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Make this nourishing rose facial soap in an afternoon and use it the same day. The recipe uses all natural ingredients including madder root, fragrant essential oils, and an easy-to-use soap base.
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I share a lot of natural soap recipes but they’re usually made with the cold-process method. It’s fairly involved and includes an aspect that beginners shy away from: handling lye. That’s why I’m so excited to share with you this rose facial soap recipe from Jan Berry’s new book, Easy Homemade Melt and Pour Soaps. It’s a modern guide to making beautiful soaps using natural ingredients including soap bases, herbs, and essential oils. I’m pretty sure it will become a valued asset in your soap making library, even if you’re a die-hard cold process soap maker.
Melt-and-pour soap is a pre-made soap base that you can add all kinds of extra ingredients to. I like to use it for fun and simple projects because it’s so easy to work with and the soaps are ready within hours. I also recommend it to folks who plan on making soap with littles or who would like to use or gift their soap asap. Further below you’ll see the recipe for rose facial soap and notice that you can choose from a couple of different bases too.
Rose Facial Soap Recipe
This creamy facial soap is infused with rose petals and enriched with nourishing rosehip seed oil, making it perfect for normal to dry skin. Madder root powder gives the soap a soft pink color, while a few drops of geranium and lavender essential oils add just a hint of floral scent. For sensitive facial skin, be sure to look for natural shea butter or goat’s milk soap bases with minimal ingredients and that don’t contain detergents, such as sodium laureth sulfate.
Melt and Pour Soap Making Tutorial
Before making your first batch of melt-and-pour soap, prepare your work space and consider these additional tips.
- Gather all the ingredients needed to make the recipe.
- Prepare your work space with all of the needed equipment, including a cutting board and cutting utensil to cut the soap base, a Mason jar or heatproof container for melting it, a jar lid/heatproof saucer or plastic wrap to cover the jar/container, a fork or spatula for stirring, small glass containers for colorants and essential oils plus a small spray bottle filled with rubbing alcohol. Have the mold that you’re using clean and ready to fill. If using individual molds, consider placing them on a tray or cookie sheet to make it easy to move them.
- Cut the soap base into uniform cubes to help it melt evenly. Weigh out the amount needed for the recipe.
- Mix thoroughly but not vigorously to avoid excessive bubbles in your soap base. If you over-mix and create a lot of bubbles, spray a few spritzes of rubbing alcohol into the base at any time to eliminate them.
- Monitor the temperature, stirring occasionally. Pouring below 135°F (57°C) will keep ingredients more evenly suspended throughout the soap base. If you don’t have a thermometer, try pouring right after a thin skin starts forming over the cooling soap base.
- If the mold you’re using is very detailed, spray the inside with alcohol before filling it, to help the soap base flow into the details more easily. After filling the mold, spritz again with alcohol to remove any air bubbles from the surface.
More Melt-and-Pour Soap Recipes
This recipe is featured on page thirty-nine Jan Berry’s new book, Easy Homemade Melt and Pour Soaps. You can order it now to have not only this recipe but 49 other melt-and-pour soap recipes using all natural ingredients. Also make sure to check out these other melt-and-pour soap recipes:
- No-Lye Sensitive Soap Recipe
- Butterfly Pea Flower Soap Recipe
Rose Facial Soap Recipe
This creamy facial soap is infused with rose petals and enriched with nourishing rosehip seed oil, making it perfect for normal to dry skin. Madder root powder gives the soap a soft pink color, while a few drops of geranium and lavender essential oils add just a hint of floral scent. For sensitive facial skin, be sure to look for natural shea butter or goat’s milk soap bases with minimal ingredients and that don’t contain detergents, such as sodium laureth sulfate.
A note before you begin. When infusing rose petals in soap, be sure not to use browned petals or pieces of green stems or leaves, as they can add a brown tone to your soap. Don’t infuse rose petals for too long, and make sure to combine them with a colorant, such as madder root, shown here, since roses don’t hold their natural pink or red color in soap.
Author Jan Berry
Cost $15
Equipment
Sauce pan
Materials
- 1 Tbsp dried Rose Petals 0.5 g
- ¼ tsp Madder root powder
- 1 tsp Water
- 10.5 oz Shea butter or goat’s milk soap base 298 g / cut into 1" (2.5-cm) cubes
- ½ tsp Rosehip seed oil 2.5 ml
- ½ tsp Sunflower oil (cold-pressed if possible) 2.5 ml / or your favorite (liquid) oil
- 1/16 tsp Rose Geranium essential oil 0.2 g
- 1/16 tsp Lavender essential oil 0.2 g
- Rubbing alcohol for spritzing
Instructions
In a heatproof jar or container, combine the rose petals, madder root, water and soap base and cover it loosely with a canning lid or heatproof saucer. Place the jar in a saucepan containing a few inches (at least 5 cm) of water, forming a makeshift double boiler. Heat over medium-low heat until the soap is melted, 15 to 25 minutes, checking and stirring 2 or 3 times while the base slowly melts.
Turn off the heat and remove the jar from the pan. Stir well. Strain the infused soap base through a fine-mesh strainer and into a clean second jar or container to help catch specks of undissolved madder root. Stir in the rosehip seed oil, sunflower oil and essential oils. Mix well. Allow the hot soap to cool to around 135°F (57°C), stirring occasionally.
Carefully pour the melted soap base into the molds. Sometimes, you may notice a layer of speckled madder root powder accumulated in the bottom of the jar. Leave this behind in the jar, to minimize speckling in the final soap. Spray the top of the soap with alcohol to eliminate air bubbles.
Keep the soap in the molds until they’re completely cooled and hardened, 2 to 3 hours, then unmold and wrap them tightly. Store them in a cool, dry place, out of direct sunlight.
Optional: Wrap the bars tightly in shrink-wrap, plastic wrap or cellophane bags. You can also store them in airtight plastic storage containers. Melt-and-pour soap is best used within a year of making, though the soap won’t spoil or go bad after that time. The colors and scent will fade and the soap will eventually dry out, but it will still be usable.
Tried this project?Let us know how it was!
After Making Rose Facial Soap
Clean the containers and stirring utensils by soaking them in warm water and rinsing well. Don’t put anything still coated in soap directly into a dishwasher as the extra bubbles could make the dishwasher overflow. Before soaking the containers, first check whether the soap can be peeled out of the container. Depending on the container type and how thick the layer of soap is, it can sometimes be loosened at one edge with a spoon, and then peeled off in sheets for extra-easy cleanup.
