How to make soap

How to make natural homemade soap? What are the ingredients for soap? Soap , by definition, is fat or oil mixed with an alkali. In bar soapmaking, the lye is sodium hydroxide.

In these days of rising prices and commercial excess, many people are looking to crafts and homemade items to restock the household with basic materials. One of the simplest household items that can be made easily at home is basic lye soap.

Gather the ingredients. Cold process soap is made from oils, lye, and water. When these ingredients are combined at the right temperature, they harden into soap in a process called saponification. Go to your local craft store and grocery store to purchase the ingredients listed. In order to make soap , you need to combine a caustic substance with oils or fat.

In days past, our grandmothers used potash, made from wood ashes and animal fats. You can buy soap bases from a variety of online outlets as well as at many craft stores. Slice soap base into small chunks for quick melting.

Place in a glass jug and microwave in 15-second intervals till melted.

Slip into soap making. Discover everything you need to make your own handmade soap in our lovely bubbly range of soap making supplies. Add drops of red soap colorant and drops of yellow soap colorant and stir. If you want a darker orange soap , add more red colorant.

Stir well to distribute the color. Add the vitamin E oil and pumpkin pie spice and stir to incorporate. There are ways that you can make and customize your own soap without handling the lye by using a pre-made melt-and-pour soap that has been pre-saponified (in other words, the lye has already been handled). It is not lye-free, but you won’t have to handle the lye yourself. Measure out the caustic soda and water, using the scale to make sure the measurements are exact.

Put the water in a pan or container large enough to contain both measurements. Place the soap making pot with the solid oils on the stove over medium-low heat. Slowly melt the oils while stirring gently. Monitor the temperature with a thermometer.

Turn off the heat when the oils get to about 1F. Keep stirring until all the solid oils are melted. Do not overheat as this could mean that some of the moisture content from the soap is lost. In our case, we are using lye.

Lye is very alkaline and fats are acidic. When an alkali and an acid react with each other they form a salt and water…so soap is essentially a salt.

Soap Making At the Soap Kitchen we favour what is known as the Cold Process method for our soap making, which is often mistakenly known as Cold Pressed. This method uses Lye to chemically react with oils to make soap and as such the soap made in this method is often referred to as Lye Soap. Make handmade soap with a blend of rosemary, peppermint, and lavender essential oils.

For added effect you can also add a teaspoon of finely chopped herbs. These will add dark speckles throughout the bars. How To Make Soap - Homemade Soap Making for Beginners 4. Course Ratings are calculated from individual students’ ratings and a variety of other signals, like age of rating and reliability, to ensure that they reflect course quality fairly and accurately. Making your own soap is easy, affordable, doesn’t require any special equipment and is quite addictive. Expert Soap -maker Gina Roberts explains the process.

Words: Nadene Hall If avid soap -maker Gina Roberts could tell you one thing, it’s that you shouldn’t be worried about the ingredient that seems to put off a lot of people who are thinking of giving it a go. The lye, also known as.