Soap By You

Don't have a Soap by You kit yet? Get started right here.

You’ve just received a box of the most premium soap available. There’s a bit of a catch though—it’s shredded. I’ll bet you’re wondering what you’re supposed to do with it. Well, we think you’ll be just fine figuring out what to do with it, but here are some ideas to get you started:

Before you work with the soap, it’s best to heat it up. The easiest way to do that is to stick it in the microwave. Take a handful or two of shreds and put them in a large microwaveable bowl. We like about 3-4 oz for a bar. Microwave this for 5-8 seconds (really, don’t heat it for any longer than that). Take the shreds out and mash them around in your hand until the whole thing is an even temperature. You can repeat this process a few times. Just remember the soap heats unevenly in the microwave, so don’t heat it for more than 5-8 seconds at a time. You could overheat the soap, or even worse burn yourself. Don’t do that. Alternatively, if you’re heating more than just a handful, you can spread the soap shred evenly in a glass brownie pan and bake it at 200 ºF for 15 minutes. Carefully check the temperature before you dive in so you don’t burn yourself.

Once you’ve got the soap soft and flexible, here are some awesome things you can do with it:

• Knead it into a dough and use a cookie cookie cutter to make fun and unique shapes out of it. Want Christmas-tree or snowman soap for the holidays? Done.
• Make your kid’s favorite animal into a soap bar. Yeah we know kids don’t always like washing, but what if they could wash with a cheetah or panda bear? You can use a cookie cutter for this, or if you’re really talented you can just make it into a sculpture. Of course you can just let your child do it, saving you the work and giving their imagination some exercise.
• Add cool stuff to it. Some things we like to use are cinnamon, dried lavender, or essential oil if you have any. You can also mix this with soap you haven’t added anything to. It makes a cool marbled look.
• Make soap on a rope.
• Press it into candy molds. When you’re done just pop the molds in the freezer for an hour or two. This makes it a lot easier to get the soap out. Clear molds are also a plus, because you can see if you’ve filled the entire mold the way you want to.

Once you’re done playing around, your soap will be ready to use in a couple of days. If you can stand to let it sit around for about two weeks you’ll get a lot more use out of the soap. The drier it is the longer it will last. If you don’t make up your whole pile of soap at once, make sure you keep it in a sealed container so it doesn’t dry out.

CAUTION: Soap can be VERY HOT after heating. Please exercise extreme caution when handling. If you’re unsure how hot the soap is, wait several minutes before handling it.