Eco Friendly Soap Packaging Ideas for Gift Giving

Eco-friendly soap packaging ideas for wrapping handmade soap as gifts. These ideas can be recreated simply and inexpensively using paper, string, lace, fabric, and other natural materials.

It’s the run-up to the holidays, and you might be thinking about presents. If you’re like me, there will be some handmade gifts being given – especially handmade soap. Bars of soap are a lovely and useful present that most people will appreciate. Being small, they can be given on their own with a small card, put into a small gift set, or tucked into Christmas stockings. But what to wrap them in?

Natural handmade soap should not be wrapped in plastic, at least not for an extended period. Handmade soap needs to breathe, so using paper, cloth, and string, as shown in these ideas, is the way to go. Most can be made with materials already in your home, including wax paper, baker’s twine, and dried flowers. The rest can easily be picked up at a craft store.

Make Handmade Soap for Gifts

If you want to make your handmade soap but don’t know where to begin, don’t worry. Whether making it for yourself or giving it as a gift, my free natural soap-making series will help. It includes the basic principles you need to know, terminology, and instructions on how to make soap from scratch.

• Natural Soap Ingredients
• Soap Making Equipment & Safety
• Easy Soap Recipes
• Soap Making Process

If giving handmade soap as a gift, you must make it a month before packaging or wrapping it. That gives time for the soap to fully cure. The curing process involves allowing handmade soap to dry fully and become gentle to use. Damp soap will also dampen paper and string and could cause quite a mess.

Simple Soap Packaging with Bows

The simplest way to decorate handmade soap is with a bow. You can make them with all kinds of materials, including raffia ribbon, plain string, baker’s twine, cooking twine, satin ribbons, or embroidery thread. Use what you already have in the house or head to the craft or dollar store.

One thing that I’d recommend is to choose colors that contrast. If your soap is all cream and white, choose colorful materials. With colored soap, choose more natural tones. Even the most rustic of your soaps will look great with a bow tied on them. If giving several soaps together, you could even bundle them up and tie them with one big bow.

Wrap Soap in Washcloths

One of the most eco-friendly ways to decorate handmade soap is to use a reusable material. You could use a piece of fabric, like burlap, but the most obvious thing that comes to mind is a soft washcloth. A standard terry cloth type is perfect since they can be used together in the bath.

When sourcing washcloths, you can either buy them or crochet your own. I love handmade knit washcloths for dishwashing, and they would be perfect if you’re gifting handmade dish soap.

Decorate Handmade Soap with Lace

Another lovely idea is to decorate handmade soap with lace. Just cut enough lace to wrap around the soap once, and then place the bars in a gift box. It doesn’t need to be stuck on any more than that. Different patterns and colors of lace will look beautiful together. I can see these being pretty presented alongside a vintage tea cup candle. A great handmade gift-combo idea for those who make candles.

Lace can sometimes be at craft stores, but you can get it at fabric or second-hand shops. New lace tends to be made with acrylic thread and is waterproof. Vintage lace would be beautiful, but it may be more expensive and a shame to cut (unless it’s already a damaged/small piece). If you like the lace idea, you can also get silicone soap molds that create lace patterns on the actual soap! Many are silicone cavity molds, but you can also get silicone mats that you can lay at the bottom of existing slab and loaf molds.

Wrapping Soap with Paper

If your soap is fully cured, you can wrap the bars in paper. It could be brown parchment paper, gift wrapping paper, tissue paper, handmade paper, or even baking paper. Wrapping up bars of soap in paper makes each one like a mini-gift. It’s a really effective and eco-friendly way to package soap!

The image above is of soap wrapped up in translucent grease-proof paper. This kind of paper is marketed as wax paper and can come in brown, white, and other colors. Over the holidays, you can even find it in festive patterns. What I like about it is that I can tuck some dried flowers inside and use them to add even prettier natural decoration. You might find that tape doesn’t stick to some wax papers. In this case, tie a string around it to hold it.

Decorate Soap with Herbs and Flowers

You don’t have to stop at ribbons and paper when decorating handmade soap. You can use both dried and fresh foliage and flowers to add even more interest. There are a few ways that you can do it, including using them to decorate the tops of bars and naturally color the bars throughout. You can also used dried pressed flowers and leaves to decorate flat tops of soap bars. Spray a little rubbing alcohol (or witch hazel) on fully cured soap, set the pressed flower on top, and let it dry. It will stick to the soap as the liquid dries.

Decorating Soap with Greenery

Another thing you can do is tie greenery or dried herbs onto your bars with a bow. It could be a few stems of dried lavender, herbs, or a sprig of holly. You could even take a cutting of one of your succulent plants and tie it in if you’re giving a gift to a gardener friend. They can propagate it into a new plant and, therefore, get two gifts in one. When using fresh greenery, make sure that you decorate your soap on the day you plan on gifting it. Otherwise, it can wilt, dampen the soap and any other packaging materials, and create a mess.

Packaging Soap in Gift Sets

One fun thing about making handmade soap is creating matching items. For example, peppermint lip balm to go with peppermint soap and lavender body balm to go with lavender soap. I also have recipes for matching herb garden soap and bath fizzies if you want to make them.

Set them together in a paper box, tie a ribbon around them, and voila — handmade gifts at a fraction of the cost. The sky’s the limit when making and packaging handmade soap! These are just a few ideas, and I’m sure you’re already thinking of even more.