Welcome back everyone. I'm out hanging out in the garden here just enjoying the beautiful flowers and I wanted to do something really fun today with you which is make a really nice fast to make soap that you can have for yourselves or to give away. So we'll be making these bars today.
with some natural botanicals in them as well as we'll do some other fun soaps as well. It's a glycerin soap, so it's for folks that really want to make soap quickly, that don't want to be messing around with lye, you know, some of those chemicals that can cause caustic burn. when you're making the soap making process and then want to try something that's really good for the skin.
Glycerin is a humectant so it keeps that moisture in your skin and sort of hypoallergenic too. So let's check out what we're gonna do today in the kitchen. So earlier this week I harvested some flower petals and I dehydrated them for today's soap making recipe. So let's head on into the kitchen and get making some soap. This soap recipe is really quick and easy and you'll have soap within two hours.
Let's go. So here we are set up in the kitchen and I've got everything that we need to make the glycerin soap. So let's take a look. We'll need a cutting board, a little jar to mix the glycerin in, some rubbing alcohol because glycerin soap tends to get little bubbles in it.
We want to help prevent that. I picked up some crafters choice premium crystal clear glycerin handmade soap base So we see how clear I didn't see my hands through there. You know, you can pick up stuff like this off Amazon That's where I got this one or you know Hobby Lobby or Mike Michaels. So it's super easy. And then of course your molds.
Now I've got some fancy molds here. This one, they're all silicone. This one's got some flower patterns in it.
This one's just your standard soap bars. I want to try a little experiment today with one or more of these. These are actually molds for succulent cacti.
So I thought that would be pretty cute for like little mini soaps, you know, guests and stuff like that. So I'm going to experiment with those. Those are new off Amazon.
And of course down here I've got sort of of my food grade food coloring. I use any like make sure the food coloring is safe for like food or for cosmetics. So I've got different colors here we can mix. And then from the garden I've dried some petals from some of my flowers. So this one is star anise.
That one smells like licorice. And this one right here this is from some black eyed susans. And this one is my wild well not my wild bee balm.
This is just like a bee balm that it's kind of like a pinkish. colour. The wild bee balm slash bergamot is a beautiful purple colour.
So we'll put these in some of the soap bars as well. So let's get started. So the first thing we're going to want to do is guesstimate how much glycerin we need for our project.
I might do this in stages. I might start with, you know, pouring out the little flower ones first, doing my different like colour dyes and things like that. It will kind of harden over time. So I might want to work rather quickly. So let's do the flour ones first.
I'll take off a few chunks of this and we'll get it set up in the microwave. It's typically not very difficult to cut. You can kind of cut it down these little score marks here.
It's you can see it's just like butter kind of going through here like kind of like firm texture of butter. I'm going to kind of cut these into the little cubes that they have them pre-cut out at just so it melts a lot easier. I'm going to guess how much I'm going to need for this little project.
Maybe, I don't know, this is probably too much, but let's go with this to start. All right, I've got this glass jar here, and I'm just going to put a few little chunks in there. All right, let's start melting this.
We're going to go at 30 seconds. intervals in the microwave until it's completely melted and remember this will be extremely hot so be very careful all right so this is 30 seconds in and it's looking great so this is the point if you wanted to add essential oils or anything like that you can add that in right now i'm going to start pouring this into the molds. If you want it clear you leave like that.
I want to do this one with a little bit of red so we're going to go in with a little bit of the cherry. Remember less is more with this or you're gonna have an extremely intense color. Put a couple little drops in here, hope we don't overdo it.
Or you can always reassess if you need. There's three drops. Got a little stir stick here.
I'm going to kind of go in and yeah see three drops look how red that is. add a little bit more two maybe oh geez that was three whoops that looks cute and i should experiment with more colors let's see what i got i have like a lavender here we could add a mix of that i don't know my color theory those you guys that do know what we can expect little charts online you guys can get and figure it out Whoa. Geez. I'm going to do that.
