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 toothbrush, but something grown-ups would love, too. This is what I came up with.
I started with the colours I wanted to use—pink, purple, and white (plus sparkle). I know not all little ladies love these colours, but little me sure did (and I have the photos of the dresses to prove it). Those colours quickly led me to and rose and lavender scent blend. As usual, the crazy high price of rose essential oil (close to $150/5mL at this writing) has sent me off towards fragrance oils. I don’t love them for a multitude of reasons, but it feels like a bit of a necessary evil with those prices. You are, of course, more than welcome to use the real thing if you can. Rose geranium essential oil is also a reasonably good compromise.
For colours, I used some iron oxides and titanium dioxide to get the three different shades I wanted. I aimed for roughly equal parts of each colour, but I wasn’t too concerned about it. Be sure to use an immersion blender to blend in the oxides for a nice, smooth colour (no immersion blender = clods of dry oxides in your soap). I ended up with a white part, a purple part, and a pink part.
To top everything off, I blended some oxides with some silver mica and a bit of oil to give each bar a sparkly topping. I made these bars in my oval cavity mould, and since I brought the soap to a pretty thick trace I didn’t get quite the, err, precision, I was hoping for with the topping, but it still looks pretty cool.
The final bars are colourful, sparkly, fragrant, and fun. My child at heart loves them 🙂
Rose & Lavender Princess Silk Soap
25% olive oil (pomace) (USA / Canada)
25% refined coconut oil (USA / Canada)
30% beef tallow
15% unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada)
5% castor oil (USA / Canada)Per 500g (1.1lbs) of oils:
- 1 pinch tussah silk or ½ tsp silk peptides
- 2 tsp sodium lactate (USA / Canada) (optional—hardens the bars)
- 1 tbsp white white kaolin clay (USA / Canada)
- 2og lavender essential oil
- 10g rose fragrance or essential oil
- For the white part: 1 tsp titanium dioxide
- For the purple part: 3 pinches lavender (aka pink ultramarine) oxide
- For the pink part: 1 pinch red iron oxide + 1 dash titanium dioxide
- For the purple topping swirl: 1 pinch silver mica + 1 nip lavender + 1 tsp liquid oil of choice
- For the pink topping swirl: 1 pinch silver mica + 1 nip red + 1 nip titanium dioxide + 1 tsp liquid oil of choice
Use SoapCalc to calculate your final amounts of oils, lye, and water based on the size of batch you want to make.
Follow my standard soap making instructions. Add the tussah silk to the lye water, pulling it apart into smaller bits to encourage it to dissolve. If using, add the sodium lactate (USA / Canada) to the lye water after it has cooled and stir to combine. If you’re using the sodium lactate (USA / Canada) I strongly encourage you let your fats and lye water come to room temperate before combining. I haven’t tried using the sodium lactate (USA / Canada) above room temperature, but I do notice a much, much faster trace than I would usually get at room temperature, and it’ll only get faster at higher temperatures.
Once your soap batter has reached trace, blend in the clay and essential/fragrance oils. Then, divide the batter between three bowls, aiming for the portions to be roughly even.
Blend 1 tsp of titanium dioxide into one, 3 pinches of ultramarine pink oxide into another, and 1 pinch of red iron oxide + 1 dash of titanium dioxide into the last one. That’ll give you a white, 1 purple, and 1 pink part.
I spooned a scoop of each colour into each mould cavity and gave them a gentle swirl with my spatula before smoothing/smooshing them down. If you’ve reached quite a thick trace you might consider a pot swirl (combine in a pot and gently swirl before pouring). Be sure to firmly rap your mould against the counter to knock out as many air bubbles as you can—this is especially important if your batter is very thick.
For the topping, drizzle the mica/oxide/oil mixtures lightly over the top of the soap, and then swirl with a toothpick.
Cover and let the soap saponify for at least 24 hours before removing it from the mould. Let the soap age for at least 3 weeks before using. Enjoy!
Remember—even though this soap was designed with kids in mind, it’s still real soap and will sting if it gets into eyes.
This is beautiful! I’ve finally begun experimenting with your recipes. I find working a little in the kitchen, whipping up a potion, to be very therapeutic. I like the small sizes that your recipes come in…small enough to keep the stock fresh, and experiment without ending up with tons of product.
Thanks, Judi! And yes, I’ve definitely learned small batch is best over the years! I think I may still have some bits and bobs of just-getting-started creations made from found recipes that yielded a decade worth of body butter 😛
Hi there! I love your site and have been following for a while now (not in a creepy way). I noticed your comment about the price of the rose e.o. and having to settle for using fragrance oil. I have found two wonderful sites that offer naturally derived fragrance oils (eo’s and isolates). They are 100% plant based. From nature with love, and Bath and Body Supply. Thanks so much for all of your wonderful posts!!!
Hi Mindy! Thanks for sharing your suppliers 🙂 Unfortunately neither of them are based out of Canada so I’m out on account of our terrible exchange rate and high shipping charges, but I’m sure my other American readers will appreciate it 😀
Thank you for this beautiful soap recipe that you shared with us. May I ask where you got your mold from?
I can hardly wait to make your Rose, Silk and Lavender Soap
Amber Noel
Thanks, Amber! The mould is from NDA, link in the big box above the comments.
