Christmas Tree Cold Process Soap Recipe with Essential Oils

It's that time of year again... crunch time for cold process soap makers. If you want to get your Christmas soaps done in time for holiday gift giving you need to get cracking. I'm pretty late to the game this year myself, but not to worry, I've got us covered with this recipe. It uses a pretty steep water discount which allows this Christmas tree soap to cure in about 3 weeks. Procrastinators rejoice 🙂

The design for this soap involves two phases: first the preparation of the embeds and then the actual assembly. For the Christmas tree embeds I use an actual cookie cutter on a flat layer of soap that has been poured two days prior. I like this technique since it gives you a lot of creative freedom and is inexpensive. If there's no actual soap mold for the design that you have in mind, there's almost always a cookie cutter shape out there that you can use instead.

The recipe for this soap is simple and produces a nice hard, white bar of soap which is important for the colors to really stand out. The essential oil blend is of course reminiscent of a pine tree: bright and crisp top notes nestled on a dry and woodsy base. I had so much fun putting this soap together and I know that you will too!

So, let's dive into the tutorial for this year's Christmas soap, shall we?

If you've never made cold process soap before, I highly recommend you read my articles about lye safety, necessary equipment and my beginner's tutorial.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you will I earn a commission if you decide to click through and make a purchase.

Gift Disclaimer: The micas for this project have been generously gifted to me by Stardust Micas.

Equipment needed:

• Gloves and goggles
• Three medium sized heat resistant containers (not glass)
• Three small cups to prepare colorants
• Spatula
• Accurate digital kitchen scale
• Immersion blender
• Crafter's Choice silicone soap loaf mold
• Extra small soap mold or recycled yogurt container
• Small Christmas tree shaped cookie cutter
• Chopstick for swirling the top

If you've never made cold process soap before, I highly recommend you read my posts on lye safety, recommended equipment and my beginner soap making tutorial before you proceed.

Instructions Phase 1 (Making Embeds):

Ingredients (makes 11 Christmas tree embeds + extra white soap for the "snow", about 400g/ 14 oz of soap). This soap recipe uses a lye concentration of 44% and is superfatted at 5%:

• Distilled Water: 53 g / 1.87 oz
• Lye: 42 g / 1.47 oz
• Tallow: 103 g / 3.64 oz
• Canola Oil: 103 g / 3.64 oz
• Coconut Oil: 74 g / 2.6 oz
• Castor Oil: 15 g / 0.52 oz
• Cedarwood Essential Oil: 5 g
• Fir Essential Oil: 5 g
• Green Pine Mica: 1 tsp

Instructions:

1. Gear up for safety (gloves, goggles, long sleeves, pets and kids gone)
2. Preheat oven to 170 degrees F
3. Measure out distilled water and lye
4. Create lye solution by carefully pouring the lye into the water (Never the other way around), stir until fully dissolved and set aside
5. Melt tallow and coconut oil in a water bath over low heat
6. Add canola oil, castor oil and essential oils to the melted oils
7. Prepare 1 teaspoon of mica by dissolving it in 1 tablespoon of melted base oils
8. Carefully pour lye solution into oils and stick blend until light pudding consistency is achieved
9. Now pour off 60 g / 2.2 oz of uncolored soap into a small soap mold or plastic container
10. To the rest of the soap batter add green mica and stick blend until combined, scrape the sides of your bowl with a spatula and stir to make sure all the mica is mixed in
11. Pour the green batter into the bottom of your loaf mold and create a flat even layer, tap the mold on the counter to release any air bubbles
12. Place both soaps into your oven and turn it off, leave in oven for at least 3-4 hours or overnight (this will help the soap fully gel)
13. Release the soaps from their molds after 18 hours and leave out to dry for 48 hours before using the cookie cutter otherwise the soap will still be too soft
14. Using the Christmas tree cookie cutter cut out at least 11 Christmas trees, space them close together on your piece of soap so that you get enough
15. Assemble the Christmas trees into a line one after the other and place them in the middle of the mold, make sure they fit in tightly so that they don't shift around too much later
16. Cut the white soap into tiny cubes and then roll them between your fingers to make little snowflakes, optional: grade some of the soap with cheese grader for a less uniform look

Instructions Phase 2 (Putting it all Together):

Ingredients (makes 965g / 34 oz of soap which will give you 7-8 regular sized bars with the embeds added) this soap recipe use a lye concentration of 44% and is superfatted at 5%):

• Distilled Water: 125 g / 4.4 oz
• Lye: 98 g / 3.46 oz
• Tallow: 243 g / 8.58 oz
• Canola Oil: 243 g / 8.58 oz
• Coconut Oil: 174 g / 6.13 oz
• Castor Oil: 35 g / 1.23 oz
• Cedarwood Essential Oil: 12 g
• Balsam Fir Essential Oil: 12 g
• Red Strawberry Mica: 1 ½ tsp
• Gold Mica: ¼ tsp

Insructions:

1. Gear up for safety (gloves, goggles, long sleeves, pets and kids gone)
2. Measure out distilled water and lye
3. Create lye solution by carefully pouring the lye into the water (Never the other way around), stir until fully dissolved and set aside.
4. Melt tallow and coconut oil in a water bath over low heat
5. Add canola oil, castor oil and essential oils to the melted oils
6. Carefully pour lye solution into oils by stick blending until light pudding consistency is achieved
7. Add 1 ½ teaspoon of strawberry red mica to your soap batter and stick blend until well combined
8. Take stick blender out of the batter and scrape down the sides of your container with a spatula to make sure all the mica is well blended in
9. Your batter should be at medium to thick trace before you stir in the "snowball" embeds with a spatula
10. Make sure the Christmas tree embeds are well in place before pouring the pink batter on either side of them
11. Pause when soap mold is half full and gently tap down the mold while making sure the Christmas tree embeds stay in place
12. Fill the mold to the top with pink batter and gently tap the mold down again
13. Combine ¼ teaspoon of gold mica with ½ teaspoon canola oil
14. Drip the gold mica onto the top of the soap using a pipett or small spoon
15. Swirl the top using a chop stick
16. Wrap soap mold in heavy towel or place in preheated oven at 170 degrees Fahrenheit, shut oven and leave soap overnight
17. After 24-36 hours unmold soap and cut into bars
18. Cure for 3 weeks
19. Enjoy!

Until next time. Happy Tinkering!