| What do you do when you are requested to make a baby soap that has tea tree and lavender? Go lightly, dear soapers, go lightly. This question was recently posed to our technical support staff and here is the recipe and the thoughts behind the choices.
Oils to use are olive oil, coconut oil, palm kernel oil. Today’s thought is that coconut and palm kernel give great lather but we want to temper the aggressive cleaning with gentle care. Let’s use 3 ounces coconut oil, 3 ounces palm kernel oil and 10 ounces olive oil for our base. Use the Lye Calculator to figure the lye and leave about 6% excess fat. The lye should be an easy to weigh amount, but right close to 6% is our target. Tea tree and lavender can be used neat, this means undiluted, on the skin. However, baby skin is so tender and new we don’t want to overwhelm. Let’s keep the essential oil addition to 1%, this will be plenty for our extra mild soap. Because tea tree is so strong, stronger than lavender, let’s use it as 1 part and lavender as 3 parts to make our scenting mixture. We will need a total of 4.5 grams of essential oil. If you want to make measuring a bit simpler, you can do 3 grams lavender essential oil and 1 gram tea tree. This will be lighter, but certainly in line with a baby soap. If you are looking for a stronger scented soap, or one for acne prone skin, you can increase the scenting to 2%, which would be 9 grams total. Let’s show some pictures of our test batch. I’m using Lemon Yellow from our blog on Jan 12, 2009. I have added 5 drops of color to achieve a pale, sunshine yellow soap. I have used a lovely mold from Soap Hutch that is scaled for this 1 lb fat batch. 3 ounces weight Palm Kernel Oil 2.2 ounces Sodium Hydroxide Weighing time: 8 minutes The soap is going to look dark because of the olive oil, but the color will lighten significantly when cured.
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 Collect supplies.  Mixing lye and water.  Adding lye solution to melted oils.  Blending the lye solution and oils together. |
 Adding the essential oils.  Scraping out the beaker with a straw.  Cutting the soap. |
 Pouring raw soap into the mold.  Smoothing the top of the soap.  Soap spread out to dry. |
Thanks for doing this! Lots of Spring babies due here and I have been wanting to make some special baby soaps as gifts.
hey – great post. thanks for showing the in the mold part and the out of the mold part. love that!!! Emily
I am definitely trying this one! Do you have any suggestions for subsitures that are just as safe for baby? Any added moisturizers? Same for scents, any other safe to use for babies?
This is a mild soap and perfect for baby. Do you have items you want to add? The forum is a great place to ask about adding baby safe scents as you go along. The first few batches should be unscented or lightly scented with skin safe oils.
I don’t really have any particular oil or scents in mind to add I just wanted to know if there were other safe scents and fats. In case I want a variety. I am definitely trying this recipe first I just wanted to know if at least there are oils or scents I should stray from in baby soaps.
I can’t think of a single fixed oil I wouldn’t use on baby skin. Certainly I think of some over others, but I wouldn’t rule any out.
As far as scents go, I would go with those that are OK for rashes, broken skin or irritated skin. I think of chamomile, calendula, lavender, tea tree. I wouldn’t consider any spices like cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, or any mint. I also wouldn’t use rosemary or eucalyptus. Anything strong scented I would avoid. I would go for those that are more subtle, and I would always use in VERY dilute form.
Thank you so much. This helps 🙂