Confetti Soaps

In a large box in my garage, I’ve been stockpiling the shavings and end cuts left over from cleaning up the edges of my soaps. Since the box of leftovers and scraps was about to overflow, I decided I needed to do something with those things. We’re talking at least 15 pounds of soap here. Not for the faint of heart!

First, I divided up the shavings, some into like colors, and some into like fragrances. And then came the fun part. I spent some time planning out what fun I could have incorporating all those shavings into new designs and new scents.

After lots of weighing and calculating, I had several plans ready to go. The first soap I made was actually two-in-one. I divided a large loaf mold in half with a piece of cardboard, made enough white base soap to fill it, then divided the white soap into 2 bowls. Into one bowl went some Energy fragrance oil along with scraps of pink, orange, and yellow Satsuma soap (similar citrus scents). Into the other bowl, I added Elements of Bamboo fragrance and scraps of green and tan soaps of various earthy scents like Green Clover & Aloe. I poured both bowls into the same mold, one on each side of the divider. Here are the resulting soaps.

Notice that I also got to practice oil and mica swirls on top of these soaps!? 🙂

My next batch of soap was a mixture of lots of bright-colored soap scraps that had been sitting around for quite some time, as well as some pretty recently made soaps. To make sure the older shavings would incorporate into the new soap, I spritzed them with distilled water, mixed, and let them sit to soften for about half an hour before making the new soap. To this batch I added a sample of Black Cherry Bomb fragrance oil, and I colored the base soap an awesome shade of neon pink. I added the shavings to this base, stirred and poured into the mold.

With the remainder of my scraps, I decided to hot process rebatch. It was a hodge-podge of scraps containing some red, black and dark green soaps, but mostly consisting of natural tan-colored soap shreds left from Oatmeal Milk & Honey soap as well as Almond and Vanilla soaps. I put 4 pounds of scraps in a big crock pot on high, added 5oz distilled water, and stirred every 15-30 minutes. After about an hour, the soap seemed a bit dry so I added 2oz of milk and 2oz of water. Some of the larger chunks never melted, while the majority of the small tan shavings did melt. After about 2 hours in the crock, it appeared like the soap was ready to mold. To add more interest, I stirred in some more chunks of red, black, and white soaps, then I added a sample of a different cherry fragrance oil, stirred it all up, and plopped it into my mold.

I thought the cherry fragrance would compliment the strong undertones of Oatmeal Milk & Honey and Vanilla soap scraps, but I was wrong! I also thought the miscellaneous colors would make the soap look more fun and interesting. Wrong again! This one gets the prize for “Ugliest Soap I’ve Ever Created.”

This rather yucky soap has an awesome lather, though! And with various milk and yogurt soap scraps plus more milk added, it should be extra nourishing.

So what do you do with super ugly soaps that have already been rebatched and still turned out badly???

Just chalk it up as a good learning experience and chuck it, I suppose! Or wear a blindfold and nose-plug while showering. 😀

Thankfully it was all just scraps anyway. Not like I was ruining a large batch of new oils and butters with a fragrance that I absolutely loved! It’s not a total failure. I have actually had success hot process rebatching other soaps, and I’ve come up with other creative ways to use scraps, like this fun embed soap I made a few months ago.

I didn’t end up using all 15 pounds of my scraps, but I sure used a lot of them! Making confetti soaps was pretty darn fun, and I have enough scraps left to make a few more soaps. Here’s to a new day of soaping.