Recipe and instructions for how to use fresh herbs and colored clay to make Natural Rosemary Soap using the cold-process method
This is a natural soap recipe that blends together two special ingredients. Rosemary, in two forms, adds scent, decoration, and anti-bacterial properties. Cambrian blue clay is a cosmetic ingredient that can tint soap a soft green-to-blue. It also has oil-drawing properties that benefit those with oily skin. Together, the herb and the clay create a beautiful rosemary soap recipe, the bars of which you can use for hands, body, and face. The recipe includes all-natural Vegan oils and is suitable for intermediate soap makers.
What I like about this recipe is that it’s very gentle, cleanses well, and looks attractive. Though I’ve created the recipe specifically for oily skin, it’s suitable for everyday body-use with those with normal skin. The rosemary essential oil smells incredible, and you could use homegrown rosemary to personalize your bars.
Both rosemary and blue clay are ideal for treating oily skin and blemishes
Blue Clay Colors Soap
You may have found this recipe through my popular piece on natural colors for handmade soap. There are many wonderful natural ingredients that you can use to add color to soap but some have other attractive properties too. Cambrian blue clay is a natural element mined from areas in northwest Russia and it naturally colors soap shades of green to blue. You can also use the clay in beauty products for its oil pulling ability and it’s common to use in face masks. In soap, it’s mainly used for coloring but it can also work to gently cleanse oily skin.
Clay not only pulls oil, but it attracts and captures minerals in the sediments where it forms. In blue clay’s case, the color comes from it having a high content of chemically reduced iron. This special mineral has been linked to its ability to naturally eliminate bacteria, including those that cause breakouts. So blue clay is a win-win in that it cleanses oily skin, reduces the microbes that cause pimples, and creates a lovely color.
Cambrian Blue Clay not only cleanses the skin but has anti-bacterial properties
Rosemary is Anti-bacterial
Like blue clay, rosemary oil kills bacteria, especially Propionibacterium acnes, the type that causes pimples. That makes rosemary ideal for gently treating problematic skin. However, the essential oil is the more important rosemary ingredient in this recipe. Most people think that essential oils are scented herbal perfumes but they’re actually concentrated plant essences with therapeutic properties. To make just the smallest bottle of rosemary essential oil it takes an entire pot of rosemary leaves and a very complicated process.
Which brings me to the fresh rosemary that I’ve included in this recipe. This rosemary more or less for decoration and exfoliation and will have very little therapeutic power. When chopping the rosemary for this recipe I recommend that you get the pieces as small as possible. I can tell you first hand that the last thing you’ll enjoy in the shower is a soggy piece of black leaf surfacing on your soap. Not only do they look icky but larger pieces can also be scratchy. If in doubt, you can always leave the rosemary leaves out — they’re completely optional.
Making this Rosemary Soap Recipe
If you’re new to making natural handmade soap, you should read my four-part series on natural soap making. It gives a good introduction to what to expect from ingredients, equipment, and cold-process soap recipes. The series gives a good foundation for making all handmade soap including this cold-process rosemary soap recipe. One section that’s especially important to read is the part on equipment and safety since it will prepare you for working with lye.
1. Soap Ingredients
2. Equipment & Safety
3. Basic Soap Recipes
4. The Soap Making Process
The soap from this recipe will be grey-green to grey-blue, depending on the olive oil you use
Natural Rosemary Cold-Process Soap Recipe
Equipment
- Stainless steel pan for melting the solid oils
- Rubber gloves
Ingredients
Lye solution
- 64 g Sodium hydroxide 2.28 oz (also called lye)
- 115 g Distilled water 4.06 oz
- 1 tsp Sodium lactate Optional (it helps harden bars quicker)
Clay Mixture
- 2 tsp Cambrian Blue Clay 3 g / use another colored clay if you wish
- 6 tsp Distilled water 30 g
Solid oils
- 140 g Coconut oil (refined) 4.94 oz (31%)
- 25 g Shea butter 0.88 oz (6%)
Liquid oils
- 190 g Olive pomace oil 6.7 oz (42%)
- 75 g Sunflower oil 2.65 oz (16%)
- 25 g Castor oil 0.88 oz (5%)
Add after Trace
- 4 tsp Rosemary essential oil 14 g / 0.49 oz
- 3 tsp Rosemary leaves (chopped finely) Optional
To prevent Soda Ash
- Rubbing alcohol (99% Isopropyl Alcohol) in a spray bottle
Instructions
Prepare your Soap Making Station
- Ensure that your kitchen workspace is clean and set up with all of your tools, ingredients, and equipment. Please also prepare yourself by wearing long sleeves, closed-toe shoes, goggles, and plastic gloves. Soap making is fun but also chemistry so you need to work safely.
