Handmade Soap from Croatia

Hi everyone! Hope you had a great summer. It's hard to believe that fall is already here. Where did the time go? I've been a little bit behind in posting things I've made, I'm so sorry about that, so I'll be catching up with some posts over the next few days. So check back if you can! :)

Today I will be showing you a handmade soap project where I made some soaps to give to friends and family as souvenirs from Croatia. As a crafter, I think it's kind of a fun idea to hand make souvenirs rather than buy them. This is my first time making soaps and it was a lot of fun! I would definitely recommend trying it out if you haven't yet. It's super simple to do.

To make the soaps, I brought back some bags of dried lavender, which grows on the island in Croatia where my mother-in-law lives, and a bottle of distilled lavender scent. When we returned, I bought some Olive Oil soap, molds, and purple dye from Michaels.

Then I melted the soap base, mixed all the pieces together and this is how the lavender soap turned out!

For the soap wrap, I trimmed some PTI kraft paper and ran it through a Fiskars crimper. If you've never used a crimper, you should give it a try. I just love that tool! The handmade paper is from a soapmaking kit, but I would love to learn to make handmade paper too one day. If only there were enough hours in the day to make everything by hand...I think I would seriously try if I could! There is something really fun about making things yourself.

And here is the full set, including some pretty handstitched lace bags we also brought back from Croatia.

And since we're on the topic of Croatia, I thought I'd share with you a few pics that I took!

Here's the cool unusual-shaped beach at Bol where we went swimming. And yes, the water really is that blue and crystal clear!

Here is the River Canyon where we rode on an old wooden boat through the mountains. It was very magical being that close to such high mountains. Living in Florida my whole life, mountains amaze me like nothing else. I'm so used to everything being flat!

And this is the town where my mother-in-law lives on the island. You can see the mountains of the mainland in the distance (see, I can't stop talking about mountains! ;).

The houses are all made of hard white limestone, which is quarried locally on the island. That same stone was also used to build parts of the White House in the US. The island also has the most beautiful purple flowers. Can anyone name the type of flower in the picture? (ETA: I found out that the flower is a bouganvilla. Thanks Mariana!)

We had a great trip and are looking forward to going back next year!

Also, just wanted you all to be aware too if you haven't noticed yet, that my url has now changed to www.craftinginsunshine.com. I redirected it through blogger so any links from the previous url (www.monicacrafts.blogspot.com) should still work. Just wanted to give you a heads up if you'd like to update with the new info!

Thanks so much for taking a look today! Have a wonderful, sunny day! :)