It is no secret that I LOVE salt bars! In fact, this month we’re celebrating all things salt bars with new blog posts and new bonus (7 Salt Soap for the Face) when you purchase my eBook, Making Salt Bars!

Be sure to check out our last blog post Natural Color Infusions for Salt Bar Soap!

Here is another salt bar recipe that I simply love. It features a fresh clean scent, loofah for light exfoliation, oatmeal for it’s skin-soothing properties and french green clay for a bit of color.

Spearmint, Lemongrass and Loofah Salt Bar soap

Spearmint, Lemongrass and Loofah Salt Bar

  • Coconut Oil – 405 grams (90%)
  • Shea Butter – 45 grams (10%)
  • Sodium Hydroxide – 63 grams
  • Water – 126 grams
  • Fine Sea Salt – 250 grams

Colorants

  • Shredded Loofah – 1 teaspoon
  • French Green Clay – 1 teaspoon
  • Powdered Oatmeal – 1 teaspoon

Essential Oil Blend

  • Lemongrass Essential Oil – 10 grams
  • Spearmint Essential Oil – 8 grams
  • Lavender Essential Oil – 4 grams

Safety: Gear up in your goggles and gloves to make soap.

To learn how to prepare your oils and lye solution, please watch our basic video series.

Step 1: Create a lye solution. Weigh the water and sodium hydroxide into two separate containers. Slowly pour the sodium hydroxide into the water while stirring. Stir until completely dissolved and set aside to cool.

Step 2: Prepare the base oils. Weigh the coconut oil and shea butter into a container and melt. You can melt using the microwave or low heat on a burner.

Step 3: Prepare your mold. If you need to line your mold, line it. I prefer individual cavity molds since salt bars are easier to unmold. I sprinkled a bit of loofah into each mold. It creates a cool effect on the surface of the soap.

sprinkled shredded loofah into soap mold as decoration

Step 4: Check the temperatures. You should now have a container containing liquid base oils and a container containing lye solution. Take the temperatures using an infra-red temperature gun. Be sure to stir each mixture before taking the temp. You want your temperatures to be between 90-120 degrees F.

Step 5: Weigh your essential oils into a glass or stainless steel container and add to your prepared base oils.

Step 6: Add your shredded loofah, French green clay and oatmeal to prepared base oils and blend to get rid of any clumps.

Step 7: Weigh and add the fine sea salt to the prepared base oils.

fine sea salt being added to prepared soapmaking oils

Note: You can add your salt to the liquid oils before combining with your lye solution or you can add the salt to traced soap. Either works!

Step 8: Pour your lye solution into base oils and mix to medium trace! You want the soap to be thick enough to suspend the salt.

Step 9: Pour traced soap into your molds. Tap molds down to flatten.

Step 10: Allow your soap to saponify and harden. Salt soap sets up much quicker than regular cold process soap. You can usually unmold within a couple of hours but I recommend waiting 24 hours to give it more time to saponify. Unmolding too soon could cause your soap to become ashy (when air reacts with sodium hydroxide it creates a white ashy substance called soda ash).

Spearmint, Lemongrass and Loofah Salt Bar

Step 11: Cure for a minimum of 4-6 weeks. I actually prefer my salt bars to have a nice long cure, closer to 8 weeks. Try your salt bar at 4 weeks, 6 weeks and 8 weeks and see what you prefer.

For more natural salt bar soap recipes, be sure to check out my eBook, Making Salt Bars – Creating Decadent Spa Bars by Combining Sea Salt and Cold Process Soap!

Happy Soaping!

Amanda Aaron