Lemongrass/ Lemon Basil Soap with Jojoba and Olive Oils

The kitchen smells like lemongrass and clean! i love it.
I made my first batch of soap yesterday. It was rather easy and enjoyable, but i didn't add enough scent so i retried today. Yesterday's had fresh rosemary, sage, dried lavendar and lavendar essential oil.
Today I used lemongrass essential oil and dried lemon basil. Looks and smells neat!
**Disclaimer** I am not using nice, pure soap as my base. I searched the town and couldn't find what I was looking for. After my purchase, of course, i discovered a great site Therapy Garden that sells everything I could need. So after I finish this cough sputter(jergens) cough "non pure" soap, I'll do it up proper.

This was my recipe:

• 2 cups shredded white soap
• 1/2 cup water
• drizzle jojoba oil
• drizzle olive oil
• about 1 or 2 tablespoons dried lemon basil, crushed and dried lavendar buds
• several dashes lemongrass essential oil
  

Pretty easy:
Shred the soap. Put the soap in a pyrex (i would use one larger than my 2 cupper for ease of stirring). Add water and oil. Heat a pan of water to simmer. Put pyrex in pan of water and stir gently. Keep this up for about 10 - 15 minutes until soap gets to a stringy texture (the water and soap have combined). Remove pyrex from heat. Stir in the botanicals. Immediately before hand molding or putting into molds add the essential oils and stir in well.

I used a tin mold lined with a little olive oil, a small glass lined with some petroleum jelly, and hand molded the remainder. The molds will sit around for about 5 hours whereapon I will tap the soap out. All the soaps will rest on my drying rack (aka removable grill from the smoker we never use) for a week or two until well cured - turning every day to prevent warping.
Lather and enjoy!

The scene is set.

Beginning to melt

Meltier

Almost done! (sorry, it's really hard to photograph oneself stirring hot liquids)

Ta DA!

Removed the soap from the 'mold' by tapping it on a wooden cutting board. Now I slice individual soaps with a nice sharp knife. I really like how the sliced chunks look: you can really see the botanicals clearly. I also like how the botanicals ooze some color into the soap. I think it's pretty.

Voila: Curing on the rack. You can see yesterday's soap there on the right. The lavender makes the soap a little brownish, and the basil seems to be making it greenish: yay!