Bar 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?
Why tallow?
As a vegetarian, I feel very strongly about using tallow and lard in my soaps. Here’s why.
How do I make soap?
Snowflake Christmas Soap
Welcome to the second soap (and the second theme) of the 2017 Christmas DIY-ing season! These beautiful bars have a striking pale blue corner that contrasts the creamy white majority, and the whole lot is topped with a double glitter topping. These aren’t beginner...
Vanilla Spice Christmas Soap
Welcome to the start of the 2017 Christmas DIY season! As usual we're kicking off with soaps so they've got plenty of time to age while we round off our gift sets with other goodies like lotions, lip balms, body butters, and other varieties of pampering goodness. The...
Minty Forest Soap
Soaps starring cedarwood and mint seem to be perennially popular; I think I see a few at every farmer's market and craft fair I attend. And honestly, it's not hard to see why! The scent combination is fantastic—soft, sweet cedarwood pairs beautifully with bright,...
Lemon Basil Soap (with fresh Click & Grow basil!)
I'm not sure what it is about this hobby (or maybe it's just me), but people always assume I have a green thumb (people who have never seen my yard, at least). With the utmost faith in my ability to nurture and create they assume I have an abundant vegetable garden...
Morning Frost Soap
This Morning Frost soap was inspired by a beautiful walk I took back in November with the oh-so-friendly Scotch—potentially the world's nicest goldendoodle. Scotch and I were out in the morning, walking down one of Calgary's bluffs into a valley. This was before real...
Chocolate and Roses Valentine Soap
I often hear that my soaps look downright edible, but I think I may have outdone myself with this decadent Chocolate and Roses Valentine Soap. It's a beautiful dark bar with what looks like a swirl of nougat running through the center, and if you don't want to lick it...
Gentle Hemp and Shea Soap
After a few weeks of some fancy-pants, layered-up, Christmas themed soaps, I fancied a bit of a rustic break. A simple to make, quick-to-assemble, low-fuss bar soap made with some lovely oils and butters, lots of creamy clay, and no timers or pomp and circumstance....
Winter Wonderland Christmas Soap
This beautiful dusty-blue gradiated Winter Wonderland Christmas Soap is my last soap of the 2016 Christmas soaping season, and I love it. I tried a new technique for the first time, and while I'm super excited to play with it more and improve, I'm still really happy...
Lumps of Coal Christmas Soap
Brace yourselves, ladies and gentleman—it's Christmas soaping season already! I'm not sure how this has happened already as my brain is still patiently waiting for summer to arrive, but I'm assuming the calendar doesn't lie, so holiday soaps, here we come. Today's...
Minty Poppy Seed Scrubby Soap
This pretty double-sided bar of Minty Poppy Seed Scrubby Soap has one end that’s scrubby and one side that’s minty fresh for a bit of end-of-summer tootsy scrubbing. If your summers (and feet) are anything like mine, you likely need it! These bars are also fantastic...
Citrus Summer Punch Swirl Soap
These bright, colourful Citrus Summer Punch Swirl Soap bars are perfect for summer. They smell like fresh, juicy grapefruit and they're basically a swirly chunk of beautiful sunny weather in sudsible form. This soap recipe is also the first soap recipe I've made a...
Maple Syrup Soap
Welcome to the next recipe in my very Canadian quest to maple syrup ALL the things! This lovely, creamy bar of maple syrup soap incorporates a wee bit of dark maple syrup for added lather and the fun of knowing you're sudsing up with the best pancake topping/natural...
Fairy Bread Soap
I was originally going to call this Fairy Bread Soap "confetti soap", but as I made it I was reminded of Fairy Bread—a snack I saw my Aussie friends chow down on (when they weren't devouring slices Vegemite toast) when I lived Down Under. For the uninitiated, Fairy...
Lots & Lots of Clay Soap
I adore clay in my soap, so I thought I'd try a bar with lots of the stuff. The general rule of thumb I've been following is one tablespoon per 500g/pound of oils so I decided to take that up by about 10x and I'm loving the results. All that clay makes for an extra...
Love Lines Valentine Soap
This pretty Love Lines Valentine Soap is great for use all year, but the pretty red mica veins in it are quite lovely for Valentine's Day, as are the pretty shimmery swirls on top. It also smells like roses and vanilla—yum! I tried a few new things with this batch of...
Fruitcake Soap
It’s time for our last Christmas soap of the season! This one is inspired by the eternal fruitcake—that lump of sherry soaked brick-like substance that appears on Christmas potluck dessert tables every year (it may be the exact same lump, if we’re being honest). I...
Chocolate Orange Christmas Soap
Terry’s Chocolate Oranges have been a Christmas constant to me for most of my life. The square little box filled with an orange foil-wrapped globe of orange-scented chocolate was usually found near the toe of my stocking, and was quickly rapped on a nearby hard...
Sparkly Snowball Soap Balls
These pretty, sparkly balls of soapy, sudsy goodness are pretty cool. They look like snowballs (or candies), but are perfectly at home in your soap dish or on your Christmas tree. They’re great for guest bathrooms or traveling, and are just neat in general. We’ll kick...
Second Summer Soap
The part of the world I currently live in is not known for having amazing summers. Amazing summer days? Sure. But summers on the whole? Reliable beautiful days, all in a row, without question? Not so much. We're moreso known for "Monsoon June", mild to severe...
Lemon Meringue Soap
This soap is inspired by pie. Delicious, bright, lemon meringue pie. The real thing is made from puckering sweet and sour lemon curd and topped with airy whipped egg whites. My version is a lovely blend of oils, spiked with lemon and litsea cubeba essential oils and...
Rose & Lavender Princess Silk Soap
A few months ago I got to thinking about princess soap. Something the littler ladies would love. Something with a bit of sparkle and swirl, and some pretty colours. Something that would smell pretty and be perfectly at home with a Disney Princess shower curtain and...
Mojito Soap
My deep dive into beverage themed soaps continues with this minty lime tribute to the Mojito. It's bright green and smells wonderfully fresh, and I just love the sprinkling of coarse sugar on the top for a hint of sweet sparkle. The base of the bar is more or less my...
Pink Lemonade Soap
I think it's about time we welcomed summer with a straight up summery soap (even if it is barely spring... let's just say we've built in ample aging time). This pretty pink bar is a tribute to pink lemonade, and as such it smells bright and lemony. The pink hue comes...
Lavender Vanilla Soap
This pretty speckled, swirl-topped soap smells of soft lavender and vanilla. It brings to mind warm, dry summer days in Provence (in my imagination, at least). I can see pretty pastel-painted wooden furniture, bundles of lavender hanging to dry in the window, and a...
