If you love scented soaps, you may find yourself searching for tips on making homemade lavender soap. Lavender soaps smell wonderful and offer numerous aromatherapy benefits. This makes them a great choice for soaps to make for yourself, soaps to give as gifts, or soaps to sell at local craft shows.
The Appeal of Lavender
The aroma of lavender is floral, sweet, and slightly herbal. Lavender essential oils are often used in aromatherapy. They offer many benefits and perform some of the following functions:
- Reduce stress
- Promote relaxation
- Encourage a restful night's sleep
- Relieve muscle pain
- Treat migraines
- Prevent scarring and stretch marks
- Slow the development of wrinkles
- Treat sun damaged skin
If you're interested in making lavender soap for aromatherapy purposes, keep in mind you will need to use pure essential oil in your soap making recipes. While pure essential oils are made from natural plant extracts, soap making fragrance oils are synthetically created scents made in a laboratory. Fragrance oils smell similar to essential oils and cost less, but they do not offer the same therapeutic benefits.
Making Homemade Lavender Soap
There are several different ways to go about making homemade lavender soap, depending upon your soap making skill level and the amount of time you want to invest in the project.
Repurposed Soaps
If you don't have time to make soap from scratch or you're looking for a project that is easy to do with very young crafters, you can try repurposing commercially made soap into customized lavender homemade soap. Here are some projects to try:
- Joys of Lavender explains how to repurpose a plain bar of purchased soap to make your own lavender aromatherapy soap.
- Wiki How has a simple tutorial for making liquid lavender soap.
- Aromatherapy at Home has a recipe for lavender soap balls that would make a fun treat for a preteen girl's spa day.
Melt and Pour Soap
Melt and pour soap making involves melting down a purchased soap base, adding the desired color and fragrance, then pouring it into your molds. Melt and pour soap is often referred to as "glycerin soap." Here are a few melt and pour lavender soap projects to try:
- Soap Queen has a page of melt and pour recipes that includes a lovely lavender and chamomile face soap suitable for all skin types.
- Brothers Handmade has a recipe for glycerin lavender beeswax soap.
Cold Process Soap
Cold process soap making involves making soap from scratch, which means working with lye. This chemical can be dangerous, so you will need to wear rubber gloves and safety goggles. Cold process lavender soap recipes to try include the following:
- Teach Soap has a recipe for making a lavender soap that includes tea tree oil and other acne fighting ingredients.
- Soap Making Essentials has a recipe for lavender cold process soap that includes pretty colored ribbons of soap suspended in each bar.
- The Spruce has a lovely recipe for lavender mint soap.
- Mountain Valley Growers has a recipe for making comfrey lavender soap.
- Anayennisi Aromatics has a recipe for a lavender tea tree oil soap that also includes oatmeal for added skin care benefits.
Pretty Presentation
Part of the fun of making homemade lavender soap is coming up with a pretty presentation for your project. If you're planning to give your soap as a gift or sell items at a local craft fair, here are a few presentation ideas to consider:
- Tie bars of soap together with a purple ribbon.
- Wrap soap in a bit of tulle or a purchased organza bag.
- Nestle tiny decorative soaps in small origami paper boxes.
- Make a gift basket with lavender soaps, washcloths, and coordinating scented candles.
