Monogrammed Hand Soap

My dear friend Amy from The Idea Room decided to try her hand at customizing some soaps with a monogram.   Life is always better with a monogram if you ask me.   After lusting after those expensive hand-carved ones at Pottery Barn and the like she decided to make her own.     For the simple cost of a bar of soap you have a great hostess gift.   Please welcome Amy…

 

I have a love for all things MONOGRAMMED! I have been wanting to make some monogrammed soap for quite a while now, but have been unsure about how to go about it. So the other day, I just thought I would do a test run and see what happened.

Overall, I am happy with the turnout. I practiced first to get my preferred carving technique down. I highly recommend a practice run before making an attempt if you would like to try to make some for yourself.

Then I let my 3 year old carve my practice piece while I worked on one of “the real things”. I actually really enjoyed working with the soap. Here is what I did:

Supplies:

Lever 2000 (I liked how soft and easy this it was to work with)

glue dots

length of ribbon

scrapbook paper

vegetable peeler

standard screwdriver (smaller the better)

Q-tips

monogram pattern

non-permanent marker

straightened paper clip

First I started with the vegetable grater and gently shaved off the Lever 2000 logo that was imprinted on the front. I did this by laying the vegetable peeler flat and gently curling the off layer by layer. This will take a little practice to get it smooth and flat. I made sure to catch all my soap shavings in a container and saved them to reuse.

As soon as the logo is almost completely gone you can finish and just smooth any uneven areas. You can do this on both sides of the soap if you would like.

Then I took my circled monogram and printed it out. The circle measured 1.5 inches square. The font I used was Times New Roman in bold and just stretched it in my photo program till I was happy with how it filled up the circle. Then I printed it out and cut out the circle.

Center your monogram in place and hold it with your finger while you take a pencil lead or straightened paper clip (which I used) to mark around the edge of the circle. Then I dug the circle out so that there was a nice deep groove.

Now cut out the letter of your monogram but be sure to leave all of the white area. Take a fine tip marker and trace the letter.

This will let you know where to stop when you begin to dig out the excess soap.

Now, take your screwdriver and gently and carefully scrap out the soap on the inside of the circle. You will want to keep the letter raised and untouched. You will need to be really careful around the edges of the letter and the circle so that you don’t accidently scrape into an area you don’t want touched.

When you scrape the bottom, be sure to pull the screwdriver so that is lays flat against the soap. This will give you a nice smooth layer. When you are happy with the monogram and have scraped out enough soap, you can take a Q-tip and smooth out areas that may be a bit rough. Simply dip the Q-tip into hot water and gently rub on the rough surface. The hot water will melt the soap and smooth any edges. Do this very carefully and be sure your Q-tip is not dripping wet. You can also gently remove the marker with the wet Q-tip.

And that is it! Done with the soap carving. You can see my practice soap in the picture below (before it was carved up). The practice soap is on the right hand side next to one of my better attempts. I learned how to be extra careful around the letter to make sure it held it’s shape nicely.

Now, you want to prettify your soap packaging. I simply cut off the ends of the soap box leaving just an open rectangle. Then I simply glued some cute scrapbook paper around the box.

Then taking a long strip of ribbon, I forgot to measure it…Just wrap it around and eyeball it. I fastened one end of the ribbon on the top of the box in the middle under the monogram (see top picture). Then using another glue dot, I attached the monogram to the other end of the ribbon. Then simply used a glue dot to place the two ends of the ribbon on top of one another.

Print out another monogrammed circle on white cardstock and use that as the decorative top. To open you will simply lift up the monogram and the soap will just slide out one end.

I thought these would be fun to have in your guest bathroom for special guests. Or they would be fun to give as a small little gift for a friend or a newlywed couple. Or…carve up your mom’s favorite soap with her initial. Monogrammed soaps are just a fun little gift idea that can help make someone feel a little extra special!

And just in case you LOVE monogrammed items as much as I do, I pulled together a list of some of my past monogram projects:

Monogrammed Hand Towels

Monogrammed Mugs

Monogrammed Hand Soap Bottles

Moss Covered Initials

Decorative Initials