Painted Bottles and Glass
Aromatherapy Eye Pillows
Pipe Curtain Rods
Art Books & Frames
Personalized Calendars, Stories, and Freezer Jam
Fancy-Dressed Soaps

by Nikol

Project: Personalized Calendars

Supplies: Lotsa soap; magazines, paper, double-stick tape or clear seals; string or ribbon (optional); scissors.

Time: A minute or so a bar.

Cost: 25 cents & up (whatever your soap costs). Discount stores will have soap as cheap as 3 or 4 for a dollar, or you might get the expensive stuff ($4 - sky-high), depending on what you want to spend.

This one's easy. You take some naked soap, and you dress it up real purdy. Present! If you got a present from me this year, chances are at least part of it was soap.

Buy a bunch of soap, either in bulk, or ends and scraps or any old kind of soap at all (except Ivory; I hate Ivory). Go as plain or as fancy as you want. A lot of hippy-dippy health food stores offer bulk soap, both in the plain-Jane (around 50 cents a bar) and superfancy styles (around 5 bucks a bar). Wrapped, unwrapped, whatever.

If you're lucky, you might get a bunch of odds and ends for cheap from a soap maker. I bought my oddly sliced and knocked-about but luscious smelling hemp soaps in bulk from Virgin Body Care.

Make the soap naked (if it's wrapped, unwrap it). Then wrap it up. Use tissue paper or make your own labels or use unusual paper or magazine pages, string, whatever you like. Magazine pages are great because you can wrap the soaps according to the style of their intended recipient.

Presentation

In a box. Stack them up in a box with a little tissue paper.

Wishy-washy. Buy a big bundle of washcloths (usually under a buck a piece in multi-packs--I got a huge stack of nice thick ones at Sam's for $10). Fold up a washcloth or two, stack a few bars on top, then bind it up with some scratchy twine or silky ribbon. You can even knot the string in a loop and hang it on a door May Day-style.

Kitcheny-kitcheny-coo. Like wishy-washy, but with a dishcloth and wrappers with food pictures. Nice for cook. If you're lucky, you might find a cute vintage recipe box to fill with soaps.

Garden variety. Fill a flower pot with natural-themed wrappers (nature pictures or natural paper and string). Throw in a washcloth, a nail brush (I used floral-printed toothbrushes--you can throw them in your scrub-brush jar next to the kitchen sink. They do a great job getting under the fingernails), lotion, packets of seeds, whatever gardeny accessories come to mind.

Bath in a jar. This is a favorite. The more of these I make, the better I get. Take a jar, at least pint-sized (quart is easier), and cram it with soap, washcloths, rubber duckies, scented candles and matches, eye pillows, whatever bathy, spa-ish things you can find or afford.