as much as I could and pushed it on to my table. I placed a cookie cutter on to it and slowly started to pull away the soap mush. It was delicate to work with but I was able to make a few shapes. I set them aside on a plate and let them dry.
a simple cookie cutter shape is best. we used a star and a snow flake shape. The corners of the star were a little tricky to work with.
After all is said and done I enjoyed the idea of making this soap, even though it was quite messy. A few bonuses are my table has never been cleaner and I only need to add one cookie cutter to my dish water and all my dishes will be clean. I might not be able to smell properly for a week but it won’t be as bad as the thought of everything I microwave tasting like soap. It wasn’t as bad as I thought – I put a bowl of water in the microwave and nuked it a few times to get the smell out. I decided to microwave curry that night and the smell is now gone.
The Children lost interest in the craft a bit quickly though. My 2 and a half year old really loved breaking the soap fluff apart. It was fun until she sneezed and a bunch of white powder went flying all over the table. My 5 and a half year old thought it was pretty cool until it started getting really messy. We all agreed that we didn’t like washing our hands for 10 minutes after the craft. They still feel soapy. I will still try it again and experiment with different scents and shapes, but I will wait till the kids are a bit older and we will do it outside. The smell is a bit overwhelming.
quite a bit messy
the finished product! I let them dry for a few days before I used them. They smell great! This is what I got from 2 bars of soap
Comments on: "Pinterest point of Interest – This Week- Soap Making" (2)
Wow. So impressive!
hahaaa! thanks
funny how these things sometimes turn out to be more of a “mommy does”