Bridal Shower Craftiness

Spent the weekend in Fort Lauderdale hanging with my girlfriend Denise, and we made these cute little crafts for our friend Nichole's upcoming bridal shower. The shower isn't until November, but our soaps will stand the test of time. Plus I have three friends getting married, one having a baby, I'm moving, Denise is moving, I have a cruise in August, etc. We had the free time this weekend and we got to it! We planned and chose invitations to a great bridal shower and follow-up bachelorette party-- both of which I'll post more about in the future-- but I digress... here are the lovely soaps we made as a small gift to the shower guests. The wedding will have an underlying beachy theme at a hotel on Delray Beach, though it is in February. The colors are eggplant (very dark purple in very few splashes here and there, mostly on the bridesmaid dresses), blush and off-white... kind of similar to an eyeshadow palette. I.e., see ribbons below.


So we decided on handmaking some soaps in seashell molds. The project was a pretty easy one. We bought the molds, soaps, scent (lavender), coloring, ribbon and tulle circles all at Michael's craft store. The rest was microwaving, waiting, cooling, popping them out and wrapping them up! Pictures tell the story:

First you microwave the soaps (we did this is two rows at a time in 20 second intervals and stirring until fully liquified; then, add 5-10 drops of your choice of scent, and mix colors to our desired shade-- start with very small drops and mix as you go if you are aiming for a light color. Then pour into your molds! You'll see we skipped on the dolphin shape and opted for just seashells and starfish. In tune with the wedding colors we tried for a faint purple and pink, since eggplant and blush are not the easiest shades to mix as amateurs.


Let them sit and dry about 25-35 minutes; we discovered putting them in the refrigerator for the last five minutes helped to make them easier to pop out of the mold. We made some shea butter soaps (opaque/creamy) and some glycerin (translucent); the latter were harder to pop out and took a little longer to cool.



Here's the completion:






Here are the products if you wish to tackle this project: soap, coloring, scent, tulle circles, molds and ribbons.