Snow Globe Soap

This crafty idea came from my 5-year-old. She had watched and episode of Special Agent Oso where he made a snow-globe (in 3 easy steps of course...) and thought it would be fun to make her own. While searching on the computer for ideas we came across this cute project from Alphamom. We headed to Michaels to pick up all our supplies and spent a fun Sunday afternoon making soap.

You will need:
*glycerin soap
*soap dye
*soap glitter
*soap scent (Lo picked "orange")
*ice cube trays
*small buttons or figures to put in the soap
*white bar soap for the "snow"

We had a hard time finding figures small enough for the trays so we picked out buttons instead (can you tell which ones I picked out and which are Lo's choices?).

So excited to start!

Our white soap was really dry and did not grate well...it was more of a powder...this caused problems later on...

We bought a large package of glycerin soap. It made about 20 cubes of soap.

Like Alphamom, we melted our glycerin in the microwave. Next time I will use a double boiler on the stove. I spent A LOT of time reheating the soap b/c it was getting too hard to pour. If you don't have a double boiler I would recommend doing your soap in small batches. We ended up making 4 cubes at a time and that seemed the best number to manage.

Follow the directions on the soap for melting.

Once it is all melted add your color, glitter and scent.

Pour (I used a measuring spoon) melted soap into the ice cube tray leaving about 1/4 of an inch at the top.

Let the soap set a little and then GENTLY push your figures into the tray. You can use a toothpick or pin to help you get them into place.

**Remember that the top of the ice cube tray will be the bottom of the soap so they need to go in UPSIDE DOWN.

At this point Alphamom put in her shaved white soap...we had a dusty disaster. We tried the dust but in the end it added an extra step. Our soap bottoms eventually fell off and we had to melt more soap and fix the bottoms.

Instead I recommend one of the following:
1. Totally omitting the "snow" at the bottom and just fill up the tray completely (you really don't see much of the "snow" anyway
2. Melt opaque white soap

If you really want to use the shaved white bar soap just use a little bit. You need to leave enough room for the glycerin soap to adhere to the top of the snow globe. After you put your shavings on put more glycerin soap to seal the bottom.

Put the trays into the freezer for 20 minutes and then pop them out like they were ice cubes. You can use a small knife to even out the bottoms but we just left them.

**You can see how our "snow" didn't come out so pretty...next time we'll just skip that step

NoJo's baby:

Lo's bird:

The girls each picked out two to give to their friends. We bagged them up and then put a custom label with their company name on each.

Overall we all thought this was a great project. The girls used their new soap tonight and it was a huge hit!

We've already thought of other variations. Lo thought to make pink and red soap with hearts inside for Valentine's day.

The clean up wasn't too bad either...the mess is all soap so it's easy to clean!