How to Make Soap with a “Grass” Effect or Stripes
Looking for more simple ways to dress up your homemade cold process soap bars? Put your leftover soap ends and scraps to good use by creating stripes in your soaps. This look is super simple and it creates a look that is similar to grass growing in a field depending on your color choices.
To create this look you’ll first need to gather your soap pieces that will serve as the stripes in your soap. You can either use soap ends from your loaves that you have on hand or you can cut a bar of soap into thin slivers about half the width of a 1 oz. guest size bar of soap. You can use different width soap pieces for a varying effect.
Once you have your soap pieces you will be embedding into your soap loaf to create a “grass” look or stripes in your new loaf, you’re ready to begin making your soap. (Learn how to make homemade cold process soap here.) Be sure to color it a different color than your soap embed pieces so they show up. Once you pour your fresh batch of soap into the mold, place the soap embeds along the length of the mold in the fresh soap in various places. You can place them straight up and down or at a slight diagonal – or even a combination of the two. Press fully into soap for a smooth top or leave a bit of the soap embeds sticking out of the top of the soap for an interesting textured on top of your final bars. Use as many or as few of the embeds as you like to create your desired effect. There is no right or wrong to this as it’s all based on your own aesthetic!
Once you’ve placed all of your soap slices into the batch of soap, cover your mold and insulate as you normally would. After twenty-four hours, you can unmold your soaps and cut into bars. (I generally discount my water amounts in my batches so I can cut my soaps right away. If your soap is still a bit soft, wait until it firms up a bit before cutting.) Your final soap bars will reveal lovely stripes when cut into bars.
Other simple ideas on how to make your cold process soaps more decorative include circle embeds, heart embeds, hand stamping, and adding an exfoliating strip. I also have DIY’s on how to make your own simple wooden loaf soap molds and a soap cutter.
