Fine Craft Guild .com » soaps

How to Make Watermelon Soap

Fine Craft Guild — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Yummmy-looking soap!!! This super summer craft project is another pure inspiration project for us, however, today it comes with a tutorial. OK. It’s time to learn how to make our own watermelon soap. What a great project to make for summer, what a great gift to create and give.

Personally, being a beginner soap maker, when I see this result I feel totally inadequate for the job.

But hop over to the Soap queen’s step-by-step soap-making instructions, and you’ll realize that it is entirely doable.

In fact, it’s on our ‘wanna try this’ list for when we come back from vacation in September, as a Back-to-School endeavor.

Soap Making Tutorials

How to Make Soap in 2 Seconds

How to Make Fancy Felted Soaps
Homemade Soap Making Methods

DIY TUTORIALS & CRAFT PARTIES

If you have a fun DIY or craft tutorial, be sure to enter it in our weekly DIY/Craft TUTORIAL linky party, so our readers can find you and your great projects also.

Here is the current party, but if you happen to come across our site after its closure, you can just visit homepage of Fine Craft Guild and find the latest linky party there.

Meanwhile, this craft article here is featured in a number of wonderful craft parties. Click the link to learn more about them.

Butterfly Soap

Fine Craft Guild — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:00:53 +0000

Good morning everyone. I just want to show you this butterfly soap that I spotted. I came across it when I made my butterfly craft templates, downloads, tutorials and other ideas-article a while ago, and felt, this gentle, pretty butterfly deserved a little posting all on its own…

A treat for your eyes, nose and.. the skin.
This type of handmade soap bar is called a cameo bar, and is of the “looks good + smells great”-variety. The soap maker called its colors ‘Raspberry Lemonade’.

This inspirational handmade soap is by Daisy Cakes Soap’s Shop. To make your own, here’s a range of lovely butterfly soap molds.

The Art of Soap Making

Each of these butterfly soaps is made by hand, one-by-one in their own unique mold.

They used a mild vegetable glycerin base (cleanses skin but didn’t dry it out). It has ‘a gentle pH neutral glycerin base that cleans, leaves no soapy film behind, contains no alcohol, and has a terrific lather!’ they say.

Soap

DIY TUTORIALS & CRAFT PARTIES

If you have a fun DIY or craft tutorial, be sure to enter it in our weekly DIY/Craft TUTORIAL linky party, so our readers can find you and your great projects also.

Here is the current party, but if you happen to come across our site after its closure, you can just visit homepage of Fine Craft Guild and find the latest linky party there.

Meanwhile, this craft article here is featured in a number of wonderful craft parties. Click the link to learn more about them.

Free Soap Contest – Last Day

Fine Craft Guild — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:55:59 +0000

The Real Soap Company, or rather Cindy at Cottage Instinct (i.e.e the brain behind this hand-made soap) is having a give- away… TODAY!!!

Better hop over right away before she wakes up, as she’ll be drawing the winner when she gets out of bed…. probably.

Anyhow, as I just moved into a new home and shed all the ‘old stuff’, I am actually in need of some new great-quality soap, so I had a look at hers, and like them. Very much. They look very good and professionally made.

Personally I like my soaps to be made with genuine essential oils as these are both good for you and they smell good.

Anyhow Cindy’s offering either 3 of handmade bars of soap in our choice of scents, OR 2 mini stacks with 6 scents in total.

Almost all are scented with essential oil blends. All are made from scratch with either goat’s milk or coconut milk. Some have botanicals just for kicks.

Well, I want the ‘Mandarin Neroli’-scent. Doesn’t that sound fabulously uplifting? There are some other good essential oil-based scents that I hope I’ll win as well.

Check it out:
the Real Soap Company.

Click this link for other articles on soap-making on this blog

Handmade Guest Soap Done in 2 Seconds

Fine Craft Guild — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:00:59 +0000

This wonderful orange Spring flower-shaped handmade soap for my guest bathroom was literally made in 2 seconds.

What’s my secret? I cheated, and you can too. Rather than using new soap flakes and make it from scratch, I recycled.

Wanna try it?

How to Make a Fun Mother’s Day* or Guestroom Soap Fast

This is the easiest homemade soap recipe you’ll find – guaranteed.

1. Delve into the back of your bathroom cabinet and search for an old or used glycerin hotel soap.’
2. Go to your kitchen cabinet and find a metal cookie mold that is slightly smaller than your soap remnant.
3. Put the soap for 2 seconds in the microwave, which will soften it by ‘a tat’.**
4. Press your mold over the softened soap* to create a personal hand soap in a delightful shape, that will look adorable in your guest bathroom…. or your own.

You could certainly make this for Mother’s Day as a wonderful darling gift in a nice embellished gift bag, perhaps with some potpourri or rose pedals thrown in.

SAFETY WARNINGS
* NOT for children. I don’t recommend kids to every use microwaves, let alone for this project. This craft idea is for adults only.
** if your soap is still too hard, put it in the microwave for another second. Be verrryyy conservative with those seconds. Put your microwave on low & stick to glycerin soaps. Particularly other types of soaps may be flammable.
** If you happen to have an old pan you could use as a double boiler, than do this instead. The ‘pan within a pan with boiling water’ (i.e. double boiler) method is safest as there is no direct heat coming to the soap.
** NEVER put a metal mold in the microwave !!)

