Simple Decorative Soaps
Perfumed decorative soaps make amazing additions to your bathroom. Aside from making your bathroom smell good, you can collect them in different shapes and colors to serve as quirky decorations. Moreover, scented decorative soaps can serve as stunning personalized gifts. They are not meant to be used as regular soaps, so you can always stick to basic handmade soap formulations.
Create perfumed decorative soaps to brighten your bathrooms or to sell as craft products. Here are ways to make personalized decorative soaps that you’ll be proud to display.
First, you can buy a pre-made soap base. Add fragrance, color (cosmetic-grade dyes produce the most vivid colors, but you can also use cheap food dyes), and touches of intricate decorative items, and voila!
Second, you can opt to create your decorative soap from scratch. This is a very tedious process. This article explains how: Making Soap from Scratch.
Third, turn a plain glycerin soap brick into a bunch of decorative soap giveaways, gifts, or selling items. Buy glycerin soap bricks from grocery, craft stores, or health-food shops. A glycerin soap bar is either tan or transparent. Melt the glycerin bricks over a double boiler. You can cut them up and place them in microwaveable ceramic or glass bowls; Melt the bricks inside a microwave oven. Once the glycerin soap base melts, add the colors, herbs, and essential oils (to impart fragrance).
Now, before you put the soap mixture in the mold, include the leaves, shells, beads, or any tiny decorative items into the melted mixture first. Some exciting ideas for decorative inclusions in the soap mix are pearls, jewels, charms, silk or dried flowers, confetti, glitter, and coffee beans. You can also introduce dried herbs like lavender, clove, lemongrass, chamomile, and rosemary.
Take note that these small decorative pieces are ideal only for soap bars. Structural and exquisitely shaped soaps can be ruined by decorative inclusions. The essential oils that you can use in crafting your decorative soaps can be any of the following: sunflower oil, grape seed oil, jojoba, sweet almond oil, coconut oil, sesame oil, and olive oil. Essential oils must be used sparingly because they have very powerful scents. Set aside for an hour and wait for the soap to solidify.
