Eco-Holiday Gift: Gorgeous DIY Soap Bars

This year I am going to try to be an eco-DIY gift giving yogini. With a potential house purchase looming on the horizon and the lesser environmental footprint of a usable, homemade sans synthetic chemicals, gift it seems like a win-win situation.

I thought over the next few weeks I could share some of my favourite DIY recipes for gift giving this holiday season.

One DIY holiday gift that is actually time sensitive is homemade soap. It will take two weeks to cure, so the next few weekends will be the ideal time to get your soap making skillz ON.

(our red hibiscus-lemon soap: the colour is from water steeped in red hibiscus tea overnight)

The beauty of making soap is that it is actually EASY. No really. Friends and I made three batches this weekend (and I plan on making a few more tomorrow night). The total prep time needed is about 3 hrs, 1.5hrs of that is the soap warming in the oven.

 The two big road blocks to soap making are:

1. Finding the wooden boxes (a friend of mine's dad makes them, but you could easily make them yourself or even see about having someone at a home building store make them for you)
2. Finding the lye (in HRM it is only sold at Home Hardware).

(Christine from Fit Hippie Chick, and I mixing the lye)

The other ingredients and hardware (stick blender, digital scale, bucket) are all cheaply bought at Canadian Tire (or other hardware store).

Our three batches produced 12 bars of soap each with scents ranging from lemon-hibiscus, sweet cinnamon and chai. I'm keeping some for myself and some to gift.

So go on, get your holiday soap on:

DIY Beautiful Soap Bars, Surprisingly Easy!