Making Soap!

About 3 weeks ago I decided to try to make soap for the first time, and it was so much fun! A little scary but defiantly fun! Handmade soap can make a great gift, one drawback is that you have to leave it for 6weeks for the ingredients to stabilise before it can be used.

When making soap you have to remember that at the end of the day it is a chemical process and you have to have the right equipment to do this safely. This includes: goggles, long marigolds and an apron (preferably plastic).

The ingredients and steps to making soap can be found here.

Through other research I have found that there are easier ways to make this recipe of soap. To speed up the process you can use a stick blender as whisking can be a very long and drawn-out process (as I found out making it for the first time).

You can also add colour by adding oxide powders, I bought mine on ebay. These can be added straight into the combined mix which means that you can stop as soon as you have your perfect colour. As mentioned on the sellers’ page this can mean that the mix can speckle if not mixed well enough. By mixing the powder to a little bit of oil this can help.

I put my mixture into different shaped silicone moulds. Traditionally wooden moulds lined with greaseproof paper are used, but old ice cream tubs or plastic takeaway tubs can be used too.

Here are some pictures of me looking like an idiot making my soap. I will update you when it is stable and I can test it out.

Adding the caustic soda to the water.

The oils being heated and mixed.

Moulds all ready and waiting.

Mixing the oil and soda/water (lay) togther.

Pouring the mix into the moulds.

Me looking all proud!