DIY Yarrow Soap Recipe

This yarrow soap recipe uses dried flowers that you can harvest from your garden. These handmade soaps are a perfect way to share the bounty of your garden as gifts. Or, use them yourself for the beneficial skin properties of the essential oils in the goats milk base soap.

Yarrow is a lovely flower that many people can find growing nearby. Use my tips for foraging, drying and storing yarrow to save the petals for this soap recipe.

If you don’t have yarrow growing nearby, you can order it online on Amazon or Etsy (where I’ve found it’s much cheaper).

The petals of yarrow flowers are tiny, so they make a great addition to soap. They will break down and dissolve easily when you use the soap, yet they give the soaps visual interest with dried natural flowers.

Essential Oils Used In This Soap Recipe

All of the essential oils used in this yarrow soap recipe were picked for their beneficial properties. Here’s why I chose the oils that I did:

Yarrow is well-known for being an anti-aging oil. It helps take down inflammation of the skin, balances the skin, is a natural toner, can help unclog pores and reduce irritations in general. It leaves the skin feeling soft and smooth. I suggest buying it on Amazon or Plant Therapy.
I used the Doterra Yarrow-Pom combination blend of Yarrow and Pomegranate seed oil (The serum is super expensive, though, so I totally understand if you don’t want to use it!). You can just use separate yarrow oil and pomegranate oil. Pomegranate seed oil is full of vitamin C and it is very beneficial to the skin. It gives a glowing complexion and does many of the same things the Yarrow does. Combining the two different types of oils gives you double the benefits.
Cedarwood oil brings a woodsy scent to the soap. It helps balance out the sometimes-odd scent of the Yarrow, which tends to be more herbaceous. Cedarwood is a calming oil which has anti-microbial benefits. It helps reduce scars, spots and blemishes on the skin.
Bergamot is easily my favorite citrus oil! It brings a wonderful scent to the soap. It is anti-inflammatory and antibacterial and works well for blemishes.
Lime oil lightens the scent and adds a hint of sweetness to the smell. It is a cleansing oil that helps to purify the skin. It is an antiseptic and helps with dryness and blemishes.

How to Make Yarrow Soap

I used this wave pattern silicone soap mold to make these soaps. Each batch made about 3 bars using these molds. The amount of bars of soap you will be able to make depends on the type of silicone soap mold that you use.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups goat’s milk soap base
2 tsp. sweet almond oil
26 drops lime essential oil
16 drops bergamot essential oil
40 drops yarrow-pom oil (or 30 drops of yarrow oil and 10 drops pomegranate seed oil)
15 drops cedarwood essential oil
1 tbsp. dried yarrow petals

Directions

Step 1

Lay out the silicone mold in a nice warm spot that is flat to be ready for cooling the soaps later on. Check the molds to be sure they are clean and free of any dust or debris that would stick to your soap.

If your goat’s milk soap base has pre-scored cubes, cut along the lines. You will need approximately 12-15 cubes to get to a cup and a half. If your soap doesn’t have the scored lines, cut it into slices about an inch thick and then cut that into small cubes.

Step 2

Place about 10 cubes of goats milk soap base into a glass measuring cup or microwave-safe bowl. Heat in the microwave for 90 seconds.

The melted soap base will boil over in the microwave very easily if you heat it too long, so air on the side of caution.

Using a heat-safe rubber or silicone spatula, stir the soap mixture and scrape the bottom to see if you have it all melted. Add more cubes, if needed, until you reach the cup and a half. Place back into the microwave for 30 seconds at a time if you need to add more soap.

Step 3

Add almond oil to the soap base, stirring it in well. Then add in the essential oils, one at a time.

Adding Doterra Yarrow-Pom oil, which has a blue color

Stir well with each one. If you notice the soap thickening up as you are doing this, you can stop in the middle and heat it up for about 25 seconds. Scrape any thick soap off the sides and bottom prior to heating.

If you feel the soap needs one more run in the microwave, go ahead and do that before you pour it. If its thick, it won’t pour in a smooth, consistent manner and your soap will come out messy.

Step 4

Slowly pour the soap into the molds to just below the top edge. If you accidentally go over, you can take the rubber spatula and push the overflow into the next mold, but you have to be quick! Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl as you pour out the last of the soap into the molds.

Sprinkle the yarrow petals evenly over the soap in the molds.

Allow the soaps to fully cool. This will take around an hour or so, depending on the temperature. Do not move the molds during this process.

Once they are cool, carefully peel them out of the molds and flip them over. Give them a few more minutes of cooling to allow the moisture that may be in the bottom to evaporate.

Helpful Hints

Heating in a measuring cup is easier because you can instantly see how much you have, but you can also heat in a different bowl and pour into a measuring cup.
The Doterra Yarrow-Pom oil has a blue tint and makes the soap look really pretty with a pale blue color. It is thick, so it drops very slowly. Your yarrow oil might not be tinted blue, so don’t worry!
Cedarwood is also a thicker oil, so it could take longer to drop into the recipe. However, the rest are thinner and runny, so be careful when adding your drops so you don’t get too many.
I prefer to let my soap sit out for a day before I put any labels or anything on it. It will shrink up a little bit.
If you would rather have the petals throughout the bar, you would need to either mix them in to the soap mixture before pouring, or put them into the molds prior to pouring. This method works fine and looks nice, but I prefer to have them on the back side of the soap, and it uses less petals this way as well.

Looking for more easy microwave soap recipes? Check these out: