I think citrus soaps are probably my favourite soaps. The citrus scent has great staying power, and it’s really quite refreshing in your morning shower. I’ve got a collection of citrus essential oils that is probably too extensive, so I decided to make myself some 5-Alive soap. Lemon, white grapefruit, tangerine, lime, and orange. Yum. I used spirulina for the green for the lime, and varying amounts of buriti oil for the shades of yellow and orange.
I worked the soap to a thick trace and layered the different colours and scents to create a pretty 5-layered soap. It smells pretty, works well, and looks pretty groovy.
5-Alive Soap
30% olive oil (pomace) (USA / Canada)
25% beef tallow
25% refined coconut oil (USA / Canada)
5% castor oil (USA / Canada)
15% avocado oilLye for 5% superfat
Water, as required by the soap making calculator
For the layer scents & colours—total essential oils should be 30g per 500g oils
Orange essential oil & buriti oil
Lime essential oil & spirulina
Lemon essential oil & buriti oil
White grapefruit essential oil & no colours
Tangerine essential oil & buriti oil
I can’t wait to get all the ingredients to make some of the soaps you have on your blog. I love the idea of making my own things. Thanks for all your wonderful posts.
Thanks for reading, Tina, and have fun with all your DIY endeavours! Let me know how they go 🙂
I am soo apply that I have found your blog. I’m really excited to try one of your wonderful soap recipes however I don’t recall seeing anywhere tat you mentioned what size mold you use. Please keep up the fantastic recipes coming.
Thanks in advance.
Awesome, thanks for reading, Sandy! Sorry it’s taken me a while to get back to you with these measurements. Anyhow, they are:
The inner measurements of my mold are 15″ long, 3.5″ across, and 3.5″ deep. I have a series of dividers that support the lid; they are 2.75″ high, giving the mold an effective depth of 2.75″ (the lid is 0.75″ thick). Each inch of the mold holds 100g/oils of soap; so the entire mold holds a 1500g of oils batch of soap. It’s also exactly as long as sheets of parchment are long, meaning it’s super easy to line as well. Basically, it’s the perfect size!
Hi Marie, I love your website and I’m trying to get everything to start my first batch of soap 🙂 Thanks so much for sharing your experience!
I would love to make this soap but having issues getting buriti oil…i know you’ve provided a link to the materials but that store doesn’t seem to sell that oil anymore. Do you know where i can get that buriti oil? If i can’t find that oil, is there another oil i can use and still get that coloring? In the worst case, if I don’t use that oil at all, does that mean my soap will only have the essence oil scent without any color?
For the layer scents & colors, you mentioned “total essential oils should be 30g per 500g oils.” Is that mean I can use any quantity for each essential oil above (ie. Lime, Lemon, White grapefruit, Tangerine) as long as I accumulate all oils and make sure the total weight of all essential oils together is 30g?
So sorry for all the questions! I am getting so excited making my first DIY soap!!! 🙂 Thanks for your help Marie!
Hi Jasmine! How exciting to be getting started on your first batch of soap 🙂 If this is your very first soap you might find that all these layers are a bit tricky for you in the case the batch traces and thickens faster than you anticipate, so keep that in mind, and be sure to have all your different EOs and colours measured out and ready to go 😉
It looks like NDA has discontinued buriti oil. Oh well, it was really only good for colour. They do have a new natural orange dye that looks like it would work instead. And yes, if you leave out an orange colourant, your soap will just be a sort of beige-ish colour (some of the citrus EOs are quite deeply coloured for EOs, so they can pull it into yellow/orangish territory).
And yes, for the EOs, you’re bang on. As long as your mix of citrus EOs totals 30g per 500g oils, you’re golden 🙂
Have fun with your soap! I’d love to see a photo when it’s done, you can easily share ’em with me on Instagram or Facebook (links above in the left column).
You can buy Buriti Oil at Botanic Planet. Wow, this oil seems to have some amazing properties. You have some amazing ideas.
Thanks so much, Carolyn! Have you ever ordered from them? Their website design doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence…
Can’t wait to make this soap! How much of the buriti oil and the spirulina do you use? Thanks!
Hi Sheila! It’s really just to “taste”—add until you like the colour. Also, I made this soap in 2012 so I truly have no clue LOL.