When making natural handmade soap, you can make all types of soaps to fit your desired niche. One of the possibilities is that of including an exfoliant in your soap to help lift away any dead skin or caked on dirt that needs a little extra scrubbing to get clean. One such exfoliant is Sodium Bentonite Powder which can be found at most health-food stores. This exfoliant will not only remove dirt and dead skin but also help to lift away the toxins in your skin. If you don’t have access to this clay, you can also start using products you probably have sitting around in your kitchen right now. You can use poppy seeds, blueberry seeds, ground almond meal, ground walnut husk meal or even ground oatmeal. Below you will find a more complete list which you can experiment with.

Once you have chosen what exfoliant to use, you will need to add it to your soap recipe. The perfect spot to add exfoliants is right after your soap has reached trace and you are adding your fragrance, superfat or color to the soap batch. With most exfoliants, because of their fine granular nature, you will want to mix them beforehand with a carrier oil so you don’t have to worry about lumps in your soap. There is nothing worse than finding huge pockets of exfoliant in your soap when you are using the soap. Once you have added the exfoliant to the soap mixture, you just need to mix it in thoroughly. Some exfoliants may thicken your soap batch while you are stirring it. Don’t panic! Your soap will be fine. Just continue to mix the soap but get it into the mold quickly before it thickens beyond your ability to fill the mold. At this point, you would treat this soap as you would any other soap and allow it to saponify for a few days, cut it and then let it dry in bars.

• Almonds (ground)
• Calendula (chopped or ground flower petals)
• Chamomile Flowers
• Clays (rhassoul, kaolin, bentonite, pink, red moroccan, french green etc.)
• Coconut Flakes
• Coffee Grounds
• Corn Meal
• Eucalyptus Leaves
• Fruit Seeds (cranberry, blackberry, blueberry, strawberry, apricot etc.)
• Jojoba Beads
• Kelp (too much can smell fishy though)
• Lavender Buds
• Loofah
• Oatmeal
• Oatstraw
• Patchouli
• Peppermint
• Poppy Seeds
• Pumice
• Rose Hips (not the seeds) (finely ground)
• Rose Petals
• Rosemary
• Sandalwood powder
• Spearmint
• Sunflower Petals
• Tapioca pearls
• Tea leaves
• Walnut shells