Photo Soap
Adding photos to home made soap... a great Soap making idea!

Homemade photo soap makes a terrific, functional and fun gift for any occasion. One of the best soap making ideas we've tried is to embed your favorite photograph right inside homemade soap. Another variation on this idea is to transfer photo decals onto the face of already-made soap bars.

Making soap at home is a very fun and relatively simple craft. In fact, home made soap making is a great project for kids to help out with. The soap DOES gets hot while it's melting though, so please be careful and teach your kids to use caution when making homemade soap.

Soap making material can be found at most craft stores or on soap crafting websites.

An easy way to get started with making soap at home is to buy a kit, which takes the guesswork out of the whole process. Choose a kit with rectangular molds and work through it before trying to make your photo soaps. Then, you'll already have some of the supplies you need for this project.

Although we don't know of any kits specifically for making photo soap, we have found this project in several soap making books. One of our favorites is 300 Handcrafted Soaps by Marie Browning but there are enough soapcrafting books out there to keep you busy with a variety of soap making ideas for years.

Here, I'll walk you through the step-by-step method of making soap at home and embedding pictures within your homemade soap (without bubbles!). These same instructions can be used to embed any object (not just photos) into your home made soap. Have fun while making these personalized soap gifts!

What you'll need to make photo soap:

1. Soap mold - Individual rectangular or rounded molds work best.
2. Some Clear, transparent Glycerin soap.
3. A heat-resistant glass container to melt the soap, preferably with a pouring spout.
4. Soap colorant.
5. Soap fragrance – This is optional but a nice touch.
6. Wooden mixing spoon or chopsticks.
7. Rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle.

Soap Making Instructions:

• Choose the photographs you’d like to use, cut them a little smaller than the soap mold(s) you plan to use, and laminate them.
• Break the soap base into small pieces for quick and easy melting.
• Place about 1 cup of the soap pieces into your glass container and microwave for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Do not let the soap boil!
• Stir lightly to melt any remaining solid pieces. Note: If you stir vigorously, you’ll end up with soap full of air bubbles. This is the single, most important thing to remember if you want professional-looking soaps.
• An alternate method, which I prefer since it seems to cut down on bubbles, is to place the glass container inside a pot of water on the stove. Bring the water to a boil and then reduce the heat to low, stirring the soap occasionally as it melts. Once melted, remove from pot and let sit for a minute until it cools slightly and a film forms. Remove the film gently with a chopstick before proceding to pour into the mold.
• Add no coloring or scent to this first batch (some scents can change the color.)
• Pour this clear soap mixture into the bottom ¼ to 1/3 of each mold.
• Let solidify a few minutes.
• Spray the surface of the soap with rubbing alcohol (to melt away any bubbles and help with adhesion) and immediately place your laminated photographs (picture side down) on top of the soap.
• Repeat the above steps to make a colored layer of soap for the photo background. I like to add a very thin second clear layer before adding my colored layer to make the photo appear to be floating.
• When the soap is melted, add a colorant.
• Add fragrance.
• spray the existing, clear soap and photograph with rubbing alcohol.
• Pour the colored soap mixture on top of the original layer and photo.
• Let harden completely before removing from the mold.
• You may place the soap molds in the refrigerator to speed set.

Play around with various color combinations and opaque versus translucent backgrounds. Once you get the hang of it, you can even embed cut pieces of colorful soaps inside your background soap. Another trick is to use several small photos and imbed them at different depths with several layers of clear soap.

If you liked this soap making idea, click here to see other photograph craft ideas.