DIY: Soap: House of Crafts Soapmaking Kit Comparison

Hello again! Yesterday, we discovered the 4 ways of making your own soap. The method that suits me best is melt & pour soapmaking.  If this is something you want to try, you can either buy all of your ingredients or purchase a kit instead. In the long run, it is cheaper to buy everything separately but this means spending more upfront. I decided to try kits first. I purchased 3 kits from Hobbycraft, all made by House of Crafts.

House of Crafts - Soap Making Craft Kit

This kit cost £8.99 from here and includes a soap mould with room for 6 soaps, a pipette, fragrance oil, 3 coloured pigments and some clear soap base. It also comes with an instruction sheet. 

House of Crafts - Handmade Soap Kit

This cost £10.99 from here and includes a soap mould with space for 3 soaps, a pipette, fragrance oil, marigold petals, Irish moss, lemon grass and some clear soap base. It also comes with an instruction sheet.

House of Crafts - Organic Soap Making Kit

This one cost £14.99 from here and includes a soap mould with space for 4 soaps, organic lemon essential oil (the bottle has a dropper in it so a pipette is not needed, aniseed, linseed, poppy seeds, marigold petals and organic soap base. It  also comes with an instruction sheet.

The biggest difference between these kits is the amount of soap you get. 

With the first kit, you get aprox. 250g of clear soap, the second one is about 750g of the same clear base and the organic one has roughly 1kg which has a creamy colour to it. 

The kits are fairly good value for money just for the moulds as these can set you back from £5 - £10 each on average. The fragrance oils with the first 2 kits smell very similar, if not identical and it is a floral scent, not one which I am a fan of to be honest. The lemon essential oil smells divine though. Also, only the first kit contains dyes to colour your soap with. The first two kits can be melted in a microwave or in 2 saucepans over the hob whereas the organic one only mentions the saucepan method in the instructions. If you only buy one kit, you can only make very small batches each time as you need to wait for your soaps to set before you can remove them from the mould.

Personally, I would not really recommend the Soap Making Craft Kit as you don't get anywhere near enough soap.  The Organic Soap Making Kit is great if you want natural soap but my favourite has to be the Handmade Soap Kit just because it can be prepared in the microwave so it is easier to prepare.

When I bought these, they were on a 3 for 2 offer so I ended up paying £24.99 for all 3. If it weren't for that, I probably wouldn't of got all of them.

In addition to any of the kits, you also need something to cut the soap with before melting, a chopping board, something to melt the soap in (either a microwavable container or 2 saucepans depending on how you choose to heat it) and a spoon. Technically it should be OK to use your equipment for food after making soap with them as long as you have cleaned them thoroughly but I prefer not to take the chance. 

I have also purchased ingredients and moulds separately. It cost me a lot more than £24.99 though! Here is what I have:

Moulds

Soap Base

Fragrance Oils (must be cosmetic grade)

Pigments & Glitter (cosmetic grade)

House of Crafts also make a bath bomb kit but I would strongly advise you NOT to buy this one because it is not good value for money. All you need is Sodium Bicarbonate and Citric Acid and you use the same colours / fragrance oils and moulds as you do for soap making. 5kg Sodium Bicarbonate cost me £4.99 and 1kg Citric Acid was £2.99. Thats enough to make LOADS of bath bombs!

Bath Bomb Ingredients

Sorry for such a long post but I hope this info was helpful. I will post more photos when my soaps are done!