Make the Lye Solution
- A couple of hours before you make soap, put on your goggles and gloves, and make the lye solution. You should do this in a well-ventilated area and try not to breathe in the steam. Measure the sodium hydroxide (lye) into a container and the distilled water into a heat-proof jug.
- Pour the sodium hydroxide into the water and stir very well. It will be very hot at this point so be careful. Set the jug someplace safe and leave the lye mixture to cool to just above room temperature 27 °C (80 °F).
Prep Work
- While the lye solution is cooling, measure the solid oils into the pan and the liquid oils into a jug.
- Finely chop the rosemary. Fresh leaves are better for this recipe but dried is fine too, although more difficult to chop finely. The rosemary pieces eventually add dark, dried specks to your bars and you can feel them as you use the soap too. If they're not small, then they can be scratchy. You can also make this recipe without the rosemary leaves if you wish.
- In a ramekin, mix the clay with the extra water. The extra water amount helps mix the clay into the soap batter and it also stops the clay from making your soap crack.
Melt the Solid Oils
- When the lye solution is room temperature, stir in the sodium lactate. The amount listed is for liquid sodium lactate so if you're using powdered sodium lactate, just use half the amount given.
- Place the pan of solid oils on the hob and turn it on to the lowest heat setting. They will melt quicker than you expect, so stay with the pan, moving the oil around in the pan to help speed up melting. When there are a few small pieces of solid oil still floating, take the pan off the heat and set it on a potholder. They'll melt with the residual heat and some gentle stirring with your spoon/spatula.
Add the liquid oils and clay
- When the solid oils are fully melted, pour the liquid oils into the pan of melted oils. To minimize air bubbles getting in, try pouring the liquid oils onto a clean spatula held over the pan of oils. Use the spatula to get every last drop out of the jug then stir the oils together gently.
- Next, pour the clay mixture into the pan. Use a spatula to scrape all the color out of the container and into the pan. Don't be alarmed if you see blobs of color at the bottom of the pan.
- Take the temperature of the pan of mixed oils and clay. You're aiming for around the same temperature as the lye solution, but they can be a few degrees higher of 27 °C (80 °F). If they're too hot, floating the pan in cool water whilst stirring helps to cool them quickly.
Bringing the Ingredients to 'Trace'
- When the temperatures are right, pour the lye solution through the sieve and into the pan of oils.
- Carefully place the head of the immersion blender (stick blender) into the oils. Insert it at an angle so that any air inside the head can escape as you submerge the head. Air trapped inside the head can create air bubbles in your soap.
- The next step, bringing the ingredients to trace, is best shown in the video at the bottom of this recipe. Have a watch to understand all the steps better, but especially this one.
- Stir the contents of the pan gently, using the immersion blender as a spoon. Then bring it into the center of the pan and hold it against the bottom of the pan. Not moving the immersion blender, pulse for a couple of seconds. Then gently stir. Keep repeating this pulse then stir process until the soap thickens to a light to medium trace. You'll see just the faintest trace marks on the surface of the soap and it will still be pourable. Stop blending, tap off the immersion blender's head, and put it aside. You will not use it again.
After Trace
- Add the rosemary essential oil and gently stir with a spatula until completely mixed in.
- Sprinkle the chopped rosemary into the soap batter and gently stir it in.
Molding and Curing
- Pour the soap batter into your mold(s), generously spray the surface with the rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol), and set the soap aside. Come back again after fifteen minutes and spray the surfaces again -- the alcohol creates a barrier on the soap and helps stop soda ash from forming.
- Leave the soap to harden up inside the mold for at least 48 hours before taking it out. It may be a little sticky when removing, especially if you decide not to use sodium lactate. In this case, you can leave the soap in the mold for longer, even a week or more. You can also put the entire mold in the freezer for 30 minutes to an hour. They should pop out easily after that.
- Next, find someplace in the house that's safe from animals and kids and that is airy and out of direct sunlight. Lay a piece of baking paper down and space your bars of soap out over it. You should leave your soap there for four weeks to allow excess water to evaporate out of your soap and for them to fully harden up. This is called curing soap.
- This soap's lather is stable and creamy and the color of the soap will be grey-green to grey-blue depending on the quality and color of your olive oil. There’s a clip of the lather in the video below. When fully cured, you can begin using the soap and gifting it to others. Try these creative and eco-friendly ways to package soap for holiday gifts.
- Once made and cured, your soap can have a shelf-life of up to two years. Check the oil bottles and ingredients that you're using though -- the closest best-by date of any of them is the best-by date of your soap.
