Okay, so I’ve watched one too many videos on BuzzFeed and this video on making your own DIY aromatherapy soap finally made me do it. I dropped everything I was doing, pulled up Amazon, and Amazon Primed myself all the stuff needed to make homemade soap. For someone who loves DIY projects and gets a little anxious about having all the right materials, the starter kit for making soap wasn’t too bad. I shopped around for the soap base first. There is a lot to choose from. You can get clear glycerin, goat’s milk, oatmeal and one of my favorites, Shea butter. I decided to go with an oatmeal base, since I wanted to it to be textured and all-natural looking. I knew for this first go around, I was going to use dried flowers and rely little on added coloring.

For the flowers, I decided to buy myself a mixed bouquet from the market. Yes, I buy myself flowers! I love the idea of having fresh flowers in the house. The color, the scent and just the idea of having something alive in the room really just brightens up your day. It’s sad when they die, but now I know how to make full use of them. I took the flower petals and set them aside so that they would dry. This batch had blue hydrangeas and others that I’d save for a later time. I also had a sash of dried lavender that my mom got from her vacation that I thought would be great for this project.

With the dried flowers ready, I went ahead and bought the rest of the ingredients: soap mold, a pack of essential oils and alcohol spray. Since I was doing Melt and Pour, you literally just had to cut the block of soap into cubes and melt it over a pot of hot water. It took about ten minutes to melt, but make sure to keep an eye on it and keep stirring so it won’t scald.

While the soap was melting, I stirred in lavender and lemongrass essential oils. Then I sprayed the soap molds with alcohol and drizzled in the dried hydrangea and lavender. Once the soap base was completely melted, I poured them into the soap molds and then popped them straight into the freezer for about four hours. I think I poked and prodded them at the two hour mark just to see how they were doing. They were rock hard, but you can tell they were still setting.

Four hours later, you’ve got soap that you can proudly use!