Your kids will love Fun-Doh Soap!

This kid-friendly soap recipe makes bath-time a breeze

Are you looking for a fun recipe to make with children? Allow us to introduce you to Fun-Doh Soap! This homemade play dough soap is both easy and fun to make with youngsters. It’s perfect for a rainy day, school vacation, or letting your little ones craft a homemade gift for their friends. But it’s not just fun to make, it’s also fun to use! Bath-Doh is a DIY soap and modeling clay all in one. Older children can help make the soap dough thanks to its safe ingredients, children of all ages (including the young at heart) can have fun shaping it, and anyone can suds up with it in the tub. With Bath-Doh, everyone’s happy! 

What will your budding artists make? A doll, a smiling pineapple, a dragon, or a unicorn? At COCOÉCO, we let ourselves get swept up by spring and made pretty, colourful flowers! 

Please feel free to share you or your little ones’ beautiful creations with us. We can’t wait to hear what you think of this kid-friendly soap recipe! 

How to make play dough soap?

Ingredients

• 15 g demineralized water
• 1 g fine Dead Sea salt
• 15 g Dr. Bronner’s unscented liquid Castile soap
• 5 g jojoba oil
• 3 g vegetable glycerin
• 0.8 g liquid colourant of your choosing
• 1–2 g aromatic essence of your choosing
• 53 g tapioca starch
• 7 g white clay
• Extra demineralized water and white clay to adjust texture if necessary

Tools

• Two small bowls
• Hot plate or stove element
• Scale, accurate to 0.1 g
• Four ramekins
• Pipette
• Spoon

Good to know!

• The salt increases the viscosity of the product to help yield the malleable consistency you’re after.
• The liquid Castile soap is the cleansing agent in this recipe. It can be replaced by an equal portion of scented liquid Castile soap, if you prefer.
• The oil and vegetable glycerin yield a product that’s gentle on your skin.
• The tapioca starch and white clay thicken the mixture, yielding a soapy dough that holds together well and that’s easy to shape.
• We tested out this recipe with other starches, but they yielded a completely different texture: instead of a malleable ball, we wound up with a brittle dough that crumbled. We advise against replacing the tapioca starch with any other starch in this modeling soap recipe.
• You can use one of our coloured clays instead of white clay (pink, red, yellow, or green), but keep in mind that they may change the colour of your DIY play dough soap. For example, if you use pink clay with a green liquid colourant, your soap will likely turn out brownish rather than green. We advise against using bentonite or ghassoul clay, as they are much more absorbent.
• Do you want your soap to sparkle? That can be done! Just add 1 g of the mica of your choosing to the tapioca and clay mixture in step 9.

Steps to follow

1. Prepare and disinfect your equipment and workspace.
2. Weigh the demineralized water in a bowl and heat it until the water is just simmering, then remove it from the heat.
3. Weigh the salt in the first ramekin.
4. Weigh the Castile soap in a second ramekin. 
5. Weigh the oil, colourant, aromatic essence, and glycerin in the third ramekin.
6. Add the salt to the bowl of hot water and mix with the spoon until dissolved.
7. Add the Castile soap to the bowl and mix well.
8. Add the contents of the third ramekin (oil, colourant, scent, and glycerin) to the bowl. Mix together well with the spoon.
9. Weigh the tapioca starch and clay in the second bowl and mix to combine.
10. Pour half of the dry ingredients over the liquid mixture. Mix with a spoon. When the mixture is homogeneous, gradually add the rest of the dry ingredients and incorporate thoroughly. 
11. At this point, you may need to adjust the texture of the dough. Test it out by taking the dough in your hands and kneading it for a few minutes.

• If it seems too dry and little bits of dough are crumbling off, or if there’s unincorporated starch, add ¼ teaspoon of water at a time, mixing after each addition.
• If the dough seems too liquid, or if it’s sticky or slick, add ½ teaspoon of white clay at a time. 

12. Place your homemade play dough soap in an airtight container or a Ziploc-style bag, removing as much air as possible to prevent it from drying out.

Use and conservation

This soap recipe is suitable for all skin types. 

This unique homemade soap has two functions. First, it can be used like a classic soap to wash your body. Second, it’s a fun plaything that the whole family can enjoy. 

Fun-Doh Soap has a play dough-like texture, so you and your children can have fun shaping it to your hearts’ content. Give your imagination free rein and mold your soap into a dinosaur, unicorn, car, or crown. You can have fun shaping it again and again, as when made in optimal sanitary conditions, it should keep for a few weeks. If it dries out, just add a few drops of water, work them into the dough, and mold it again. Store your Fun-Doh Soap in a dry, dark place, ideally in an airtight container.

At bath time, just break off a little piece and use it to wash up in the tub. On contact with water, this soap will dissolve and create a lather. So, keep in mind that you only want to bring a piece into the tub, not the whole thing.