All right. i think that'll be pretty good oh it's gonna be some dark wine color all right let's get this poured here all right so we're gonna start in this one remember this is like super hot i'm just gonna pour it in this one's just like the rose mold oh that's cool and then i'm gonna do this one as well suit this red one as well and that should be it okay perfect Now, because glycerin soap is prone to developing these little air bubbles, you can see on the surface there, what I like to do is go with the alcohol and just spread. Oh, see, it's gone.
Let me do that. See the bubbles? Poof. gone some people look that's at the bottom as well because you can't get a bottle that bubbles at the bottom of your soap mold so okay so there's that one um so i'm just gonna clean out my little jar and i'm gonna do these guys next different color okay so i'll clean out again it's soap so it just washes out pretty fast. So about six of these.
It seems like each of these takes about three of the cubes. So we're going to do that right now. All right, so we're all set. I'm going to try something a bit different. I'm going to pour in the clear glycerin base into the mold.
And I remember to spray the mold bottom with alcohol this time. I'm going to maybe try doing a few little drips of different colors and like swirling them throughout and see how that looks. This is so fun.
I love experimenting with this. You can't do anything wrong, really. If you don't like it, just melt it down and do it again, you know.
So I'm going to put that in there, that one in here. That takes about three cubes for each one of these. Okay, that's pretty good.
Now let's experiment. Alright, so I'm just going to do a couple little drips. They're kind of heavier. Ooh, look at that!
That's cool. I'm just going to do little swirls. Eventually I'll get my little stir stick.
A little bit of yellows in this one. I don't know what we got here. Oh, we got some blueberry. Let's do that one.
Gotta work fast before this starts to kind of settle up. All right. I don't know.
This might be a bad idea. Let's experiment, guys. Hey, look, it's kind of following into the flower pattern there. Look, you could probably get some in the actual petal zone there. That's neat.
It is heavier than the... Glister and base there. So isn't that, that's cool. I didn't know it did that.
That's another way you can kind of experiment with it, see what it looks like. Of course that uses a lot of your dye, but I like that. It's kind of cool. So yeah, this one I'm going to try just swirling it around, see what it does. Maybe letting it set with some of the swirls, like not completely mixing it.
Tie dye look. And it's going to be heavier, so you can see it'll sort of rest at the bottom. in the pattern so i'm kind of just painting with it in here so that's interesting i'm learning something here and this one i'm actually you know what i'm actually going to practice like not mixing it up i'm just going to see what it's going to do if i kind of let it get into the mold there more of the red there for that oh geez that's not good ah outtake um so i'm going to stick it down there get it into the petal there we go I'll take this one a little bit more. Kind of like a really pretty pansy or something.
Well, this is quite the art experiment, let me tell you. Okay, and then when you're kind of happy with what you got, then don't forget to spray it again with alcohol. Yeah, that one wouldn't be as weird if I hadn't dropped the top in there.
Okay, so now we're just going to spray alcohol. burst those little itty bitty bubbles on the surface break them up okay good enough okay great so we're gonna let this set now for a couple hours let's go on and make the rest of our uh soaps next ones i'm gonna work with are my little succulent molds i think these are gonna be really cute um you know if you have like guests over and stuff like that there's lots of different molds you can get online um so i'm gonna die uh use these guys here so i've got chartreuse and kiwi i mean they look fairly similar to me So we'll kind of make a really dark green for these cactus molds. Alright, so I'm not going to go light on this stuff at all.
So again, you can put in your essential oils at this point and you can put in your dyes. Again everything has to be for soaps and safe. Oh, there's a little bit that's not melted.
I'm going to pop this in the microwave for a couple seconds, but that's the color I want. Perfect. Alright, two more seconds in the microwave and we should be ready to pour. So. got these all out here remember um again sprayed inside of these things with alcohol there will be bubbles in this kind of a setup for sure and then we're just gently going to pour in here These ones don't hold as much as you'd think, so just be careful.
This will be obvious. I'm excited to see how this is going to turn out. Again, it's really hot. Be careful. We should be wearing gloves.
