Citrus Soap for the Shower (say that 3 times fast!)

I would love to say I thought of this on my own, but I found the idea on my Martha Stewart craft-of-the-day emails. I thought this soap looked so cute, so I read her instructions, and it seemed way too easy. I had to try it. So Martha said all that you have to do is grind up citrus rinds or fruit and add it to clear glycerin. Let it set, and then you have soap. Off to Michael's craft store I went. They had a lot of soap bases to choose from. I saw a clear glycerin, which is what Martha used, but that package was kind of yucky. There was an olive oil one, an avocado soap (sounded neat), a few others, and then a shea butter one. A woman at the market gave me some shea butter for my feet and my heels have never been happier, so I chose that one. It wasn't clear like the glycerin, it was white and milky, so I knew that the color of my soap wouldn't be quite as attractive as Martha's-but who can ever do anything as attractive as Martha? The soaps were $9.99 for a pretty big container. Always use a 40% off coupon if you can. If you don't know get the Michael's emails every week with a coupon, you NEED to sign up. When you sign up in the store, you instantly get 40% off of your most expensive item (that is not already on sale). AND-if you forget a coupon, just sign up again-they don't check into it. I'll admit I have about 5 email addresses that subscribe to the Michael's newsletter right now.

Anyway, all I did was grind up the citrus rinds in a blender. This part did confuse me a little, because in her directions, she said to blend them into a puree...she didn't mention anything about adding juice to it. I have a Vita Mix and that thing didn't make puree for me. It was more of a paste-like zest. I just went with it. Hey, it was my first try. The little bottle in the picture is some lemongrass-scented essential oil that I had left over from a trip to the spa-that was my back-up plan in case the zests didn't work out. Michael's has tons of frangrances to choose from, too.

After melting the soap in a glass measuring cup, I poured them into some silicone molds that I had. You don't have to use these. You can use an old yogurt cup or a juice container or something too. Or you can just use a large pan and cut the soap into bars once it sets. You don't have to spray the silicone molds with vegetable spray, but be sure to give any other mold a good coat of it. I started out with just using the zest, but the smell of the shea butter took over and you couldn't smell citrus. So I added a bunch more. Bad choice. The zest clumped together and created weak spots in the soap. I scrapped the first few and went to the back up plan. I added a bit of essential oil (you don't need a lot of that stuff, it is super concentrated) and then just a small sprinkling of zest for color. It only took about 20 minutes for the soaps to set up. I put them in the freezer for a little while to help loosen them from the tins. If you want to be fancy, you can spray rubbing alcohol over them once you pour them in to eliminate any bubbles. If I make them again, I will probably do that step.

And here they are! The picture shows about 1/2 of the total amount of soap that was made from one package of shea butter soap. They would make cute gifts, or maybe wedding or baby shower favors. I don't really have any of those events coming up though, so I'm stuck with all of this soap. I did have fun making it though! I love random projects. We will have enough soap for every "April shower"!