This post is part of my Christmas planning in July series.
I really do love making my own handmade gifts for Christmas. This year I had it in my head that I would like to make soap. Something along the lines of my favourite soap from Est a gorgeous little shop in Auburn. You can also buy it from their online shop here.
I looked online for tutorials to make soap and while completely gorgeous it seemed to take a lot of time and skill! Something I just didn’t think I could take on this year. So I came up with an easy short cut to make my own soap balls.
Soap balls – easy short cut DIY
Ingredients:
- 5 x 80 grams goat’s milk soap – I used this baby soap from ecostore.
- water
- Essential oil blend – I used the harmony blend from Jurilique.
- 1/2 metre hessian
- 2.25m ribbon
Method:
1. Finely grate the soap. I used my food processor to do this. If you use your food processor my tips for cleaning it up are to give it a good wash with water asap, then use a combo of water, lemon and vinegar. Pulse the liquid combo in the food processor and let it sit for 5 – 10 minutes before rinsing and washing out further.
2. Add the soap to a heatproof dish. This will go over a saucepan of water. You will need to add 1 part water to two parts soap. I had 382 grams grated soap and 191 grams water.
3. Once water has boiled, reduce the heat to low and heat the soap until it makes a paste.
4. Add 15 – 18 drops of essential oil blend and mix into the soap paste. Mix the paste into the soap to disperse the scent evenly.
5. You could make the soap balls any size. I decided to go for a smaller size and make more soap balls. I used a little scoop so I could make the balls relatively even in size. Roll the paste into a firm ball.
6. Place the soap balls onto a lined tray for them to harden. This mixture made 24 small soap balls.
7. Once they have hardened you can then package them for giving.
8. Cut the hessian to size, depending on how many soap balls you are packaging. I made packs of 6 soap balls.
9. Cut ribbon to be twice the width of the hessian square to use to tie up the hessian.
10. Pull up the four corners of the hessian.
11. Then pinch up the remaining hessian.
12. Then tie the ribbon in a bow and your gift is ready for giving.
The soap balls smell beautiful and the goat’s milk soap is very gentle on the skin.
What do you plan to make for gifts this Christmas? Have you made a start yet?