Soap Recipes

Making soap is one of my all-time favourite things to do. It's like a wee bit of art you can wash with! Get ready to dive into a world of wonderfully sudsy scents, colours, oils, and shapes.

Can I make soap without lye?

There’s no such thing as making soap without lye, and here’s why.

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As a vegetarian I feel very strongly about using beef tallow and lard in my soaps. Here’s why.

How do I make soap?

Here’s my most thorough overview of how to make your own bar soap.

Rustic Clay Soap

Rustic Clay Soap

This two-layer unscented soap is coloured with clay, and is really beginner-friendly. I designed this soap for my dad as a Father's Day gift since he prefers unscented products; my Christmassy soaps for 2021 were pretty perfumey, so he put in a special request for...

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Candlelight Christmas Soap

Candlelight Christmas Soap

It's time for our second Christmas soap (and Christmas theme) of 2021: Candlelight Christmas Soap. It's a warm, rich soap that I designed to look like a glowing candle and smell like cozy, fireside cuddles. Let's get started! Want to watch this project instead of...

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Frosted Cranberry Christmas Soap

Frosted Cranberry Christmas Soap

Welcome to the first 2021 Humblebee & Me holiday project—Frosted Cranberry Christmas Soap! Every year I select two wintery, Christmassy themes and create a collection of highly giftable DIYs around those themes. This year, Frosted Cranberry is one of those themes...

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Almond Oat Soap

Almond Oat Soap

This creamy Almond Oat Soap came with a rather baffling (and completely unexpected!) mystery! When I sliced it after leaving it to saponify for a day I was delighted to find it was a completely different colour than I expected. Not just a bit darker or lighter (or...

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Ice Palace Soap

Ice Palace Soap

Welcome to holiday soap (and holiday theme) #2 for 2020; Ice Palace Soap! This year's Ice Palace theme is all about embracing the cool, sparkling beauty of ice and ice sculptures. This cold processed soap channels dazzling wintery wonder with wispy cool-toned swirls...

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Argan Rose Soap

Argan Rose Soap

Today we're swirling up some luxurious bars of Argan Rose Soap, made with vitamin-rich argan oil and dusty pink Australian clay. Crimson rose buds and rustic Himilayan pink salt stud the top of the bar, and a rich pink swirl dances through the middle of the bars....

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Lavender Aloe Soap

Lavender Aloe Soap

We're continuing our Lavender Aloe theme today with a batch of beautifully swoopy and swirled Lavender Aloe Soap. The top is decorated with a dusting of violet biodegradable glitter, and I had a lot of fun bevelling the edges of each bar with a vegetable peeler for a...

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White Chocolate Peppermint Christmas Soap

White Chocolate Peppermint Christmas Soap

Welcome to Christmas theme #2 for 2019—White Peppermint Chocolate! This theme will feature lots of deliciously fragrant cocoa butter and fresh peppermint essential oil, plus complimentary clays, micas, hydrosols, and other fun things. Our first foray into White...

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Cranberry Orange Christmas Soap

Cranberry Orange Christmas Soap

Today we’re kicking off the 2019 holiday making season with our first Christmas soap and the launching of our first 2019 Christmas theme—Cranberry Orange! This theme will be starring ingredients like juicy-smelling cranberry seed oil, cranberry seeds, orange essential...

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Rosé Soap

Rosé Soap

Today we're making a type of soap I haven't made before—cold processed soap with wine! As a continuation of our rosé series, I'm using rosé wine as part of the water for this soap, complementing it with a fresh rose fragrance oil and some gold and pink whorls. Want to...

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Sweetgrass Gradient Swirl Soap

Sweetgrass Gradient Swirl Soap

Today we're continuing our sweetgrass series with a beautiful Sweetgrass Gradient Swirl Soap, featuring soft swirls that gradate from a reddy copper to pale cream, much like a sunset. The top is dolloped and swirled, with some shimmery mica whorls and a dusting of...

