Felted Coal Soap

by Ashley Weeks Cart

In our household, Santa always left chocolate oranges in the toes of our Christmas stockings. It was a lovely and sweet (pardon the pun) tradition. I’m hosting Christmas this year and thought I’d mix things up by leaving a ‘naughty’ gift from Santa. As we all know, I went on a serious felting binge this fall, and have enough wool roving to build a human sized bird’s nest still floating around the house. I thought I’d use up some of these materials, and try my hand at felted soap. It’s no easy task – but I kept it simple with basic black felted coal soaps. Just a little reminder from Santa Ashley to clean up your act in the New Year!

Materials:
Soap base (cold-processed soap making is something I have not yet tackled. Notice the word YET, it WILL happen, eventually)
Scented oil (peppermint, perhaps?)
Microwave safe bowl
Mold that is semi-large sphere shape (I used my Beaba, a silicone, baby food freezer tray from my day’s of baby food making)
Knife for carving
Black wool roving
Hot water

Directions:
1. Break up chunks of soap bar in microwave safe bowl and microwave until melted. Stop to stir throughout process. Add a few drops of scented oil as desired. I used peppermint as that seemed highly appropriate given the season.

2. Pour the melted soap into your mold and let cool for at least 30 minutes. I waited longer until the mold was thoroughly cooled and the soap hard.

3. Break the soap out of the mold and store on parchment paper.

5. I then used a knife to shave off some of the soap and create coal-like lumps.

6. Now it’s time to get to felting. Felting soap is much like any other form of wet felting, except you don’t need the soapy water – just hot water – since the soap you’re felting will do the trick. I find felting soap requires a great deal of patience and practice, as it is just not as simple as when you’re felting, say, a rock. Give it a whirl on some old bars of soap before tackling your coal. See my wet felting video to follow the next steps in the process.

Photo: Courtesy of Ashley Weeks Cart