Soap Mold Shapes & Soap Textures to Suit the Season

I chose a fresh colored soap, and a flower-shaped soap mold because it’s Spring, and I wanted to create a Spring craft.

However, you can choose your shape and texture of your soap to suit the season: Hearts are good for Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day; actually they are good year round for women or girls.

Animal shapes are good for visiting children. Choosing a speckled oak-meal type soap would be great for this. White Christmas tree and star shapes are good for the winter holiday season.

Tips for Successful Soap Making

After you press then glycerin soap through the mold, rub the soap’s surface with a rag till it shines.
Preserve the soap by putting it in clear plastic wrap.
While you could use plastic molds, I recommend the metal ones, because they’re sturdier and won’t break if you really press on them.
Ideally, create dedicated art supplies. While you could re-purpose your regular cookie shapes for this project, I find that I hold 2 collections of molds: one collection of molds and shapes that I use for food and the other collection of molds I use for all kinds of crafts, such as soap making, but also for image tracing, and stamp making, etc. It’s a healthy habit to do it my way.

Be sure to read my other articles on soap making… See below!

© copyright 2010, Rose, http://www.FineCraftGuild.com – all rights reserved

DIY TUTORIALS & CRAFT PARTIES

If you have a fun DIY or craft tutorial, be sure to enter it in our weekly DIY/Craft TUTORIAL linky party, so our readers can find you and your great projects also.

Here is the current party, but if you happen to come across our site beyond July 28, you can just visit homepage of Fine Craft Guild and find the latest linky party there.

Meanwhile, this DIY tutorial here is featured in a number of wonderful craft parties. Click the link to learn more about them.

Great Handmade Soap – Romantic Gift for Men for Valentine’s Day

Fine Craft Guild — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:20:42 +0000

This fresh and energizing soap is a great choice for a man’s gift for Valentine’s day. Ideally you monogram it, but even without personalization, it makes a fabulous gift.

The soap’s base is palm oil. This makes the soap bar hard and long lasting (and a bit more manly).

Almond oil’s rich concentration of oleic and linoleic essential fatty acids makes it used throughout the cosmetic industry for its penetrating, moisturizing and restructuring properties. In particular, almond oil is a wonderful emollient oil for soap making.

Use plastic containers as molds.

This recipe makes 4 large bars. If you trim the edges,the overall shape of the soap becomes more interesting.

Soap Recipe

Melt together:
2 cups grated pure vegetable soap
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup palm oil

After the soap has melted, add:
1/4 cup almond oil
10 drops sweet orange oil
5 drops cinnamon oil,
optional: 1/4 teaspoon powdered cinnamon.

Mix the fragrant oils and the extra oil into the melted soap
before pouring the liquid into your prepared molds.

A HAND MILLED soap recipe.

Homemade Soap Making Methods

Fine Craft Guild — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 01:44:22 +0000

There are several different soap making processes that will allow you to easily make homemade soap products.

The first soap making method is cold process soap making. This process requires a scale, a large stainless steel pot, measuring cups, kitchen thermometers, rubber gloves, mold, cardboard, plastic bags, olive oil, coconut oil, shortening, lye, distilled water, and fragrances. The cold process gets its name from the general low temperatures that are used to mill this type of soap.

In addition to cold process methods, hot process soap making methods are also available. This process is named for its boiling pot method of soap milling. For this type of homemade soap making you will need palm oil, coconut oil, sesame oil, shea butter, castor oil, sodium hydroxide, water, borax, soap molds, stainless steel pot, stirring stick or spoon, plastic wrap.

If you have soap scraps that you would like to rework into a new bar of soap then you can use a handmilled soap making method called soap rebatching. To do this you will need soap scraps, a mold, a grater, fragrance, dyes, and other additives. The best type of soap base for this type of soaping making is a cold process soap. To start with you will want to grate your soap into fine particles. Then place all of your shavings into a glass bowl that can be placed in a double boiler. As the double boiler heats up you will need to stir your grated soap pieces. Add in your vegetable oils and fragrances at this point, making sure that everything is incorporated. Break up soap clumps that form. Continue to cook until the soap reaches the string stage. At this point the soap will thicken rapidly. Remove the pot from the heat source quickly add in fragrances, coloring, herbs, and optional items in that order. Spoon into molds and allow it to cure.

The final way to make handcrafted soap is to use the melt and pour soap making method. Out of all of the soap making methods this is perhaps the easiest for novice soap makers. It involves simply melting a soap base in a double boiler, adding in fragrance and dyes, and then placing the soap mixture into a mold. This is the soap making method that most soap making do-it-yourself kits will use.

By Sarah Freeland

About the Author

For more information on how to make homemade soap as well as soap making recipes visit PureandNaturalSoaps.com. Check out the soap making forum to discuss techniques, share ideas and post your favorite soap and candle making recipes.