6 April 2022 / Laura Garvin Gomez
How to make pastel soaps with essential oils for Easter
Celebrate this Easter with these fun, beautifully-scented soaps.
Easter is a time for family, and there’s no better way to bond than by creating something together.
These soaps are perfect for making with kids or loved ones, or for hiding around the garden for your family to find.
This recipe uses three beautiful colours, each paired with a beneficial essential oil, for Easter gifts that will look as lovely as they smell.
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Before you start: This recipe won’t include a list of equipment and the instructions may not be minutely detailed at every stage. That’s because you can find all of this information by heading over to this article: A beginner’s guide to making soap using essential oils. We recommend having it open as you work through this recipe, especially if you are fairly new to soap making. You should also pay attention to all the relevant safety information contained in the article. |
How to make pastel soaps for easter:
Ingredients:
- 63g sodium hydroxide
- 110g distilled water
- 114g coconut oil
- 91g shea butter
- 227g olive oil
- 23g castor oil
- ¼ tsp Ultramarine pink pigment
- ¼ tsp Ultramarine violet pigment
- ¼ tsp yellow iron oxide powder
- 5g Lavender Essential Oil
- 5g Rose Geranium Essential Oil
- 5g Lemon Essential Oil
Method:
- Mix the Ultramarine pink powder in a tablespoon of olive oil and set aside.
- Measure your coconut oil and shea butter into a pan and your olive oil and castor oil into a jug.
- Pour the distilled water into a heat-proof jug.
- Dissolve the sodium hydroxide crystals into the jug of water. *Please refer to our soap-making guide for instructions on how to do this safely.*
- Melt the coconut oil and shea butter in a pan on a very low heat. When both have melted, remove the pan from the heat and set down on a heat-proof surface.
- Pour the olive and castor oil into a pan with the melted coconut oil and shea butter.
- Measure the temperature of the mixed oils and lye solution – both should be around 35-38 degrees Celsius.
- Pour the lye water through a sieve into the pan of oils.
- Stir the solution together. Then hold the stick blender to the bottom of the pan and blitz for a couple of seconds. Turn off, stir, and repeat until the mixture thickens to ‘trace’. At this stage it should have a thin, custard-like consistency.
- Separate the mixture into three jugs. To the first, add the pink colourant and the rose geranium essential oil. To the second, add the purple colourant and the lavender essential oil. To the third, add the yellow colourant and the lemon essential oil.
- Either pour each jug into a separate square mould, or pour into the soap mould of your choice.
- Leave the soap in its mould for 48 hours before cutting into bars. You should then leave the soap to cure in a cool, dry place for 28 days.
- Package up as gifts and give away – or keep for yourself!
Can I use fragrance oils to make this soap?
If you want your soap to have the kind of consistent scent that comes with artificial products, then you may want to use a fragrance oil in place of one or all of the essential oils.
Bear in mind that whilst fragrance oils can make great additions to soap, they have none of the natural benefits of essential oils.
What are Ultramarine pink pigment, Ultramarine violet pigment and yellow oxide pigment?
These are all natural colourants that are quite easy to source from online retailers. They give the bars of soap their pretty pastel colours, but they aren’t an essential part of this recipe.
You can feel free to swap any of them out for a colourant of your choice, or leave them out altogether and let your soap bars remain a neutral colour.
Optional:
Instead of making square soap bars, you may want to try using a soap mould that shapes the soap into bunnies or Easter eggs.
