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STAFF REVIEW: AT HOME LAVENDER SOAP MAKING

Feb 9, 2021
at home experiences , Staff Reviews
Kaia Greader-Palme

During lockdown, I have tried out many things to keep me busy: Fitness, baking banana bread, and of course a bit of online shopping! But there’s only so much banana bread you can make before you go crazy… so, when I discovered this lavender soap making kit, I was very excited to get stuck in and get creative!

The kit arrived in completely recyclable packaging, which was amazing to see! It also came with a selection of cute stickers that I would be able to use when packaging my finished soap bars.

Opening my lavender soap making kit, I saw that it contained all the ingredients I needed to make my very own lavender and organic cocoa butter soap bars. This included a list of instructions, glycerine SLS free soap base, lavender fragrance oil, dried lavender petals, organic cocoa butter, purple colouring and a disposable loaf mould.

To carry out this at-home experience, I needed a large microwavable bowl, a spoon and a large straight-edge knife.

To begin, I melted down my soap base in the microwave for 5 minutes until it had become smooth with no lumps, stirring half-way through to make sure it melted evenly. Next, I added in the lavender petals and lavender fragrance oil that comes in an adorable mini pipet bottle.

I love the scent of lavender, so decided to add the whole bag of petals and the whole bottle of fragrance. You can add as much or as little as you want according to your own preference!

At this point, I would have added the purple colouring if I wanted my soap to have a solid colour. However, I thought a marbling effect would look cool, so I came back to this step later instead. Next, I added the organic cocoa butter to the warmed soap base mixture, and mixed until this was all combined.

The lavender and cocoa butter smell filled the room, and smelled good enough to eat. (Unfortunately, it is not edible!)

Next, I poured the soap mixture into the disposable loaf mould. I had to do this fairly quickly, before the soap began to harden. Once in the mould, I added a few drops of the purple colouring and used the end of a spoon to slowly mix the coloured drops in a marbled effect. This was very satisfying to do, but was slightly tricky as the soap had already begun to form a hardened layer on top.

After leaving the soap to cool for 2 hours, I carefully de-moulded the loaf and began cutting it into 8 individual bars of soap. At this point, I realised I hadn’t mixed in the colouring completely as half of my soap bar was colourless, but this just meant I had 2 different types of soap which wasn’t all bad!

I would definitely be inclined to add more colouring if I were to do this again, as the one half of the soap that did show the purple marbling effect looked lovely. I wrapped up my soap bars in some cling film, and decorated them with the stickers included in the kit. You could gift some soap to your friends and family, or keep them for yourself…

Finally, it was time to test out my soap! It felt very moisturising, and left my hands smelling amazing. This was a unique and fun thing to do at home during lockdown, and the best part is I definitely have enough soap to keep me going for the next few months.