An easy technique for customizing your soap

By Ruth Esteves

Have you ever wished that you could add a custom design to your cold process soaps, but don’t think you’re “artistic” enough? There’s a technique that makes it easy to decorate your soaps however you want.

Here’s the beauty of it: you don’t have to be able to draw; you can trace your design.

I’ve had it in my mind to try this technique for ages. I remember seeing it in a soap blog (Japanese, I think). It obviously made an impression on me and I finally got the chance to try it out. But I can’t find my original source anymore. 😦 If any readers remember seeing this and can point me to a source, I’d love to give it proper credit.

First, find or draw your own design or pattern, or even writing.

Now line your mold with freezer paper and open up the paper again. Or if you are using a mold that doesn’t require lining (like the green silicone mold that I used), then cut a piece of freezer paper that fits the bottom of the mold.

Take the freezer paper that will be on the bottom of your mold and lay it over your design, shiny side down. You should be able to see through the paper enough to trace your design onto it.

I found this pattern that I liked online and printed it out to the size I wanted.

Now lay the freezer paper back into your mold (shiny side up) and start making your batch of cold process soap.

Color a small amount of your soap as desired and place it in a squeeze bottle. Then just use your tracing as a guide and “paint” with your soap onto the freezer paper at the bottom of the mold.

You can see the squeeze bottle in the background, with the blue soap in it. Since I was alone, I couldn’t take a photo of myself piping the soap, but this is what it looked like when I was done.

Let this set for a few minutes to firm up, and then gently layer the rest of your soap over it. To protect the design, I started by spooning on some of my white soap, before pouring on the rest. Then I ended with a thin layer of the blue soap, just because. 😉

Once the soap has set, just unmold and peel away the paper to reveal your soapy design!

You can see where the lines are uneven in spots. Some thinner, some thicker. It was a little hard to control the flow of the soap coming out of the bottle because the soap was a bit too thin. I got too excited to wait to let it thicken up! Next time, I will.

I think this technique has such great potential! Anything that you can trace, you can put onto soap: designs, drawings, initials, words… And why stop at one color!?

UPDATE: I found the link to a blog post that inspired me to try this technique. Although it’s not the original tutorial that I know I saw once, it is a beautiful example of what is possible with this.

Have you seen or used this technique yourself? What design would YOU like to see on soap?

32 thoughts on “An easy technique for customizing your soap”

      • I would google “swirl design” and select “images”. Also, try iStockphoto.com and Fotolia.com. Or get inspired and make it yourself! You can keep working at it until you like, unlike trying to do it freehand right on the soap.

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  15. Hello Ruth this is Mandy, I tried your technique I thought it was great. BUT I would just like to let you know and anyone else that make sure you put 2 layers of freezer/baking paper down. Because even though I had shiny side up with my design facing on the bottom of my silicone mold, what horror did I find when I took my soap out of the mold only to find it had left a permitted imprint in my silicone mold. Thank goodness it did not get on my soap. I had actually drew my design about a month ago and found it and used it yesterday. But these are the lessons we learn. Still a great idea.

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