Homemade Bath Crayons

I've had this idea pinned to my board on Pinterest for months - maybe even over a year - to make homemade bath crayons with the kids. It sounded like a good way for the kiddos to have fun in the bath, and I'm a sucker for making things. So, I finally got the supplies to make it recently and we did it. To find out how to make these, check out this blog.

Photo from Pinterest

First things first: the supplies: glycerin soap is not cheap. These are some of the most expensive crayons I have ever purchased. It was still a fun experiment, but a bar of glycerin soap was about $10. OY! Yeah, that part wasn't so great. But, alas, I had already committed to the idea in my brain, so I had to do it. Maybe I just don't know the right place to by glycerin soap?? If anybody has other ideas for getting cheap glycerin soap - I'd love to hear them. I just found the soap at our local craft store and through clenched teeth, bought it.

Which reminds me, I just saw this on Pinterest today and had to share it - it made me think of this very thing. It may not exactly apply - but it was too funny.

Anyway, back to our homemade bath crayons. We did this project while Cade and James were napping, so just the older two kids did it. I figure dealing with hot, melted liquid could quickly turn into an ugly scenario if we had had two-year-olds involved.


I cut off a little chunk of the soap and melted it in the microwave, then I poured the melted liquid into ice cube trays. Gabe and Peyton each got their own tray. I did add a little bit of lavender scent to the liquid as that stuff was STANKY! It was way better after the lavender was added though.

After all the liquid had been poured into the trays, I let the kids pick the colors they wanted. We did a little bit of color mixing, but mainly just went with the colors that were available in the food coloring boxes that I had. The potential for spilling was pretty high since there wasn't much room for stirring, so mixing colors was not an idea I was too keen on.

In between stirring in each color, I had given the kids paper towels so they could wipe off their spoons. I would highly recommend this method as the soap does dry rather quickly and it's better to keep the spoons clean if you can so as not to mix colors and have an icky build-up of soap on your spoons...not that it would matter all that much - you let it soak for five minutes and the soap has re-liquified anyway.

After more than an hour of drying time, the soap crayons were ready to come out of the trays. To get the soap out, I used a butter knife. Because these aren't like ice cubes, running hot water on the back didn't seem to help all that much. But the soaps pretty much stayed all together when taking them out with the knife, so that worked just fine.

Aren't they precious??

After the soaps were done, the kids couldn't wait to use them in the shower. Unfortunately, the news I received from them was that they did not work well in the shower. Although I have not tried it first-hand, so I'm not sure if that's completely accurate. I did try the blue crayon worked in the sink even when wet and it worked, so I'm wondering if they were trying to use the smooth end of the soap, which may not have worked as well. Also something good to note - the crayons did not stain their skin. Gabe was very excited to use it in the shower, and I just held my breath and hoped that he didn't come out multi-colored; he didn't. He smelled a little too much like the nasty glycerin soap mixed with a little lavender, but he was clean so that's good.

Playing with the blue soap in the sink

They later tried the crayons on a piece of paper and the soap crayons worked well on that, which was exciting. If they used the smooth end of the crayon, it took some work to get it to work, but if they used the sharper side, it was no problem. Their Aunt Becca showed them that. She's a genius.

So, all in all, I'd say this was a Pinterest success....an expensive Pinterest success, but still a success. It seems more worth it to make these if they actually do work in the bathtub (as the blue one did, but apparently the others didn't), but not so much otherwise. Who needs a $10 box of homemade crayons??  Not I. (Granted, not the whole bar of soap was used, but still....)

It was still a fun experiment, and an experience with my kids, so I still very much enjoyed it and just for something different, I'd say you should check it out.