Making Soap for the Mothers Day Stall

I have been looking at things to make for the school Mothers Day Stall on the internet, and found lots of inspiration on the HomeLife website which got me thinking about making soap.  I looked into it a little bit but it all seemed a bit complicated to source the ingredients etc.  Then I hit upon the fantastic idea of melting down existing soap and adding stuff to it, then remoulding it.  You can add colour, smell, texture etc. and you can buy the soap at your local supermarket, or use up soap that you have in the cupboard.

To melt it down all you have to do is get the soap you want to use and grate it.  I just put it in a saucepan and added water (somewhere I read you need 1/2 a cup of water to 1 cup of soap and I loosely followed this ratio). When it melted it went all sticky.  I think that technically speaking you are meant to use a double boiler, but I am impatient, so I was very careful to watch it the whole time to ensure it didn't burn.  I then added essential oils (I also read that you can add bees wax for a honey smell which I would like to try) along with dried lavender, dried rose petals (you can also add oatmeal or ground coffee ...) and some food dye.  One lot I put in a milk carton to dry and then cut it up with a sharp knife.  Another lot I just did in a baking tray.  Apparently you need to leave it a few days to dry out before you use it.  But it looks good within a few hours.  I have used strips of the pages of an old Alice in Wonderland book that I sourced at an Op Shop to wrap it.