Let’s be honest, soap decorated with dried herbs and flowers is gorgeous!

Adding plants to your soap is tricky as most of them turn brown in contact with the lye and water, but there are some exceptions like herbs (mint, rosemary, thyme, etc), chamomile and marigold. The herbs will maintain their dark green colour and the marigold and chamomile will remain golden yellow.

Lavender will usually turn brown and so will rose petals. If I want to use rose petals on top of the soap I just sprinkle them lightly, so they are not too much in contact with the soap, and I don’t cover the soap so the rose petals do not sweat.

However, one thing you need to keep in mind is that they will get stuck to your shower or bathtub when you use the soap, and if you use too much, they might also clog your drains.

The best is to sprinkle them on top of your soap as lovely decoration, but not add them to the actual batter. People will admire the decorative plants, and when they use the soap they can easily remove them before using it if they don’t want plants getting stuck to their shower. 

The students in my natural botanical soap workshop 2 weeks ago had a lot of fun experimenting with natural colours, herbs and flowers. Here are some of the pictures.