See, that one's really small. And while those are setting, last but not least, this is the part I'm most excited about. This is doing the clear soaps with my fresh garden dried power petals. This is really exciting.
The glycerin I bought is ultra clear, like 10 out of 10 for clarity. You can see how clear these bars are. So we're going to be able to see the flowers throughout. So this is really awesome.
Important, use dry flower petals and it works so much better and doesn't get all yucky. so I've melted you know some more right here let's work in little batches so what I want to do is just I'm gonna start and be pouring this in layers just do a little bit here oh geez alcohol spray I always forget all right so we're gonna start by doing a little bit of alcohol spray again in our mold for the bubbles and I'm just gonna start maybe just in a few little layers I'm just gonna do a little bit here and you can be as creative as you want this is what i love about this you can just make everyone unique individual these are great christmas presents bridal shower presents if you have kids you might want to get like those little plastic toys or something and stick one in the middle as it's partially setting that'd be kind of cool um so like you can do so many cool things with this there you go I mean this one, I mean I might just do one straight with a knee. So you want to use like, you know, an essential oil Like kind of licorice or smells licorice-y.
That would be the one to use for this one Bee balm, I'll say this one right here, it smells mostly like oregano, so that's another idea. Again, I'm really scent sensitive, so I'm just leaving these plain. Just going to kind of fill all these up here. I don't know if we'll be able to do all in this first pour, but all right, that's a good bit to get started with.
Let's start, let's see how it goes. it's always going to move around and that's why i've got my little um stir stick to kind of uh push this around after so don't arrange it until after the fact i can get two bars out of this I've got a smaller mold too. Alright, so let's push this around with my little stick here. So these are probably going to want to float, is what I'm learning here.
So that's okay. Just move them around as to how you want them to be. Still look super pretty. Look at that. Hard to see with the glare on there, but there you go.
Very, very pretty. this thing's set you can kind of maybe push them down a little bit more as it gets a little bit thicker so maybe we'll do that in a minute let me get a bit more soap base looks like i might be able to do maybe two more with what i bought i bought two pounds of the soap base so all right this might only get a really small little bar out of so let's just put whatever we have left over in there and that's okay too now some of the uh star anise has some seeds in it so you'll see some little black flecks that's just seeds actually so that's really cool all right so this one like i said it's gonna be like a half bar and that's all right we'll just kind of move this around make it all pretty and this one is purely star anise This one has Black Eyed Susan and the Bee Balm. Oh, that's cool. I like that.
Very good. All right, so when you're happy with your arrangement, make sure, again, just do little spritz with rubbing alcohol so you don't get the bubbles. Now we're gonna let all of our soap sit for a couple hours and we'll check back in with you.
I've been setting for about maybe 15-20 minutes. I want to show you a really cool thing that's been happening. As you can see there with the bee balm, that little purple bit there, it's really interesting. The bee balm has turned purple in this glass.
glycerin soap base, which tells me, you know, it's an acid base indicator. So that's really cool. So it's changed color. It's not the pink that it used to be.
And it's giving off a purple dye. And as well as the black eyed Susan petals, it's giving off a yellow dye. So very natural dyes for the soap. So that's something to keep in mind. to consider as well if you want to make some natural color changes to these soap bars the flowers will do it for you okay so we're about an hour and a half two hours later let's do the big reveal so I'm going to start with these ones right here so it's pretty easy just peel them out of the silicone mold like this and they really just kind of like pop out so we're going to take a look this is the one I did the red dye in to kind of make it look like a rose let's see here whoa that's beautiful look at that absolutely gorgeous the clarity is amazing like look at that through the light so that's beautiful take a look at the rest all right so i took this one out with the food coloring and this one didn't turn out as expected i think i really should have pre-mixed that so there's a bit of food coloring kind of stuck at the top so don't do as i do with that mix it throughout but i think some of it did in here and it's really pretty just some of this purple didn't so that'll rinse off really well again it's just soap it's just going to wash off and you want to keep that one for yourself and kind of rinse off some of the color again once it's really mixed through it's not going to stain or anything it's just because this has a big glob of it that didn't mix into the glycerin soap base that's why there's a little bit of stain on my hand all right so the other red one turned out really well and this one not too too bad but again i don't think i'll do that again sort of dripping um the the color into it i'll mix it beforehand Again, some of it mixed in, but some of it did not.
