Who makes soap here, what has been your experience or what would you care to share? I have several ingredients ready to make soap but since I'm a newbie I'm afraid to ruin my high quality ingredients.
@Mum4ever♫ great tip! Thank you.
Thank you all for your replies. Very great advice!
I only make glycerin soaps. Nothing with Lye and beef fat, as I'm too impatient.
If you're a newby than I would recommend you watch several Youtube videos first before embarking on mixing your high quality ingredients. Or at least, cut all the ingredients down to a very small batch for just practicing on first. Then proceed if you're happy with the results.
GL!
Go to your local craft store.
They will have Glycerin soap, clear, which you then add whatever color or scent you want.
You simply, take it home, and in the microwave, for a FEW seconds at a time, melt it, using a pyrex little bowl. Once melted, pour it into a plastic or silicone type "mold." I have used even baby food containers. Then, let it set and harden. Or put it in the fridge to cool off and harden. And pop it out of the mold. You can also spray some "Pam" spray on the mold container first, so that the soap pops out easier when it is hardened and cooled down and solidified.
Then you have, soap.
This is a very simple way.
I don't!!!
I hate it. I've had to from time to time, from fat and ash, and not only dies it stink to high heaven, but I always burn myself with the durn lye!!! X(
LOL... Some people enjoy it, though!!! I love cooking / don't mind those burns, but chemical burns not only hurt more, but give me the heebie-jeebies! Shudder. Ick ick ick.
I make soap from scratch (lye) and I love it. It takes a bit to get use to what you must do and to take your time.
Do some research on the oils and such. There are several places that have calculators so that you dont' have to figure out your lye ratio by hand even though it is nice to know how to. Try the sage, southern soapers, and soapmakers websites for information. Post me if you need more info. I will be teaching a coworker how to make soap next month.
Welcome to the world of bubbles.
The other S.
It's nice to see other soapmakers out here. :)
I make handcrafted soap from lye and fats/oils.
The key, imo, to making soap (as above) is to have an accurate scale, and to follow safety protocols about using lye. One of the best "newbie" sites, imo, is Miller's Soap page:
http://www.millersoap.com/
One of the really nice things about the Miller's Soap site is that it offers you the chance to make soap without a scale, using a tried and true recipe.
There are recipes there you can try and that don't use high-end/super expensive ingredients. I would recommend doing a few batches of "grocery store" soap before spending a lot of money on ingredients.
I've made cold process soap, and hot-process soap (oven hot process and crockpot hot process). I like hot process better, because I think you can a reliable product more quickly useable (rather than w/ cold process, having to wait weeks for it to finish curing), and avoid the pitfalls of finicky ingredients like fragrance problems affecting trace. However, the process takes longer to do (45 min-1.5 hour) to "cook" the soap, rather than 15-30 for cold process to take it to trace.
