Soap Making Instructional: Flower Pot Soaps
This clever and fun arrangement was created by Nouveau Designs owner, Denise Marks. It was designed as a get-well gift but works equally well for birthdays, craft show displays, or as a thank you gift. Consider making several of these arrangements for your next shower or special event. Have each guest remove a soap from the arrangement to take home as a thank you or hostess gift.
Here's what you need:
Molds: Cut Glass Butterfly, Celestial Sun, Sunflower
Fragrance Oils- If using our fragrance oils, we recommend 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons per pound of soap base. You may need to adjust the amount if using another supplier's fragrance.
Soap Colorants- We used Neon Yellow, Tomota Red, and Turquoise.
Wooden Skewers - Use to secure to the back of soap so that it stand upright in the pot.
Florist Tape- We used a green color and wrapped each wooden skewer so that it would look like a stem.
Flower Pot Container- We used an inexpensive terra cotta planter spray painted yellow. We glued the round drainage saucer to the pot with Elmer's glue. Note: A deeper container works best due to the weight of the soaps. The ends of the wooden skewers need to be inserted at least 5-6 inches into the pot to keep the soaps upright in the arrangement.
Floral Foam- Placed inside the container to hold the wooden skewers in an upright position.
4 x 6" Shrink Bags or Clear Plastic Wrap- You will need to wrap each soap since you will be taping the back of each soap to a wooden skewer.
Optional: Curling ribbon and floral greens. We used some floral stems left-over from another project. We removed the flower heads and used the wire stem and leaves for this project. Wal-Mart offers inexpensive silk flowers. You might want to incorporate a few silk flowers into your arrangement.
GETTING STARTED
Step One
Place your clear glycerin soap in a melting pot. Place the melting pot inside a pan partially filled with water. Never melt the soap over direct heat. We also do not recommend using the microwave to melt your soap for this project. You will need to gauge an exact temperature when pouring your soap into the mold. It is much easier to monitor the soap's temperature when using the double-boiler heating method.
Step Two
As the soap begins to melt, clip your thermometer inside the melting pot so that the tip of the thermometer is touching the soap base. Reduce heat to very low once the soap reaches a temperature of 160 degrees. Add fragrance and color to your soap.
Step Three
Slowly pour soap into your molds. For one of the butterflies, we poured both lemon yellow and berry pink into the mold at the same time for a swirl effect. If you do this, be certain that you pour at a lower temperature (around 140 degrees). We also used contrasting colors for the sunflower for a more interesting effect. A second butterfly was made in the same manner as our Spring Fling Butterfly.
Step Four
Lightly spray the back side of poured soaps with rubbing alcohol to remove any air bubbles on the surface of soaps. The bubbles and (smell of alcohol) will disappear. Allow soap to cool completely before trying to release from the mold. Wrap each soap in clear plastic wrap or shrink bags. If using clear plastic wrap, tape the back of the stretched wrap so that it is secure.
Preparing The Pot:
Cut a piece of floral foam to fit the inside of your container. To hide the foam, we secured (with floral greening pins) colorful gift basket shred to the top of the foam.
Cover wooden skewers with floral tape. You might wish to add a few leaves to each skewer before covering with the floral tape. We removed the silk leaves from the wire stem of a silk flower bush and slid them onto the skewer. Secure the back of each soap to a wooden skewer. Clear packing tape works best.
Insert each soap into the floral foam. We used 4 sunflowers, 1 celestial sun, and two cut glass butterflies in our arrangement. Finish off your arrangement with coordinating curling ribbon. We used greening pins to secure the curling ribbon to the base of the pot and then taped a curls to the back of a few soaps. Insert a few silk flowers if desired. Brightly colored Tulips make a nice display.
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