DIY Rose Petal Soap

Earlier today I posted my book review of Herbal Goddess and mentioned I tried one of the skincare recipes. Well I really didn’t follow the recipe exactly but it inspired me to create something similar with stuff I just had sitting in my closet. I don’t even use bar soap hardly ever but it was a fun experiment. I figured I’d take a few photos and share what I ended up with when making this rose petal soap.

I recommend checking out the original recipe in Amy Jirsa’s book but here are the ingredients that I used for my soap:

• approx. 3.5 oz – 4 oz of melt & pour glycerin soap (look for one without sulfates!)
• approx. 1/2 cup dried rose petals (from small buds – I got mine through mountainroseherbs.com)
• 6 drops rose essential oil (I used a 10% dilution of Rose absolute from Morocco Rosa damascena)
• 4 drops ylang ylang essential oil
• 2 drops vanilla extract

I just happened to have a 2lb brick of glycerin soap for melt and pour projects sitting in my closet from years ago that I had totally forgotten about until reading Herbal Goddess. It was pre-scored into 32 cubes and I used 7 of them, if that helps. I wanted to make a very small quantity to just create two soaps so I estimated on this and the amount worked out good. NOTE: This project will go way faster if you cut each of these cubes into like four smaller cubes each. They took quite a while to melt at this size.

Step One: Crush the petals!

When you buy a bag of dried rose buds (mmmm they smell so good!) you have to snap the rigid stems off and then I recommend crushing them to help ease the petals off. This can be done by pressing each bud under the flat of a knife or spoon, but is much faster with a little mortar and pestle. The idea is just to get as many pretty pink petals off the outer parts of the buds and discard the rough leaves and inner brown seeds so that you’ll have pretty material to sprinkle in your soap. You’ll need about 1 cup to get a half cup of petals I’d say.

Step Two: Heat the Glycerin

You’ll want a double boiler for this, which you can easily create by placing a glass bowl over a pot of boiling water. Have your oven mitt ready, it gets hot! Place your sliced up glycerin cubes into the bowl and let the boiling heat from underneath melt it.

Once melted take off the heat and mix in your essential oils, few drops of vanilla extract and half the rose petals. You can totally choose different essential oils for this. In the original recipe Amy Jirsa uses lavender I think. You could do jasmine, orange blossom, or even go more earthy with it. Rose and patchouli or vetiver would be nice. I thought the beautiful floral scent of ylang ylang would go nicely with rose – they’re quite the romantic duo. Only do a few drops of each though, a little goes a long way!

Use your remaining half of the rose petals to line the bottom of the soap molds then pour in your soap mixture. Many of the petals with float right to the top but pieces of them will be submerged to they’ll stay. Let cool for an hour or two before popping out of the mold.

I only had a mold with a rectangle, square, circle and octagon in it so I chose to fill the square and rectangle. You can get soap molds and melt and pour glycerin soap at most craft stores by the way. I think I got these either at Joanne Fabrics or Michael’s years ago.

Once you pop them out of the mold the bottom should be smooth (see below), and the tops will have a great decorative effect. You could also make these without the rose petals but I think they look fun this way! Plus will add some exfoliation in the bath.

NOTE: The original recipe also contained powdered soy milk, but I’m allergic to soy, so I left that out.

So there you have it! Two cute little bars of soap decorated in rose petals. They have a beautiful but delicate garden rose scent with a hint of ylang ylang and you could give them as gifts or keep for yourself. I think I’ll use them for relaxing baths.

TIP: To avoid the whole bar becoming soaked and icky and throwing it out when you’ve only used half of it, cut it into fourths and only use a piece at a time.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I’d love to know if you try this or anything similar. Have fun with it and make it your own! Have a great weekend. xo – Naomi