felted soaps - the stocking stuffer edition

So. If you make soap (and I know that some of you do), felted soap is a really, really quick and easy way to cover up some of your less-than-perfect bars. I was playing around last night in a festive, crafty mood, and came up with these little 'gifts' - I think they're adorable, if pleasantly imperfect. (If you receive one, act surprised, okay?) I just found some other little gift-ish felted soaps here, which are much more perfect!

I blogged just about everything I would type tonight almost two years ago over on my soap blog, so you can pop over there for some of the technical details. All you need is roving (if you're local, Hands On Crafts carries it), soap, and water. Magic! These ones were done quickly and certainly not terribly carefully; you could probably have better results if you took your time.
From that post:
Here's my first bar of felted soap! It was a lot of fun and very easy to do. You may be thinking a few things: a) what on earth is felted soap? b) why on earth would anyone bother doing this? and d) how do I make it?

a) Felted soap (or 'sweater soap', 'soap in a sweater') is simply soap wrapped in wool. Some people do fancy dancy things with cute little pictures, some go for my type of simple beauty, and some use lots of colour. There are tons of felted soaps on Etsy, and you can even order your own DIY kit here.

b) Having your soap wrapped in wool means that you don't need a washcloth or nylon shower poof thing. It increases the lather of your bar, and you can use your bar to the very last sliver. The wool is gentle on the skin, yet slightly exfoliating, and it's a natural material (aside from any crazy dyes and treatments to the wool). It also keeps your bar from slip-sliding all over the place.
So there. I think I'm going to try this with Phillip sometime in the next few days - it's definitely kid-friendly, and it might give me a chance to perfect my technique. I'm also planning on using some scraps for some rebatching fun. I love how my first rebatched batch turned out a few years ago, and that's another kid-friendly soap technique.

I hope that you have a great weekend! I'm done work for the break, so all of those Christmas plans for cookies and other goodies are due to begin straight away!