Sunny Soap!

Hi guys, I really hope that you're enjoying my blog much more at the moment. I've been trying in the past few months to upload more posts to do with special occasions and now I am doing a whole series of crafty half term kind of art projects to do when you're bored. If you like my posts at the moment you should keep coming back for more because I will try to upload more often for you guys now!

      Anyway, in this post I'll be talking to you about the handmade soaps I recently made and  a cool recycling project on what to do with the scraps. I used a soap making kit to make my soaps so you will probably need one of your own to make sure that the soaps you make are actually safe to use on the average human's skin. I got my kit for Christmas but I have seen it in shops so I know it costs around £25 so you'll probably want to ask for it for a birthday or Christmas (unless you save up) if you want to use it. To make 4 bars of soap, I melted a quarter of the given soap compound in a pan over a bowl of water on the stove. Once it was fully melted (using the stirring method) we added in 2-3 drops for each bar of soap (so you had to times that by 4 and add it into the mixture that would be shared between all four of them). Before it was poured into the molds, I put various seeds and petals into the bottom of the molds. We then poured a layer of the soap mixture into each one and then added more seeds. After that we filled each one up to nearly the top and left it o cool on the side for half an hour. When we came back from the cooling we covered it in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for an hour! Once it was fully hardened we popped them out of the molds. Your soaps (if you choose to make them) should look a little like these below.

They have different variations of marigold petals, poppy seeds, linseed and aniseed inside them along with a lemony scent. I love the overall look of them and I think they would make great gifts! I'm giving 3 of them as mothers day gifts for my mum (of course), my grandma and my Nanna. I hope they love them as much as I do. I'm keeping one for myself (the circle shaped one) because I really like the way they smell and look. These have a matching scent to the lip balm so I'll use them both on the same days! Since I'm giving most of them as gifts, I wrapped them and her's a picture below so take a little look for inspiration on how you may want to wrap your own.

I used the lemon patterned tissue paper again to wrap my Mum's and pink colored tissue paper to wrap my Nanna's and Grandma's. Mine is the one that is wrapped lie a bonbon in cling film. I'm only preserving it, I didn't want to waste paper. I then use lace ribbon for Mum's little package and a pink bird on for the other two. 

    I don't know whether you noticed the little bag or not but I filled it with little bits of the handmade soap that crumbled off and some petals alongside some extra drops of essential oil. I may give this to someone as a little gift in the post- it's meant to be a drawer scent (you know when you have a little package in your clothes drawer to make them smell nice. Unfortunately I think I put to much extra oil in it, it's a bit strong scented for me. I enjoyed making this and I really hope you do too.