Mother's Week: Homemade Soap

I love the idea of being able to make soap that smells and looks the way you want.  To be honest I have never made soap before.  I have always wanted to so I figured that Mother's Day gifts are a great way to start.  While researching I found quite a few ways to make soap, but if you know me, I take the easiest way.

What you will need:
Glycerin
Scented oil
Liquid food coloring
Microwave safe bowl
Mold (I bought one for $2 but you can use anything, old yogurt cups, milk carton, etc.)

I followed the directions on the back of the glycerin soap bag.  It was so simple!  I also used the directions found here on the Martha Stewart site.  Don't you just love Martha?!  I am always getting wonderful ideas from her.  I found my glycerin at Hobby Lobby, I had a 40% coupon so it ended up being really cheap.  They also had the mold and scented oil.

Here are a few things I learned about making soap:  My first batch I kept adding the food coloring.  A little goes a long way!  It ended up being a funny color.  I wanted the soap to be more translucent but it turned out more opaque than I wanted.

I added dried flowers to the soap.  It would have been better to have less food coloring so you could see the cute flowers better.  Also the glycerin hardens very quickly.  If you don't continuously stir it, it gets a hard layer on the top.  At first I tried to add the flower after I had poured it in the mold, this did not work well at all.  Next I tried putting the flowers in the mold before I poured in the glycerin.  This worked a lot better.  I used a toothpick to get the flowers where I wanted them.  I also added scented oil.  One of my favorite scents is almond so when I came across one that was honey almond, I couldn't resist.



There are so many different ways you could wrap this gift.  They would look adorable wrapped in a cellophane bag with some cute ribbon or you could make fabric sacks to put them in.

For my gifts I am going to make some dish towels to go with the soap.  Do you remember this reader's showoff post?  I love the cute fabric that Ruby used.  I am off to the fabric store, so I can start on the towels!  Have fun with the soap making!