Make your own BEAUTY BARS
Soap-making is fun – and easily customisable with homegrown herbs and flowers, and essential oils. Create your own natural soaps for face and body.
With today’s convenient and easily available melt-and-pour soap bases, it’s extremely easy to make your own soaps and beauty bars. Just melt, add homegrown herbs and flowers, then pour into a mould. You can also use other simple ingredients such as beeswax, cocoa butter, coconut oil and shea butter to make soaps, mixed with a combination of essential oils. Choose your essential oils for their therapeutic properties. Sweet orange oil, for example, helps to soothe sore muscles and increase blood flow, and also aids collagen production. Myrrh essential oil helps to heal chapped skin, sun damage and rashes, and rose essential oil is useful for soothing skin conditions like psoriasis and dermatitis. Rose geranium essential oil helps regulate oil production and reduces acne breakouts.
To make a simple calendula and sweet orange beauty bar, you need 250g glycerine melt-and-pour opaque soap base, 3 tablespoons runny honey, 4 tablespoons oat bran, a handful of dried calendula petals, dried orange peel, and 20 drops of sweet orange essential oil.
Cut the soap base into 2cm cubes and place in a microwave-proof jug. Heat in the microwave on medium until melted (about five minutes). Remove from the oven, add honey, oat bran, calendula petals, orange peel and essential oil. Mix well, working quickly. Pour into silicone cupcake moulds. To eliminate bubbles you can use a small spray bottle filled with methylated spirits to mist the surface of the soap. Allow soaps to dry (about two hours). The soaps should be dry by the time they have cooled.
In a similar fashion, make a gardening soap to soften your hardworking hands. Chop 250g aloe vera melt-and-pour soap base into 2cm cubes and place in a microwave-proof jug. Heat in the microwave on medium until melted. Remove from the oven, and gently stir in 2 tablespoons oat bran, 1½ tablespoons fine pumice, 1 tablespoon bentonite clay and several drops of lemongrass essential oil (which is antimicrobial). Pour into moulds and allow to cure.
For honey soap, melt 1 tablespoon beeswax pellets and 125g melt-and-pour soap base. Mix together, add 1 tablespoon honey. Stir until the honey has melted. Pour into a mould and cure as above.