Fuzzy Felted Soap Balls

Thank you to Amanda Griffin from Lovin’ Soap for doing this tutorial. It’s like a cold process-felting tutorial all in one! We love it so much that we’ve got Cranberry Chutney fragrance on sale for you! I am loving her Charcoal Facial bar right now. Amanda is one talented soapmaker and we are lucky to have her guest blog today! Anne-Marie PS – If you’re new to soapmaking, safety up! Gloves, goggles, kids out of the way, no aluminum and review the basics here!

This recipe fits nicely into two of the round sphere molds. Tutorial by Amanda from Lovin’ Soap.

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RECIPE:

2 oz. Apricot Kernel Oil
2 oz. Avocado Oil
8 oz. Coconut Oil
9 oz. Olive Oil
1 oz. Shea Butter
3.17 oz. Lye
4 oz. Distilled Water
1.2 oz. Cranberry Chutney
15 drops of diluted Fuchsia LabColor
4 Sphere Silicone Mold

1. Make your lye water solution. Weigh out and melt the Coconut Oil and Shea Butter. Add the liquid oils to the melted oils. Add the fragrance oil and fuchsia color to the melted oils.

2. Get everything ready to go.  You should have your melted oil (with fragrance and color), the lye solution and two sphere molds.

Note: Be sure you have on your safety gear (goggles, gloves and long sleeves)!

3. Add the lye solution to the melted oils. Check out that beautiful color!  When you reach a light trace…pour into the molds.

4. Let them sit overnight and unmold.  I wanted mine to gel so I put them onto a heating pad and covered with a towel until they gelled. Unmold!

5. They can require a bit of cleanup.  Simply take a knife and cut off the nub.  You can then smooth it down with your finger.

Part 2:

6. Adorable!  And even more adorable felted!  So let’s make some cute felted soap balls!Let your soap balls cure at least three weeks before you felt them.  You will need some wool roving.  Make sure its the kind that shrinks down and felts.  Look around locally and see what you can find. Pull the wool into thin pieces as shown below if you want to create a striped pattern.  If you don’t…just use single colors similar in size as shown below.

7. Wrap your ball as evenly and tautly as you can.

8. Dunk your soap into hot water.

9. Bring it out after it is completely wet.  Then start squeezing and patting.  You don’t want to rub at this point or it will move your fibers around too much.  Dunk again.  Squeeze and pat some more.  It should start felting.

10. Now you can rub.  Alternate between squeezing, patting and rubbing your soap to felt.  You don’t want to dunk it into water too much but do it a few more times.  You can also use bubble wrap or a woven dinner mat to help with the agitation and felting.

11. Once you feel like you have it felted enough…where you pull on the fibers and they don’t pull up…then shock it with cold water.  This is a tip I learned from Bobbie at the Texas Soapmakers Conference.  Cold water shocks wool and causes it to felt as well.  So give it a good shock in ice cold water.

12. Then roll it in a towel to squeeze out the water.

13. And there you have it!  Adorable felted soap balls!

Cute!  And this one above came out with a little face on him.  So why felted soap?  Felted soap is a wash cloth or luffa and soap in one!  The felt causes the soap to lather like crazy and gives your skin a gentle exfoliation.  Wool dries quickly between uses and is anti-microbial so it doesn’t grow yuckies!

Click here for a printable PDF of this tutorial.