Video
Notes
Interested in Naturally Colouring soap?
- How to Naturally Color Handmade Soap + Ingredients Chart
- Woad Soap Recipe for Denim-blue bars
- Make sunny yellow soap using carrot puree
- Naturally purple soap using Alkanet root
Hello! The soap is great, really! Just a question: how do you prevent rosemary to turn the soap brown? Thank you.
There’s no way to prevent it, I’m afraid. Each piece of rosemary will turn a dark brown shade and fortunately I think it looks really pretty in this soap recipe.
I used this recipe to make soap for my friends and family and they all absolutely loved it! I am about to make my 2nd batch 🙂
I have made this soap a few times now. It is wonderful every time. I have substituted about 1/4 of the rosemary essential oil with peppermint, and I just love it! I find the two oils really complement each other. I have also used the saponification chart to make substitutions for some of the oils and altered all the weights to accommodate the specific molds I like to use. I really like using tallow in this recipe, though I have done it without in deference to friends who prefer vegan products. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and expertise so freely, it has awakened a joy of creativity in soap making!
Hi, I am looking for palm free soap recipe about six weeks. I think my search is completed. I am satisfied with your receip . I am making soap first time. Thank you for good recipe. My English is not good enough.
Hi Tanya,
I made this soap and have some soda ash on the top. I did only let it go to a light trace before pouring as I wanted it to be easy to design the top. I am wondering if this soap can be made at a higher temp as I heard temp also affects the possibility of getting soda ash, can I make this soap at 38°C?
Thanks! 😊
Hi Jenny, this soap has a high water content, which is the most likely suspect for causing soda ash. But yes, that combined with low soaping temperatures can cause soda ash to form, especially if it’s cold in your house or you have high humidity. To avoid soda ash, I recommend making the recipe at 120F and spraying the tops with rubbing alcohol after you pour the soap into the mold. It creates a barrier that stops carbon dioxide in the air from reacting with lye to cause soda ash. It will evaporate off by the time it comes to unmold the soap.
Hello Tanya,
I love your website and videos! I have just finished my first batch of soap…and did a play on your rosemary soap (I used beautiful mountain lake clay I collected myself). Other than using slightly more dry powdered clay (no more than an extra gram), I followed all your recipe amounts to the letter. I have just removed the soap from the mold, and the loaf (uncured) weighs 654 g (instead of the expected 454 grams that make up a pound). Is this normal? As your recipes are 1lb recipes…what does that weight refer to? The weight of a batch after curing? The weight of just the oils in the recipe? Is my brand new scale perhaps inaccurate? The loaf smells and looks lovely, but now I am worried I have messed something up and perhaps made unsafe soap. Any help would be so greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Hi Sara, the weight in soap recipes refers to the base soaping oils only. The additional weight comes from the water, lye, essential oil, herbs, and clay. Some of that weight will evaporate out during the curing phase though.
Hi:)
I have made 4-5 batches of cold process successfully and 1 batch of hot process soap that never fully hardened. So I’m not completely new, but certainly not experienced either! I found you on you tube yesterday and love your tutorial. I went to one hands on class and this was just as helpful. Thank you so much. My question – doesn’t the tutorial say you picked the sprig of Rosemary the day before you made the soap? So the chopped rosemary that goes in the soap does not have to be dried? One more question- where do you buy your supplies?
Rosemary is one of those rare herbs that you can add to soap undried BUT it must be cut very small and it will turn black. It’s a visual effect more than anything else so you can leave the herbs out if you wish.
Thank you for this wonderful recipe! How would I go about decorating the top of the soap loaves with fresh rosemary? I have tried in the past and the rosemary turned brown/black. Not sure if it was because the temperature was too high during gel phase? Would you suggest waiting 24 hours after gel phase and then attempting to add the rosemary using isopropyl alcohol? Many thanks in advance for your thoughts! x
Hi Leanne, I don’t recommend decorating any soap with fresh herbs or flowers — only dried. Fresh material will mold over, or cause the soap underneath to get icky. To keep the rosemary as green as possible, dry it quickly using a food dehydrator if you have one. Wait until the soap is fully cured, then spray the tops with alcohol or witch hazel and spinkle the chopped rosemary over. When the alcohol dries, the herbs will stick 🙂
Hi, I’m so excited to make this soap. And I’m also new to soap making . Thinking of sodium Lactate , since it’s optional, I wanted to omit it. So that means do I have to cure the soap for longer time , more than four weeks . Thanks for your detailed recipe . Looking forward more !
