How to Make Liquid Soap With Just 3 Ingredients!
Endlessly versatile and so easy to work with, our 3-in-1 liquid wash base is a favourite here at Craftovator as it’s the easiest way to create your own liquid hand soap and so much more. By simply combining the base with fragrance and colour, you’re able to create so many different products including liquid hand soap, body wash, shower gel or even bubble bath!
If you’re looking for a great way to wash away that sticky sun cream and sand off your hands and leave them smelling like you're still walking along the promenade holding that perfect iced slushie, you’re going to love our Raspberry Blue Slushie Scented Liquid Soap tutorial below!
You can even use a couple of pumps of the wash on a shower puff or in your running bath to relax with bubbles smelling of one of your favourite summer iced drinks.
If you’re ready to jump straight in, check out our video tutorial below or scroll further to see our written tutorial with pictures and a little more info on customising this easy recipe.
Our tutorial is meant for personal use only. If you’d like to sell your liquid soap products, you’ll need to purchase our 3-in-1 Liquid Wash Base Assessment and follow the guidelines on selling your bath and body products as laid out in our blog post here.
Difficulty Level: Beginner
Makes: 1 x 300ml volume container
Ingredients
- 320g of 3-in-1 Body Wash Base
- 3g Blue Raspberry Slushie Fragrance Oil
- 1g Neon Blue Non-Bleed Pigment
Equipment You'll Need
- A set of kitchen weighing scales
- A pouring jug
- 2 small pots for your fragrance oil and colour
- A Spatula
- 1 x 300ml Lotion/Pump Bottle (see our brand new pump bottles here!)
- A Small Funnel (optional)
Note: Use this same tutorial to make shower gel or bubble bath, simply by decanting it into a different container.
Step 1 – Measure Out Your Ingredients
Measure out 320g of the 3-in-1 body wash base directly into your pouring jug, 1g of Blue neon non bleed pigment and 3g* of fragrance oil into separate pots.
*Note: If you have high precision scales, you may go up to 3.2g of fragrance oil. See further information below under the subheading, How Much Fragrance Oil Can I Use in My 3-in-1 Liquid Base?
Step 2 – Mix Your Pigment with Your Fragrance Oil
Take your blue neon pigment and mix it into the fragrance oil. Stir to fully combine.
Step 3 – Combine the Mixture with the Base
Pour the mixed colour and fragrance oil carefully in the 3-in-1 base.
Very carefully and gently stir the fragrance and colour mix into the base with your spatula. We recommend this is done slowly and lightly as we do not want to incorporate small bubbles into the mix.
Continue to stir until you can no longer see streaks of pigment within your mix.
Step 5 – Decant into Your Bottles
It is now ready to pour. Pour directly into your bottle or use a small funnel to help with any spills. Your liquid soap is now ready to use.
Why Use 3-in-1 Body Wash Base?
The 3-in-1 liquid wash base has to be one of the easiest bases you can work with. The base itself has many features that helps give this product its versatility.
- Perfect for creating a variety of cleansing products
- Easy to use, pre-preserved and pre-thickened
- Excellent foam and lather
- Mild pH
- A neutral odour enables excellent fragrance lift
- Vegan and cruelty-free compliant
How Much Fragrance Oil Can I Use with 3-in-1 Liquid Base?
You are able to scent your 3-in-1 wash base with up to 1% of fragrance oil. What does this mean? When considering the total weight of your finished product, you want to ensure that no more than 1% of that total weight is made up of your fragrance oils.
This may seem a little strange when considering most wash-off products can hold up to 3% of fragrance oil. However, this base is different from most of the other wash-off bases.
Stephenson's, who are the manufacturer of the base, only recommend using 1% because using above this amount can cause the base to become runny and/or cloudy.
We have tested fragrance oils in this base ourselves at 2% and 3% and, as the manufacturer warns, it did immediately cause the base to become extremely runny.
So as tempting as it may be, we would strongly recommend sticking to the 1% recommendation. You’ll find that the fragrance lift in this base is amazing even at 1% so you won’t need to go higher.
As an example of how to work this out, if we are using 320g of 3-in-1 base for our liquid hand wash, 1% of the total weight would be 3.2g of fragrance oil (320g x 0.01 = 3.2g).
Remember to measure your fragrance oils in weight, rather than in millilitres, which is a volume measurement. Oils will often differ in their viscosity (meaning some are thicker and some are thinner) so even at the same volume, you will find they will be different weights.
To account for this difference and to make things easier, all your ingredients should be using the same unit of measure - in this case, grams.
Can I Use Any Fragrance Oil for My Liquid Soap?
One important aspect of safety when using any kind of fragrance or essential oil is to make sure the oil you’ve chosen is skin safe.
To check this, click the link that says ‘IFRA 49th AMENDMENT’ on the fragrance oil product listing to download the document.
Next, check the heading that says, "Certificate of Conformity" and scroll to Category 9. If the IFRA documents states that the safe usage is 1% or higher, then you can use up to the full 1%. However, even if the IFRA document gives a percentage of more than 1%, we would still advise never using more than 1% in your 3-in-1 liquid wash base.
For our tutorial, we used 3g of Blue Raspberry Slushie Fragrance Oil. We have used 3g and not 3.2g because most common kitchen scales do not give accurate readings with decimals. However, if you do have precision weighing scales, then you can use the full 3.2g of fragrance oil.
How Can I Add Colour to My Liquid Soap?
Who doesn’t love a bit of colour! You can choose to colour your base to either match your décor, to make it fun for the kids or to coordinate with the scent you choose.
Because it’s such a versatile product, you can choose to colour your base with water soluble dyes, mica powders or neon pigments. There are so many to choose from to create your own unique look!
Water soluble dyes can be added straight to the product as its water-based. Mica powders will give the base a lovely shimmer and neon non-bleed pigments will give you bright vibrant colours, but both of these need to be added to the fragrance oil before mixing in the base. When using any of these colourants we would recommend to only use a little as they are all very concentrated.
We hope you've learned how easy it is to make your own liquid soap! Looking for more soap tutorials? Check out our easy guides on making melt and pour soap, making a soap sponge and making whipped soap too.
1 comment
thank you for instructions i can’t wait to try out my own hand wash.
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