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Strawberry Rose Soap

Strawberry Rose Soap

These richly scented, pink swirly bars of Strawberry Rose cold processed soap were so much fun to make, and I’m so excited to share them with you today. They’re a continuation of our Strawberry Rose serum and pair a decadent fragrance oil with pink clay hanger swirls...

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Pemberley Soap

Pemberley Soap

If we're going to be making Jane Austen inspired things, we obviously have to make a soap. I feel very confident that Pemberley would have the loveliest of soaps in all of the (presumably numerous) washing and bathing facilities. I also feel more confident than is...

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Mango Mango Soap

Mango Mango Soap

Today we’re getting our mango on (again!) with a lovely loaf of bright orange, tropically scented cold processed soap. I had a lot of fun playing with some bright & summery micas, channelling all kinds of mango-y goodness into colourful slices of sudsy soap that...

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Lemongrass Gradient Soap

Lemongrass Gradient Soap

I'm so excited to share these beautiful bars of soap with you guys! I tried a new technique—a gradient (or ombre) pour—for the very first time, and I love how it turned out. These bars are inspired by all things lemongrass, with that herbal-citrus scent and a slow...

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Blue Marble Soap

Blue Marble Soap

This beautifully marbled soap is a wonderful example of things not turning out quite how you expected, but being wonderful anyways. My working title for these bars was "Indigo Swirl", but this batch of soap had different ambitions. The particular level of trace in the...

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Red Red Rose Soap

Red Red Rose Soap

Today's soap is in honour of Robbie Burns' day, but it also doubles up nicely as a Valentine's Day soap with its rosy scent and dusty pink layers. I had a lot of fun making this soap, even though it turned into a bit of a learning experience (a.k.a. things didn't go...

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Christmas Tree Soap

Christmas Tree Soap

Welcome to our second and final soap of the 2018 holiday soaping season—Christmas Tree Soap! These clean white bars feature an abstract Christmas-tree-inspired swirl down the centre and a topping of dancing mica swirls. I had so much fun creating these bars, and the...

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Sugar Plum Christmas Soap

Sugar Plum Christmas Soap

Welcome to our first Christmas 2018 soap—Sugar Plum Christmas Soap! Sugar plum will be one of our ongoing themes this season, and I'm really excited about all the different projects I've devised for it. We're kicking off the theme with these stunning purple, swirly,...

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Citrus Poppy Seed Swirl Soap

Citrus Poppy Seed Swirl Soap

I had so much fun creating these sunny, speckled bars. The idea was to create a swirl using texture—as opposed to colour—to differentiate the swirl from the rest of the soap. When I set out to make these bars it had been positively ages since I’d made soap. Who else...

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Cream of Earl Grey Soap

Cream of Earl Grey Soap

I had so much fun crafting up these creamy, sweet-smelling, sparkly bars of tea latte inspired soap. The batter is silky smooth and has great play time, so the whole mixing-pouring-swirling experience is calm and easy and fun (no pudding panic here, ha!). A dusty...

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Lavender Spruce Soap

Lavender Spruce Soap

I don't remember when I first fell in love with the lavender/spruce scent combo, but it's been a long standing favourite of mine for a while now. The woodsy, calming sweetness of lavender blends beautifully with the bright, fresh, camphoraceous notes of spruce and...

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Winter Custard Soap

Winter Custard Soap

This simple, warm, wintery soap is just the thing for January. The first month of the year is typically hit with at least one cold snap here in Calgary, necessitating hot tea and warm baking and a general refusal to leave the house for anything less important than a...

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Aurora Borealis Soap

Aurora Borealis Soap

I had so much fun making this pretty soap. Coloured with powdered indigo and some pretty purple and green micas, I wanted to channel Aurora Borealis, or the Northern Lights—and the winter solstice seemed like a great time for it. I had a lot of fun thinking through...

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