Dried flowers for scent

[Sandraruba]

Is is possible to use dried flowers as a scent in your soap? I have these wonderful smelling little white flowers in my yard and I took them off and dried them.

I put some of them in grapeseed oil to see if I could infuse the scent in oil, but that smells rather funky now (should I have used another oil?).

So I was wondering if I could just use the dried flower petals directly in the soap and give it the scent like that?

I want to try and use as many products that I can get from my own back yard. I grow Aloe, cucumber, I make my own coconut oil. I am waiting for my papaya and pumpkin to be ripe so I can use them as well. And I want to use the scent of the flowers I have in the yard. I have this wonderful plant that has flowers that smell like jasmin (waiting for it to bloom again) and I have the abovementioned flowers that smell like heaven.

Any thoughts and suggestions on how to do this?

 

[chicklet]

Any flowers or plants you add to your soap are going to lose their scent during the saponification process. You can infuse plant material in oil (grapeseed should be fine, olive works too) to try and capture other properties of the plant, but the scent won't survive. Essential oil scents do survive the saponification process and are derived by distilling plant material such as flowers, and you can (theoretically) distill your own home grown plants, but I've never done it and don't know anybody who has. I've seen home distilleries for sale online but I don't know how well they work. I do know that it takes lots and LOTS of plant material to get a small amount of essential oil.

 

[hoegarden]

you can sprinkle the flowers on the top as deco.. at the same time, the smell will not be affected by the saponification process.. but do take note there is a possibility that the smell will go away with time even before the soap is cured..

 

[mel z]

The scent will not make it through in soap. Also, please be sure to identify the flowers, you don't want to use something poisonous.

 

[Kay]

Shucks! I was thinking about doing the same thing! What about using different herbal teas in soap? Would those add any scent? Either the dried tea leaves, or what if you made a really concentrated tea and used the water to make your soap. Would the scent survive the saponification process that way?

 

[Ruthie]

No. Tea scents do not survive saponification either.

 

[hoegarden]

you will get a darker color to your soap only. the scent won't survive.

in addition, you have to be really careful when using concentrated tea to dissolve the lye, it may lead to incomplete dissolving of lye. its better to strain your lye if you want to use concentrated tea.

if its just adding in at trace, it will be okay. but like my first sentence, the color will be darker.

 

[adoptapitbull]

The only scents that survive are EOs and FOs. Not coffee, tea, flowers, herbs, food products...none of them!

 

[Ruthie]

The only scents that survive are EOs and FOs. Not coffee, tea, flowers, herbs, food products...none of them!

True. But coffee GROUNDS will leave a light scent.

 

[adoptapitbull]

True. But coffee GROUNDS will leave a light scent.

Never in any of mine. I've done brewed (3x strength) with a few tsp added fresh grounds and nothing.