Genre: Instruction

Felt Me Up : Hand Felted Soap New video tutorial below and soap felting kits available here ! Because sometime is is easier to watch the whole process. Or continue for the photo tutorial... After last week's how to make castile soap post that required chemicals that command respect, we have a gentle craft post this week, felting soap. This one is kid friendly and lots of fun, not to mention another cracking idea for frugal holiday gifts. You won't need many supplies, just a bar of soap and some wool or alpaca fibre. Add a bit of water and elbow grease and you'll end up with a beautiful felted soap. You won't need a wash cloth or a body scrubby to gently ex-foliate and you won't be prone to dropping the soap. First the soap. Use any kind you like including a cheap bar from the grocery store. Rectangular with rounded edges is the easiest shape to start on, but in this tutorial I used a small round hotel soap. Free is good. Choosing wool is trickier. The first time I tried felting I used some yarn I thought was 100% wool, but since it wouldn't felt, it probably isn't. After trying to felt a soap with it, I found how to Test Your Yarn for Felting . The yarn failed the test, so I bought a ball at the Warehouse (NZ's closest Walmart equivalent) for $3.99 that had a sticker that said "Felt me." If you use yarn, cut the pieces and feather the fibres apart and process enough to cover the bar of soap you've chosen. If you are lucky enough find wool roving/batting, lay out the fibre and wrap it around the soap. Finding the right amount of fibre to use takes practice. You want enough to cover the soap without having lumpy extra bits. You'll probably end up with soap with a bare patch or two at first, so make sure your first bars of soap are cheap or free. Next, trickle a bit of water over the wool fibre and gently wet it. If you try to run water over it, the fibres will be washed off the soap. If you are doing this with kiddos or want to save yourself a bit of fuss and aggravation, pop the whole affair into the end of some panty hose or knee-his and you'll have an easier time keeping the fibre on the soap. When all of the fibre is wet, but not sopping, gently massage it in circles. Think of petting a baby rabbit. Ah, baby rabbits... Once the fibres seem to be sticking together, fill your sink with the hottest water you can stand. Cool it down to a comfortable level if you are doing this with kids. With the soap submerged, massage in firmer circles for 5 minutes are so. Make sure that there aren't any holes peeking through. When the felt starts to shrink down, you need to up the agitation a notch. I scrub my soap on a sushi bamboo mat, but you can use anything that will give you more agitation. Scrub one directions for a few minutes, then rotate 90 degrees and repeat. Keep at it until the felt is flat, snug and smooth with no holes. With small kids, they are unlikely to make it to the "flat, snug and smooth with no holes" stage. My advice is to leave it be. Their creations will have their own charms, lumpy, holes and all. But if you can't stand it, you'll have to take over and finish it up yourself. Squeeze the soap bubbles out with a towel and put your soap aside to dry on a wire cooling rack. Now you have a gorgeous felted soap that will let you use your soap up all the way. When the soap is gone, you can use the felt to create a broach or earrings or slit it open to use as a tiny pouch. You could also leave it as is, put a couple of drops of essential oils on it and let it scent your lingerie drawer. I just happened upon your blog today while looking for some advice on felted soap. This will be my first wool/felt/soap project ever so I am spending lots of time reading. Thanks for the great tips and quick video! Do you ever needle felt on top of the final felted soap, or do you have to do any needle felted before you apply the base? Also, what happens if I needed to leave my soap mid-felting process say for a few hours or possibly overnight, then return to finish the felting. Would this effect the final look? Should you be able to continue felting no problem? Thanks so much, any help is much appreciated! Hi Kelly, you can find my post on needle felting soap here . If you have to stop and go back to the project later, that won't be a problem. I do it all the time, although not usually with soap as that goes quickly. Hi, I have tried this a few times now but seem some times the wool doesn't seem to shrink down and is baggy on the soap when I'm done.  Some wool also doesn't seem to 'knit' together very well and its peel off.  Do you think I am using too much wool and should try thinning it out a bit?  Any suggestions. Cheers -- Great fun activity! You should be fine with Corriedale. Sounds like to me you may have a wee bit too much wool on the baggy ones. Conquering bare spots takes practice. Watch the video, if you haven't already, and try felting with a stocking. Let me know how it goes- I'd love to see pictures. I am giving this a try but when I got to the "step up the agitation a bit" part mine started to shed and ball up. I had to keep rewrapping the yarn. I have wool yarn and spent forever pulling it apart! It got very sudsey too -- was it too wet? I used an old washboard. What am I doing wrong? Ummm...oh yeah and I was working on last minute Christmas gifts. Better try the massage melts while waiting on an answer from you!! How fun! I am so excited to try this!! I went straight to the yarn shop to get supplies, and when I got there realized I wasn't sure what I was looking for. I re-read your blog and am ready to go! Can't wait to see how it turns out. I love this. My children really enjoy felting, and this is a great way to do it easily because sometimes our issue with hand felting is that we keep having problems keeping the wool soapy enough to felt. Wouldn"t be a problem with this craft for sure! I didn't even know there was a such thing as felted soap before reading this. How cool! I can see this being a very fun activity to do with my daughter, not to mention a great way to get my soap to go the extra mile. And, hell, we could even make everyone's soap color coordinated if we wanted. What I'm wondering: are there some uses for felted soap that are better than others? Like is it a good scrubber for cleaning pots and pans? Or is it better as a body soap? As for uses, you could certainly try it for scrubbing pots, but it would be like scrubbing them with a soft wool sock. Not terribly abrasive unless you get some really rough wool, I suppose. But that is good news for using it as a body soap. You get gentle exfoliation, but it won't take live layers of skin off!