Preparing to Make Soap

This is just me playing around with making a small batch of soap. My oils are in the pot and I just need to get my goggles and gloves on so I can pour the lye solution with soy milk into the oils. Then I mix away.

Goggles are sexy, eh? They are definitely required though when making soap. You never want to splash raw soap in your eyes. It will burn like the dickens! Fortunately, I have not had any accidents yet. *knocks on wood*

And below, you'll find the end product:

A Different Kind of Soap.

Today, I have been totally into making soap. My favorite soaps to make and use are salt bars. These are fabulous bars of soap that contain some form of salt like sea salt. They make hard, luxurious, creamy lathering bars of soap. I also get the satisfaction of unmolding them much, much sooner than a regular cold process soap.

My first batch of salt bars turned out perfectly! Here she is, lying in her mold, waiting to be cut into perfect, gorgeously fragranced soaps. I can't wait to try this one out. Her name is Amazonia. She'll be ready for sale in about 4 weeks.


My next batch was a terrifying mess! But, I have managed to save her and I'm thrilled about it because this soap has a fabulous scent also. If you can't tell, I am a lover of fragrance...

The particular fragrance I used cause what is known as acceleration. This is where your soap (which is a liquid consistency before being molded) turns very hard while still in the pot. It makes it nearly impossible to get in the mold. This being a salt bar, it just became very crumbly.

Not a good thing... This soap will fall apart if I don't do somthing about it. So, I'm throwing it in the crockpot to cook (which is more of a hot process for soaping).

I'll cook this for a few hours to complete the saponification process and then put it in the mold. The color may change a bit, but not much. Since the process is sped up by the heat, I expect this soap to be ready in about 2 weeks. I'll post the finished soaps in my next blog update.