This Soap looks very pretty.
Thanks, Zwirbeline 🙂
Lovely soap! What about palmarosa as an essential oil alternative? I love it in masks and lotions for a rose scent on the cheap. Haven’t tried it in soap yet, as I just bought a trial size, but it’s nice and pretty smelling. You could also make a matching lotion for your princess collection with rose water. Cheap and good for the skin! Thank you so much for all of your wonderful blog posts. I am always so happy when I check my email and see something new from you!
Hi Kate! I must admit I am rather confuddled by your suggestion of palmarosa as a rose alternative as the palmarosa I have smells nothing whatsoever like a rose :/ It smells like sweet tea to me. I do love the lotion idea, though! And perhaps a pink sparkly lip balm to round out the collection? 😉
That is just awesome!
Thanks, Sharon!
How many bars did this produce?
This recipe is written in percents so you can scale it to make as many bars as you’d like. Simply use Soap Calc to get yourself some hard numbers to work with 🙂
I love this recipe. Have you looked into geranium rose EOs? I’ve been able to successfully replace my rose FOs with this close twin, and still have that lovely rose smell without breaking the bank.
I have, and I have some rose geranium EO, but to make a 750g batch of this recipe I’d still need $50 worth of it… and that’s still “breaking the bank” territory for me!
I’ve been looking forward to making this, especially with a plethora of young nieces who love all things smelly- and with Christmas looming I thought it was time to give it a go. But it was only my second attempt at CP soap making. I have discovered I do rather like the precision of the measurements – so much so, I’ve gone through all my workable cream & salve recipes and changed them into %. So satisfying. So good to be precise.
Anyhoo, this was a soap I had high hopes for. But was somewhat blighted by the shivers last week and hardly a squeak of a voice this week, but I battled on. I decided to do the ‘leave it to sort itself out’ temp thing. So mixed late morning. Trouble was I had so much catching up to do from days of ‘oh woe is me’ that I didn’t get round to combing the lye water and the oils till well past tea time. So I mixed, and mixed, and mixed a bit more. It seemed about right for the trace. I had almost everything to hand, I just needed to get out the mica powder. And Bingo, I turn back to my 3 bowls awaiting their colouring to find the soap almost solid. I just managed to force my blender through the glutch enough to get the colour to blend.
I scooped it into the moulds like it was yesterdays hardened mashed potato. It smells lovely, but the colours looks a bit dark, the pink isn’t as pretty as I hoped, and the silver dribbling failed – lets just call it blobs.
It was too hard/compact to do swirly whirlies, but I’m hoping younger eyes will pass over its imperfections.
I plan a second go once this darned head cold leaves me. Maybe I’ll have better success then. It’s not a failure though. Just, rather than OooOo, it’s uh.
Thanks for a lovely recipe. I shall endeavour to do better.
Hi Wendy! I’m sorry to hear your batch went so thick on you so fast! It sounds like you got the hot process experience, minus the hot part. It is really odd, though—if you’re soaping at room temperature (somewhere around 20°C) should prevent that and give you at least a good 10–20 minutes to work with the soap batter. I often leave my lye water and oils overnight (and sometimes for longer than a day), so leaving it for quite a while shouldn’t have impacted it, either. I would recommend making sure you have all your colours and micas and things measured out and set out right where you need them so you don’t have to walk away from the soap in the middle of things—that might help next time 🙂
Thanks so much for DIYing with me!
Marie, I now know where I went wrong. Have made a second batch and it’s turned out lovely. With the first I miscalculated. I was making less than 500g. No problem, I thought. I just need to measure all the additional items like the sodium lactate silk etc by turn, divide each weight by 5 to get how much for 100g, then x by 3.2 for my final weight of 320g. A bit fiddly, but once it was done I’d have my notes for future reference. Trouble was I used the wrong page of notes when making the first batch, which was the individual weights for 500g. So I’d used too much soduium lactate, kaolin etc.
The second batch looks great, managed to get a nice looking swirl going too. Didn’t bother with the topping, didn’t want to push my luck.
Even though the first batch was a bit out of whack due to my error, the soap itself seems nice enough, lathers just right. Doesn’t leave my hands dried out. They just don’t look as pretty and are that bit harder.
Thanks for a lovely recipe.
Really like the new look of the website by the way, and is much easier to navigate.
Hi Wendy! I’m glad the mystery has been solved, and I’m glad your next batch was a success! All that extra sodium lactate would definitely speed things along quite a bit. And I’m so glad you like the new website design, it sure was a long time overdue 🙂
Hello Marie,
I have so enjoyed exploring your blog and also your portfolio! Your photography and dresses are so amazing and creative.
This rose/lavender princess soap looks so beautiful and must smell wonderful too. I have tried making soap a few times. I am going to have to try some of your recipes sometime. Do you have a recipe for your Titanic inspired soap? I did not see it here. I would like to try making it. Thank you.
I am excited to see your recipe for a DIY version of LUSH’s Ro’s Argan Oil Body Conditioner. I have a sample from their store and really like the scent, but I don’t like the preservatives in it.
Keep blogging and sharing your ideas and insights!
Thanks, Elizabeth! The Titanic soap is here (if you search “Titanic” using the search function that’s in the menu and the sidebar it’ll also turn up). Thanks for reading!