I made a new soap a couple of days ago and I wanted to share my process here. It actually didn't go as smoothly as I thought it would, but I am happy with how it turned out. This isn't really a tutorial, just a peek at the process :)
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| Getting out the ingredients for my soap. |
The first thing I do when I'm planning my soap is go to Soapcalc.net. This is where I put in how many ounces or grams of oil I'm planning on putting in this batch of soap and other information. Then it calculates how much sodium hydroxide (or potassium hydroxide for liquid soap) you will need for your soap. After I input all of the information, I click on "calculate" and then I can print it from there (you can see the paper in the above picture). After I get my sheet, I write down the additives I'm planning on using and the essential oils. I then set out my ingredients. I usually make my lye solution first, so it has time to cool down to about 90-110 degrees F. I weigh out the sodium hydroxide in one container, and my liquid in another. Wearing all my safety gear, I slowly pour the sodium hydroxide into the liquid and stir until dissolved. To be safe, when you work with lye you must have gloves, long sleeves and goggles on.
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Weighing out sodium hydroxide. Always wear gloves and goggles or other eye protection.
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Weighing out the oils
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While the lye solution is cooling, I weight out my butters and oils and put them on the stove to melt the butters and heat up the oils a bit. I like to have my oils about 90-110 degrees F when I pour my lye solution into the oils.
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All my butters and oils, ready to melt and heat.
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When the oils are melted, I usually blend in my clays or other dry powders that are going into my soap batch. Then, when both the lye mixture and oil mixture are at about the right temperature, I slowly add my lye solution into the oils and blend up with my immersion blender. I blend a few seconds, hand stir, and repeat until the mixture is emulsified and starts to thicken up. Then I add my essential oils.
Lye solution is added, mixing and blending.
When I added the essential oils this time, it started to get thick and chunky right away. That's not typical, that means that my essential oils "accelerated trace", or made the soap turn to soap faster! ;)
Anyway, it happens more often with synthetic fragrances, but some essential oils such as florals (what I was working with here) or spicy essential oils can do this as well. Here is the picture of the chunky mixture:
Phew, at least I got it in the mold! :)
Accelerated trace and chunks forming, I apologize for the fuzzy picture, but I was in a hurry and didn't realize it was fuzzy at the time.
Anyway, I got it into the mold, textured the top and waited until the next day to cut.
Ready to cut into bars.
Overall, happy with the soap! It's smooth on the inside and it smells fantastic, plus I love the creamy color.
So, next time I make this soap, I will probably soap even cooler (90 degrees for both lye solution and oils) and just hand stir the essential oils in after I've reached emulsion.
Here is my recipe:
I did a 62 oz batch (that's the total amount of oils used)
Olive Oil 45%
Coconut Oil 27%
Apricot Kernel Oil 10%
Hemp Oil 7%
Mango Seed Butter 6%
Castor Oil 5%
I added 3 t. of Sodium Lactate, which helps the bars harden faster in the mold, 2 t. of Agave Nectar, 1 t. Rose Clay, 1.5 T. of white Kaolin Clay. My essential oil blend was at a rate of 4% of the Total Oil Weight (which is the standard way to measure the fragrance)
Makeup of the Essential Oil Blend:
Geranium 50%
Palmarosa 40%
Ylang Ylang 10%
I always use EoCalc.com to calculate safe usage rates for essential oils in my products.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the process! If you're interested in making your own soap, there are many resources.
Here is a link to the book that taught me how to make my very first soap:
I pored over that book for years and then finally took the plunge seven years ago!
Jan Berry's books and website are fantastic for the more naturally minded maker:
Have a wonderful day! Thank you,
Ginny
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