by Rustic Escentuals

A wonderful soap for the cold weather! It’s a loaf soap with white Shea butter soap curls and a sparking peppermint scent. This will give you 9 slices of soap, enough for you and your friends.

Skills: embedding, soap loaf

sparkling peppermint scented winter soap!

Supplies and Equipment Needed
Large Microwave safe glass container – enough to hold 40 ounces of soap
Sharp knife to cut soap into cubes
Spray bottle with rubbing alcohol
Butter knife
Rubber gloves
Loaf Soap Mold
Disposable pipette
Thermometer to monitor soap temperature
40 oz Ultra Clear Melt and Pour Soap Base
Peppermint Swizzle Stick Fragrance Oil
Uncut block of Shea Butter Melt & Pour Soap Base
Vegetable Peeler
Miter box cutter – not shown in supplies

gather your basic supplies

and the remainder of the supplies (don’t forget the peeler!)

Prepare in Advance

Step 1: To create swirl embeds, take a block of Shea Butter soap base and, using the vegetable peeler, “peel” strips of soap from this block. Don’t make the strips too thick; you want the strips to curl up. Make enough swirls to fill the loaf mold.

peel a nice amount of curled pieces, enough to fill the mold

Now let’s make the soap

Step 2: Cut up 40 oz. of Ultra Clear Melt & Pour into small cubes. Place in a large microwave safe glass container and melt in the microwave using 30 – 60 second bursts, stirring between bursts until melted. This is a large amount of soap and it will take longer to melt, take your time so that you don’t boil or burn your soap.

Step 3: Using a disposable pipette, slowly add 20 ml’s of Peppermint Swizzle Stick fragrance oil. Stir slowly until mixed well.

once melted, add your fragrance oil and stir slowly to mix

Step 4: Use a thermometer to monitor the soap base temperature; it should be about 135° to avoid warping the mold and melting the embeds. If soap is too hot, keep stirring slowly.

monitor the soap temp to reach the sweet spot, 135F

Step 5: Slowly pour the soap into the Square Loaf Soap Mold. Remember to pour slowly to avoid excess bubbles. I like to pour half way up the mold then add the embeds, followed by more soap and more embeds. Others like to pour almost all the way to the top of the mold before adding the embeds. Either way, make sure you don’t pour all the way to the top, leave a tiny gap. After pouring, spritz the soap with alcohol to zap any bubbles.

slowly (to avoid bubbles) pour melted soap into your soap mold

Step 6: Spritz the soap curls with alcohol before adding to the loaf mold.

before adding the curls, spritz them with rubbing alcohol

Step 7: Add the soap curls to the mold.

once spritzed, add your curls to your mold

Step 8: To finish up, add more curls to the top of the soap loaf so that they stick out of the soap. If the clear soap is starting to thicken, spritz with alcohol first and press the curls in.

add some curls to the top of the soap so they stick out (visually appealing!)

Step 9: Spritz the top of the soap with alcohol and drizzle a small amount of clear soap over the curls to help “cement” them into place.

spritz your top curls with alcohol

and drizzle some clear soap to keep curls from falling out

Step 10: This is a large amount of soap; therefore it will take much longer to completely harden. I suggest waiting overnight before trying to remove from the mold.

let harden overnight before removing from mold

patience, patience! set aside overnight until fully hardened

Step 11: When completely hardened, slowly pull the sides of the mold away from the soap, turn over, and gently press on the underside of mold to release the soap.

Tip: If the soap won’t come out, wait another hour or so – don’t fight it. You can even pop the soap in the freezer for 5 minutes.

once it’s out of the mold it’s ready to be cut!

Cutting your Soap

Step 12: Cutting the loaf into 1 inch bars will yield approximately 9 bars of soap. I use a miter box cutter for easier and safer cutting. Miter boxes can be found in home improvement stores like Home Depot or Lowes. Without the miter box, the soap loaf tends to shift when you cut.