Soap Making Workshop

On Friday, I made handmade soaps with my mum, my sister, and a friend of ours. I wasn't sure what to expect as I had never made my own soaps before, or ever really enquired about the process behind it. Now I know how fun, easy, and simple it is to do!

The Workshop

Our natural soap only needs three ingredients: water, oil, and lye. This it what forms the soap base before we add our oils, colours, and flowers. You could choose between an olive oil base or a coconut oil base.

Olive oil soap base (left) and coconut oil soap base (right)

An olive oil base produces a transparent soap that shows off the flowers better while a coconut oil base produces a more opaque, pastel coloured soap. My sister chose the coconut oil base, and the rest of us chose olive oil. Next, we chopped them up into small pieces and added them to the heating pots. 

While the soap base heated up, we got to select our flowers. 

We could personalise our soaps even further by choosing our preferred scent and colour. After smelling all the options I chose the coffee & spice (it reminded me of cake), while everyone else went for fruity smells (passion fruit and forest fruits).

Once the colours, oils, and flowers had been combined we could transfer them to our desired moulds. We had enough soap mixture to fill either two large moulds, three medium sized moulds, or lots of mini moulds. 

There was a huge variety of moulds from letters to animals to even babies! The most popular mould, the one we all used, was a 100% handmade soap design, as it would be a reminder of our experience. 

100% handmade soap (left), and a heart design (right)

The bear mould was my personal favourite!

My glittery bee soap!

The whole process took around an hour and we had such a great time! Not only was it a brilliant group activity but you also come away with your own soaps that you can use or give as gifts. The place we went to for this particular workshop was called 'Token Studio', where they also do a variety of other craft activities during the week including crochet, jewellery making, and life drawing lessons (something I am eager to try!). In the future, I hope to be able to write more posts about these crafting adventures!

Fem