Botany Project- Soap

At the beginning of our homeschool year back in August, The Girl who Loves to be Blogged and The Mayor made a light hut.  The idea is to create a warm and bright space for plants to grow year round, especially since we live above the 42nd parallel.
The first thing we were supposed to plant were herbs.  The herbs were supposed to be dried and used in cooking, teas and soaps.
I already had some basil growing, and we added to that.
A few weeks ago we harvested basil and chives, tied them together and poked the string through a brown paper bag, hanging this contraption from the curtain bracket near the Girl's desk in the school room.  So her desk has been a fragrant corner.  I also harvested some dried lavender from my mother's kitchen, and comfrey from her front yard.  Other additives we had around the house were olive oil and oatmeal.
Last week, while on catch-up time for other school work, we made our soaps. 

I got some fragrance from the dollar store, and a kit from the craft store which contained soap, dyes and plumeria fragrance.  It had molds with embossing tools, but I also used some shapes my mom had around.

We melted the glycerin in the microwave, though I eventually changed to a poor-mom's double boiler so we would have more time to think about what we wanted to do.  Soap dries/cools/hardens pretty quickly!
The Mayor only made two of these, and then wandered off.  That's Ok.  The Girl enjoyed doing this with just her mom. I think.

 This is the little tin my Mom provided. You can sort of see how the soap is puckering up in the process of drying.  In the end we made a handful of soaps and still had some supplies left over, but I had to reclaim the kitchen for lunch.

This plastic mold that came with the kit had a little embossing plate in the bottom of it, so that the soap came out with flower design pressed into the top of it.  It was pretty.  We discovered was that it would take quite a bit of the dye powder that was provided to make the soap anywhere near as dark as shade of red or green pictured on the box.  We were reluctant to throw all that in. So our soap is pink instead of red.  Luckily, I stopped myself on the verge of throwing in some blue food coloring to make the lavender purple instead of pink...the user of the soap will thank me!

These are intended as Christmas gifts for my Secret Sister as well as several family members, so I am not going to reveal the finished product right now.  But my husband did say that if this is all that goes into making soap, the people who sell it at craft fairs are over-charging!  It was that simple...though he had no idea what I spent on the soap base, etc. from the store.

All in all though, a simple and quick craft for Christmas presents, making use of something we did for school.  I win, she wins, receiver of gifts wins.  Oh, and it made the house smell nice.  That's a good day.