Soap Stars

The boys and I made soap stars. No equipment or special ingredients needed. Super easy! See instructions below.

My kids like to play with the soap in the bathtub and they ended up wasting a lot of soap. So instead of having to police them in the bathtub and holler at them all the time about using all the soap I decided to make them their own little mini soaps that they can use.

Bear in mind, I am not a soap expert so there might be some weird variations if you use a different soap than I used or add anything like coloring or scent. I'll just tell you what I did and you can experiment on your own and not hold me responsible if you make a big kitchen disaster because of my shoddy instructions. :)

What you need:

• one bar of Dove soap
  
• cheese grater
  
• small container of hot water and a spoon
  
• bowl
  
• optional: a mold, ice cube tray or mini-muffin tin
  

Before you begin, cover your work area! The soap sticks to stuff like crazy and is a huge pain to clean up!

Grate the soap in a bowl. Spoon in 1 tbsp of hot water to start and then smoosh the soap around with your hand until it's soft and you can shape it. It might take an additional tablespoon of water. IMPORTANT: LESS WATER IS BETTER. DO NOT ADD TOO MUCH WATER. (That's the most important hint I can give you.)

At this point you can shape the soap into balls and be done with it if you just want round balls of soap. One time I added some lavender and made soap balls as gifts.

If you want shapes you can press the soap into a mold of some sort. The best thing I have found so far is the flexible silicone molds they sell as ice trays at party stores or Hobby Lobby. You don't have to oil them to get them out of the pan. If you use something like a regular ice tray or the muffin tin you should probably spray Pam in the container.

Use a spoon to press the softened soap into the molds. (For what I was doing I only did it halfway because I wanted the tiniest bars possible.) If you don't like that the soap looks lumpy on the exposed part you can wet your finger and rub them smooth, just don't use too much water. Try to pack in the soap really well so when they are dry they will hold together well.

Let them sit overnight and then pop them out of the mold and let them cure for a few days. They should be completely dry before use.

Depending on big your bars are you can get anywhere from 4 to 15 mini-bars out of one big bar of soap.