Handmade Soap Gifts

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Inside: Find lots of handmade soap gifts and ways to package them.

Homemade soap is a great gift idea because almost everyone uses soap. And when you make your own you can control the ingredients, the scent, and even add things like coffee grounds for exfoliation or herbs and flowers to make your soaps beautiful.

Soaps are great to keep on hand for when you suddenly need a gift and you forgot to purchase one. I’ve gathered some of the best soap recipes on the internet so that you can make some handmade soap to give as gifts for Christmas or other holidays.

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Melt & Pour Recipes

If you are just getting started making soap, I recommend starting with a melt and pour soap recipe instead of a cold process method or hot process soap recipe.

To make melt and pour soap, you just need a few supplies and a few minutes time and you can have beautiful handmade soap gifts for all your holiday presents. If you are going the cold or hot process route, you’ll need different supplies and you’ll need to allow a lot more time for the soap to cure.

These recipes all use a melt and pour soap base so they are perfect for the beginning soap maker.

I do recommend purchasing the highest quality melt and pour soap base that you can afford. It truly does make a difference in the final product. My favorite brands are:

• Stephenson Shea Butter Melt & Pour Soap Base
• Our Earth’s Secrets Goats Milk Soap Base
• Primal Elements Clear Soap Base

These seem to have more natural ingredients than other kinds I’ve seen. However, these recipes will also work with almost any soap base that you can find online or at your local hobby stores.

Homemade Soap Bars with Essential Oils

Many people like to use more natural products nowadays and using essential oils in your soap instead of fragrance oils is an easy way to make a more natural soap.

You can use a single essential oil or a blend of many in your soap. You can swap the essential oils in many of these recipes for your favorite essential oil blend.

Essential Oil Soap Recipes

Orange Peel Soap – This soap recipe uses clear soap with dried orange peel, dried orange slices, and orange essential oil for a soap that smells out-of-this-world. This would be the perfect soap to wake you up in the morning since orange essential oil is a great mood booster.

Lavender is always a popular essential oil to use in soap. It has a calming scent that is perfect to use at the end of a long day.

In this Lavender Rosemary Soap tutorial, Dawn shows you how to create a luxurious and all-natural lavender rosemary-infused soap that is not only gentle on your skin but also free from harmful ingredients. She guides you through the step-by-step process, including optional essential oils that you can add for a personalized touch.

Do you love the scent of pine trees in the winter? Pine is uplifting, calming, and mentally clarifying. This Homemade Forest Pine Soap uses balsam fir essential oils and a natural colorant for a woodsy scent that would be a great gift to give to men for Christmas.

Peppermint Soap with shea butter is another soap recipe that would be perfect for Christmas gifts. If you are looking for a soap recipe that’s moisturizing and gentle on your skin, you’re going to love this soap bar. Using a moisturizing homemade soap recipe is a great way to return moisture to dry skin.

If you would like my printable that contains 30 essential oil blends, perfect to use in handmade bar soap recipes you can get it FREE as a bonus for joining my newsletter.

Handmade Soaps That Exfoliate

There are many ingredients you can add to the soap base to add some scrubbiness and exfoliating qualities to your soap.

Many of these scrubby soaps make a wonderful gift for men. While people often don’t think of giving soap to men, it makes the perfect gift, especially for the hardworking man who does outdoor jobs such as landscaping or mechanics.

Adding some exfoliating ingredients to your soap will help remove the dirt, grease, and grime on a working man’s hands. Keep in mind that anything you add to the soap will eventually go down the drain as you are using the soap.

Exfoliating Soap Recipes

This Poppy Seed Soap DIY makes the perfect soap to exfoliate tired, winter skin. Melt-and-pour soap recipes are so easy to make. You can easily stock your cabinet with your favorite homemade soaps in different scents.

Coffee Exfoliating Soap – Who wouldn’t like to wake up and shower with a soap that contains coffee grounds for exfoliation? And if you use coffee essential oil (or fragrance oil), you can make the soap smell just like that morning cup of coffee.

DIY Loofah Soap – This DIY loofah soap makes a wonderful exfoliating body bar that will leave you feeling like you’ve had a professional spa treatment. You can make this recipe using your favorite essential oils, so be sure to experiment with different scents!

Oatmeal Melt & Pour Soap – Oatmeal soap can be very beneficial to your skin. It usually works well for eczema and acne and is a great exfoliator for the entire body. 

Charcoal Soap – There are so many activated charcoal soap benefits that go beyond traditional cleansing methods. In this ​step-by-step guide from Kateable, you will learn the top charcoal bar soap benefits, an easy-to-follow homemade black soap recipe, and the different ways you can use charcoal soap!

Homemade Soaps for Kids

These are some super cute soap ideas to give to kids.

Easy Harry Potter Soap is perfect for the Harry Potter Fans. This maroon and gold layered soap mimics the colors in the scarf Harry Potter wore.

Homemade Ice Cream Soap is sure the be a hit with even the youngest children. You may find them washing their hands more often to get to the ice cream surprise in the center of the soap.

Homemade Lego Jelly Soap – Make bath time a blast with wiggly, homemade LEGO jelly soap that looks just like LEGO bricks! These transparent soaps are sure to make bath time a whole lot more fun.

Novelty Soaps

This Pumpkin Spice Soap from Sustain My Craft looks absolutely adorable and would make a great party favor for a Thanksgiving celebration with family and friends. Although they look like a sweet Fall dessert, they are actually adorable soaps. Just note that is one will take a bit longer to make than many of the others on this list.

Chocolate Vanilla Swirl Soap – Chocolate and Vanilla might be two of the most popular fragrances in the entire world! Why not combine them together to make a delicious-smelling soap that looks fancy but is actually quite easy to make? A layered pouring technique gives these handmade soap bars a designer touch that is very easy to make!

Handmade Sugar Scrub Soap – If you enjoy using natural body scrubs you’ll love this recipe for an all-natural scrub with sugar. It’s the perfect combination of a great bar of soap with a good sugar scrub and the lavender grapefruit scent is refreshing without being overwhelming.

How to Package Handmade Soaps

Once you have removed the soap from the molds, you should wrap each bar with plastic wrap. Over time, melt and pour soap will sweat. While it doesn’t harm the soap, it doesn’t make for as nice a finished product.

After the soap is wrapped you can package the soap many different ways. The simplest way is to just tie a ribbon around the bar of soap.

You can make great spa gift baskets by packaging homemade soaps with other handmade items like a lip balm, a lotion bar, whipped body butter, bath salts, and something like a cute towel or washcloth.

A handmade soap gift box or basket would make a thoughtful gift for the elderly as it is something that would be used and not create clutter. You could package up several varieties of soap to make beautiful handmade soap gift sets anyone is sure to love.

Who to Gift Soaps To

There are so many people you can give bars of handmade soap to. But here are some ideas if you love making soap and don’t know what to do with it all.

• Hostess gifts
• Bridal shower favors
• Baby shower favors
• Teacher and librarian gifts
• Delivery drivers
• A birthday gift for almost anyone
• Christmas gifts

Related Posts

• If you aren’t familiar with making homemade soap, this tutorial will guide you through the steps of using a melt and pour soap base.
• Want to make beautiful layered soaps? This post shares the secrets to perfect layers when using a melt and pour soap base.
• Learn how to make foaming hand soap in this post.

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