There are many great recipes for making your own natural liquid soap. While most of the recipes differ in the mixture of oils they use, one thing seems pretty consistent - they all make a lot of soap! Even the small recipe I have for making basic liquid soap makes almost 6 pounds when diluted. Unless you use liquid soap every day for bathing, that's a lot of soap! If you fragrance and dilute the whole six pounds of paste, you're stuck wtih the same blend of oils and fragrance until you've used it all up. But there's actually an easy way to divide up the soap paste into more manageable batches.

Part of it was hearing Jeanne Rose speak about the healing qualities of herbs at the Texas Soapmakers convention. Part of it was testing out a new jojoba liquid soap recipe. Maybe it's just the warm herbal smells of oils and herbs heating slowly, but I really enjoyed making a herbal oil infusion especially to use in a new batch of liquid soap. Whether you infuse calendula petals or lavender...eucalyptus, patchouli, or sage, it's a lovely way to add some extra herbal goodness to your soaps (both liquid and bar), lotions, bath oils, massage bars and even bath bombs. It just takes some oil, some herbs and some heat.