So there's a little bit on the surface there. Again, if you didn't really like this and you don't want to use this at all, just melt it back down in the microwave. The colors will intermingle and you can repour.
I am really, really excited for the cactus ones because you really don't know what you're going to get. This is what I can see, but I don't know what I'm going to find. So let's find out. Oh, wow.
This one's cool. Look. Whoa. Look at that.
Look at the detail on it. oh i like that this is more of your like little decorative soaps you can set up in your bathroom you can decide whether you want to use them or not give them away as wedding party favors or things like that so that's one that is really cool that is amazing this is perfect for decorative purposes in the bathroom but it is really functional where thinks it's something to eat sad to say it's not um yeah so or you know when you're done with it you can have these little decorations melt them down and put them into soap that you want to use i mean you can certainly use this as soap it's got a lot of little knobs on it there this one i can tell how that's going to look that's just a very cute little cactus i should say these molds can also be used for making candles so i might do that after this i have multiple different uses to them so there's last them i think they're super cute really tiny little succulent uh plants there and cacti so very neat okay i'm really looking forward to these ones as you guys know um so let's take a look these ones are just going to pop out very easily oh look at the clarity on that it's like glass almost oh wow that's perfect oh neato and one of them sunk to the bottom so it's actually all the way through great let's take a look at this one this one accidentally bumps there's a little bit of a ripple in it that's my fault i kind of bumped it when it wasn't not fully cured yet so i mean not a big deal soap so let's take a look so this has actually got a nice uh yellow hue to it and that is all uh because of the uh black eyed susans in there oh this is great look at that look how clear that is you can see my hand right through it and you can see the beautiful flowers i'll take these outside in a minute so you can truly appreciate it and again purple and the yellow is mixed through on this one for this is like naturally dyed i did not stick any colorant in here so that's natural plant dye in there and all these plants are they're not harmful for your skin don't anything in there that's harmful uh just purely decorative so here we go this one oh wow cool now this one's my little half-sized one but that's okay you know what i actually like it good for travel you can kind of cut these up into little little tinier squares um to take backpacking or whatever you know it's all good just don't wash your hands near a waterway obviously but yeah look at that isn't that beautiful okay let's go outside and take a look at them in the sunlight these ones yeah so there you go very clear You can see all the little flowers in there. It's beautiful.
So let's take a look at this soap here with the Black-Eyed Susan and the beautiful Bee Bombs. You can see the natural dye in it has made it kind of a yellow color with a little bit of the purple. Beautiful.
And this one, I put in the B-bomb in there, and I put a couple extra just as it was starting to cure, so it didn't sink in and didn't react with the glycerin soap to do that acid-base indicator thing. So we've got the pink and the purples, and of course a bit of the star anise in there. So this one turned out really well. really nicely.
So there you go from my two pounds of glycerin soap base there I made all these little soaps. I'm really happy with all of them except these two. I made a bit of a mistake.
I'm trying to be a little artistic there but that's okay. My favorite of course are these ones with petals of flowers from my garden. I think they're really special. Now to store these you should wrap them in plastic and keep them in a cool dry place before use.
So if you're gonna give this away in the short term, I just wrap it in a bit of parchment paper and a bit of jute and Beautiful little bit of the star anise. Doesn't that look beautiful? Just before I sign off here.
I took those two flower soaps I didn't like the ones that had the dye right all over the petals here and I mixed the colors together basically melted it back down again. This is what I got. Look at the sunlight It's a beautiful kind of olive green color really neat. So worked out in the end Well, I hope you enjoyed today's video and you learned something new today and you'll have a new fun craft to participate in.
Alright, have a great week as always. Take care.