No, this doesn't mean shampooing your sheep - although we probably WILL add a post on scouring fleece soon - this is about bringing raw fibre and handmade soap together to make an incredible, gentle,natural exfoliant cleansing bar.
Soap making is always fun and one of the few traditional crafts guaranteed to leave you cleaner than when you started! If you are new to soap-making and the idea of working with lye does not thrill you, it may be useful to check out some of the readily available 'melt and pour' soap bases.
Before pouring the soap, of course it is kind of important you have a mould ready to pour it into. You probably already knew that.. but.. just in case you forgot. Moulds can be as simple or as complex as you want to make them. For simple, you can cut a drink carton down to the size you want (clean it thoroughly first, natch!) and pour the melted soap into that. This will give you a great square shape. You could use cookie, cupcake or muffin baking pans.. use your imagination!
At It's Ewe! we wanted to make a soap suitable for guys. Something simple and kinda 'blokey' in appearance. A rock was chosen and several were tested in the palm of (sort of)willing male family members' hands. The perfect rock was selected and a mould was made of the rock. When the mould was set, the soap was poured in and left to set.
The 'rock soap' was then removed from the mould and felted with natural coloured Merino fleece. Merino was selected because it has natural anti-microbial properties. 19 micron fleece was selected because we wanted to exfoliate gently. A larger micron may be too rough if the soap was used on the face. If you were making a heavier duty hand soap specifically, then you may want to consider using 22 upwards micron.
Below is our now popular 'Ram Rock Soap' .
