Soap!

I made more general all over body shower soaps today, nothing fancy, and thought I'd put a how-to up in case anyone was interested. I ramble, so don't say I didn't warn you!

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You will need:

~A general soap base, like olive oil or glycerin. I got mine at Michael's, in 2lb blocks.

~ Any herbs you like or those you know help the condition of your skin.

~ Old fashioned oats

~ Honey

~ Soap molds

~ An essential oil scent you love (optional)

~ A blender, or something to grind up the herbs and oats

~ A double broiler or a makeshift one

To make teh suds of awesome:

First, I choose what herbs I want use. For a general soap in my home I use rosemary, chamomile, rose petals, and calendula. The rosemary and calendula acts as an antiseptic which is great for acne problems, as is chamomile.

Rose petals help to soften the skin, plus they just make me happy so I threw them in there :) I don't really measure out my herbs, I just threw a good portion of each in my blender.

Then I put old fashioned oats in with the herbs. Again, I really don't measure. Any extras I have after making the soaps I just bottle up and save until next time. Oatmeal is wonderful for sensitive skin and helps to soothe any itchy dryness. Plus when ground up it works well in the soap as an exfoliate.

Then I put my blender on liquefy, or high, until everything turns into almost a powder and I set the herb mixture aside.

Alright, the soap base. For now I use a general glycerin block because A) It's cheap and B) It's quick to re-solidify. You could add other things to your base such as an assortment of butters (shea, mango, almond, coco, etc) or oils (olive, coconut, almond, etc).

For now though I'm using just glycerin mainly because of reason A (you could make your own glycerin soap base using lye, but it creates toxic fumes and such things that I don't want to deal with so I just go with the already made ones, thanks.).

Anyway. I took a pot and boiled some water. I put six small bars of glycerin in a smaller "pot" (it makes about three bars of soap, at least for me), and set it in the larger pot, heating up the glycerin until it all melted.

I added as much of the herb mixture as I saw fit, and stirred. I then added a few teaspoons of honey because it's wonderful wonderful stuff for your skin. Mix and turn down the heat and allow the herbs to steep in the liquid for a bit.

Lastly I put a few drops of essential oil in my soap, just for scent. I usually use sandalwood because it's the sexiest scent EVER in my opinion and I just love it. GAH.

Then the soap was poured in the molds and put in the fridge to cool for 45 minutes.

I press the soaps gently out of the molds, and ta-da! Simple herbal soap.

My favorite staple place for herbs is Mountain Rose Herbs where I buy my herbs in bulk every year and you can also get butters and oils here as well. It's my once a year treat to myself and I can't say enough good things about this place.

Enjoy!

~*K*~