Soap DIY Tutorial

Have you ever tried making your own soap mix before? If you haven't yet, now is the time! There are melt and pour soap bases that you can purchase as a base, and then you can add whatever ingredient you want. There are advantages in making your own soap other than sounding pretty cool. When you buy your soap base you can actually choose what ingredient you want for your soap base. In Indonesia I've seen VCO (virgin coconut oil) soap base, but in the world wide web you can source other soap bases like goat milk, aloe vera, donkey milk, argan oil, and more. I opted a VCO clear and opaque base for mine. These are not as sudsy but they are very rich and moisturising on your skin. If you really have to have more suds in your soap, then you can choose a base with SLS added.

My clear and opaque VCO melt and pour base

Other than the soap base, you will need a mold. Silicone moulds works best. You can use your muffin trays if you want, but there are cute molds you can buy inexpensively for your soaps. For this tutorial, we will make one soap bar with this single mold that says 100% Hand Made.

Additionally, you can add 'stuff' inside your soap to make it prettier and probably extra benefits (depending on what you put in it). Some options are:

1. Dried flowers/berries
2. Dried leaves
3. Ground coffee (for extra antioxidants)
4. Ground cumin (for yellow colouring, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, antioxidant)
5. Ground activated charcoal (detox)

You would want to make sure that these add-ons are dry ingredients because fresh or moist ones will not last very long.

Wolfberry tea

Last but not least, you can also add essential oils for fragrance and extra benefits. When choosing essential oils for your soap, you might want to choose the brand depending on what you want to achieve. Regular aromatherapy essential oils that is mainly used for fragrance will have stronger and longer lasting smell. However, carefully extracted pure essential oils will give you more of their property benefits.  Some of the popular oils are:

1. Lavender (calming, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory)
2. Tea Tree (anti-septic, anti-inflammatory)
3. Lemon (stimulating, anti-septic, astringent, detox)
4. Mint (cooling, anti-microbial)

For this tutorial, I used my Doterra Sunrise invigorating blend also known as Citrus Bliss. It's a mix of 7 types of citruses. So here's the how to:

1. Cut up into small cubes just enough soap base to fill your mould.
2. Put it in the microwave in increments of 5 seconds, stirring in between with a popsicle stick or toothpick. Do not over-microwave.
3. Once all cubes are melted, put your add-ons and a few drops of essential oil.
4. Stir.
5. Spritz the surface with rubbing alcohol to prevent air bubbles. I didn't care much about the air bubbles so I usually skip this step.
6. Leave to cool off.
7. Once all set and hard, pop the soap out of the mould and voila!