This is a luscious, frothy soap with wonderful skin healing and antibacterial properties. Calendula has a long history of use as a wound-healing and skin-soothing herb. This sunny yellow and orange flower is particularly good for cuts, scrapes, bruises, sunburns, irritated skin and acne. Even though Calendula is loaded with powerful skin-healing and anti-inflammatory properties, it is gentle on the skin. 

I’ve also added jojoba oil, shea butter, and apricot kernel oil for moisturising and superfat. The balance of olive and coconut oils as the primary base give a wonderful, tight lather while not lasting very long, certainly delivers. Finally, the addition of sandalwood and bergamot oils because I wanted to make this a more pleasant scent for my husband and boys as well as to gain an uplifting sense of calm and clarity.

As usual, if you are new to soapmaking, see this post on the basics and how to get started.

Infuse this creation process with your magic. Light a candle, say a prayer or invocation, wave your wand, summon your faerie friends. In particular, brownies, gnomes and the occasional elf love to help around your home, hearth and garden. Put out a little treat for them. They love milk, honey and cake. Set your intention for your soap. What do you want it to do? How do you want to feel or have others feel when they use it? (Only keep good juju here, peeps.) Put on some music that helps you feel this. Dance wildly in joy!

Recipe:

• 20 oz. Calendula infused olive oil (to use the folk method of infusing oils, fill a mason jar with dried flowers and fill with olive oil, making sure that the oil covers the flowers by an inch. Shake. Set in warm window for a week to three weeks making sure to keep the oil line at an inch above the herbs/flowers. Shake occasionally. Strain. Alternatively, you can slow heat infuse with a crockpot on warm. Be very careful with the heat as you don’t want to muck up the natural oils by getting it too hot.)
• 28 oz. coconut oil
• 6 oz. jojoba oil
• 4 oz. apricot kernel oil
• 4 oz. shea butter
• 2 oz. beeswax
• 8.97 oz. lye for 5% superfat
• 20 oz. lavender hydrosol (or water, or other hydrosol of your choice)
• 2 full ounces of essential oils of your choice – I used sandalwood and bergamot
• Optional: coloring agent, dried calendula flower petals

This recipe made 22 bars for me, using sheet molds not a loaf mold, so you may get more or less depending on what kind of molds you use. Happy Soapmaking!!