Without it, the soap will be sticky at first and be difficult to get out of the mold. You can just leave it in the molds for part of the cure time though.
Made my first batch a few weeks ago! Thank you! Questions: can this recipe be doubled easily? I am thinking of making about 100 as favors for my wedding. They will be made in molds shaped like animals (we are biologists). Also, how long do they keep for? I’d like to start making them now for my wedding in August 2020. Thanks!
Feel free to double, triple, etc, this recipe. I share soap ideas in one-pound batches for the hobby soap maker but all of them can be increased in size. Once made, your soap has a shelf-life that’s the closest best-by date of your ingredients. So use oils that have a long shelf-life. The rosemary in this recipe brings the best-by date down to a maximum of one year though. All the best for your wedding this summer 🙂
Thank you very much! Is this recipe transferable with other herbs?
Yes, you could use lots of other different dried herbs for this recipe instead of rosemary. Peppermint, oregano, lemon balm, and thyme to name a few. Essential oils are different though and some won’t be safe in the same quantity as the rosemary eo in this recipe. For further guidance on other essential oils, and how much to use, head over here: https://lovelygreens.com/make-soap-with-essential-oils/
Is it okay to substitute the olive oil pomace, for evoo?
Yes of course. It’s darker in color though so your end bars will be a different shade though.
Hi, I’m not going to add the clay as I don’t have any. Should I add the water you use for the clay in with the lye water mix or omit it completely? Can’t wait to make it I love Rosemary.
You can just omit it. It’s only needed to mix the clay, not for anything else.
You state you are using a water discount of 33%.
Soapcalc asks for:
Water as a % of oil, or
Lye concentration, or
Water : lye ratio.
What do you mean water discount 33%?
I was just checking out your recipe with soapcalc trying to learn more.
Thanks so much. This batch will be #2 for me. Batch 1 is great soap but doesn’t smell that good.
Have a read on what water discounting is about half-way down in this piece: https://lovelygreens.com/change-customize-soap-recipe/
Why do you think the soap doesn’t smell great? Are all of your ingredients within their best-by date? Old oil can go rancid quickly in soap making.
Hello Tanya,
Thank you for this recipe! I have rosemary that needs harvesting and this soap fits the bill. But this will be my first soapmaking experience and I haven’t been able to buy the Cambrian Blue Clay ($27 shipping to Canada and cannot find it here) so I need to swap clays.
My question: can I replace the Cambrian Blue Clay with any other type of clay? I understand the color of the clay will change the color of the soap, and also it’s properties. Hence I would probably stick with some green clay which will fit the color and properties – would that be right?
Thank you for a great website, tutorials and information – you are definitely my “go-to” for soapmaking advice (amongst other topics)!
Hi Susan and thanks for being in touch — good question! Yes, you can use most any other clay for this recipe. Stick to using just one teaspoon of clay per pound of oils as a general rule. There are many to choose from!
Hello. I love your recipe. I have one question. Can I change the castor oil for almond oil? thank you 🙂
Sure, but if you change any oils in a cold-process soap recipe then the Sodium hydroxide amount has to change too. Use the SoapCalc to get the amounts you need: http://soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp
Thank you so much for your video tutorial and wonderful recipe! Smal batches are so helpful as I am just making soap for myself (and I guess giving to my friends and family!) I am just getting into soap making and excited to try this one!
hi Tanya, thanks for sharing your wonderful soap recipes. Thinking of making some for commercial purposes. but i am in Africa and its quite difficult getting fresh rosemary. I was wondering if i could use dried rosemary instead and if possible how do i use it.
Thank you
Hi Lorraine and yes, you can used dried rosemary. Chop it up finely and only use half the amount of fresh.
Hi Tanya,
Thank you again for sharing another great soap recipe! I made a batch a month ago and am now happily using them. They smell wonderful, feel great and have lots of fluffy lather. I will be making these again soon. Mine turned out a pale greenish grey color.
So glad I discovered your website!
So pleased to hear it 🙂 Doesn’t the rosemary essential oil smell amazing?
I was always told making soap was dangerous. Your video for the lavender soap was wonderful and “scrubbed” my fear of making my on soap. Thank you so much!
You’re so welcome Pam 🙂 I foresee many other soap batches in your future! Have fun making them
I love the scent of rosemary in soap! Always looking for more natural colour options too 🙂
I have a question..Will the rosemary turn brown in and on the soap? Thanks! I love these! They are lovely!
Yes it will and in the photos you can see how it’s turned brown already. Each little piece of lavender creates a dark speckle in the soap. I think that i’s a pretty effect contrasted against the blue-green of the bar.