Dave and I will be making some new soap in the next week or so, but I thought it might be fun to make some rebatched soap of all of the scraps I have around the house. You know – the ones that are in the shower waiting to be thrown away. Be sure that you use soap that is actually soap. If you use a “beauty bar” or one of those other commercial bars out there, this process won’t work as well as with homemade soap.
So I gathered all of them up and added a couple of the Calendula Olive Oil Soap bars that I didn’t like how they looked.
Next chop or grate the soap into small pieces. If you want the soap to melt in a short length of time, they need to be in real small pieces. Mine were too large so they didn’t all melt. However, if you like the look of soap pieces in the soap, then do as I did!
After the soap is chopped or grated to your satisfaction, put about 12 to 16 ounces in a plastic bag. Add enough water to just moisten the soap.
Knead the bag to make sure the water is throughout the bag. Then close up the soap bag and slip it into a larger bag.
After closing the larger bag, place them into the pan of boiling water.
Now, cover the pan. You can check the soap from time to time, but it will take at least an hour for the soap to melt.
After an hour it should have the consistency of jelly. See my picture above. If you have shredded your soap real fine, you would not have the chunks I still had left. However, I thought the chunks would give it an interesting look.
Now is the time to add your fragrance or essential oil. Just add enough to your liking. I also added dried Calendula flowers. You can also add a little butter or oil (cocoa butter, shea butter, wheatgerm oil, sunflower oil, etc.) at this point, but if you do make sure you use the soap up within three months since the oils may turn rancid.
Cut a hole in a corner of the soap bag and pipe the contents into your molds. Let them set for several hours and then remove from the molds.
I let them dry for a week before I tried them out. They look funky, but smell real good. And look at this lather!
This is just one way to rebatch soap. You can use the microwave, the oven, or a crockpot. However, I thought this way would be the easiest. It is a tad messy, but it’s a great way to use up those little shards of soap left in the shower. It also gives you the opportunity to use some fragrance or essential oils you hadn’t tried before.
Awesome, Lynda!!!
I think they look really cool and pretty Lynda! I didn’t even know you could rebatch soap like that. Thanks for sharing the technique!
Wow, these are awesome.
Drica, I received your voicemail message but I coudn’t respond since you didn’t leave your email. This is the only time I’ve rebatched so I’m not much help. As far as signing up, if you want to receive my blog post via email, at the top on the right side of the page you will see a box to enter your email. Thanks for dropping by and hope you see this message.
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