Anyone here make soap?

[Kittish]

I'm getting into making soap, but still at the point where I'm assembling equipment and materials (and making a spot to store it all!). I've got my first three batches already planned, and another three or four tentatively planned batches depending on how the first ones go.

Very first batch is going to be a cold process almost castile soap. I plan to add just a little stearic acid to make the bars a little harder, other than that it'll be olive oil and lye. No colors, no fragrance. Second batch is going to be an orange scented and colored cold process that I'll be forcing into gel phase, and the third batch will be a mixed evergreens hot process soap. If those all go well, for the next batch I'll try making transparent soap, rose colored and scented. I've got some cute little rose silicone molds that I'll pour part of that batch into, the rest will go into various shapes of bar molds. (Bit of an aside- wow! Rose otto is expensive! Absolute isn't much better. I'm getting some of both, to see which I like better.)

One batch I want to try to make is a transparent, light blue soap with fluffy white clouds with a silver lining floating in it. The silver lining will just be a bit of mica dusted onto the cloud inset before it goes into the blue. I have no idea what sort of scent to use for it, though I'm kind of leaning toward lavender.

As much as possible, I'm going to stick to natural colors and all of my fragrances will be natural essential oils. Artificial fragrances are flatly out of the question, since I'm allergic to synthetic fragrances.

[notalwaysright]

Yay, soap. I haven't made anything as spiffy as transparent or anything, or colors. Well, I did a clove scented one that I used herbal tea to color a light brown. I've made a goats milk soap scented with rosemary and peppermint, and a gardeners soap with poppy seeds, scented with orange essential oil.

My last batch actually failed, and I'm still not sure why! It's soft, even though it cured forever. It's a very basic 80% olive oil, 10% coconut oil, 10% palm oil. (yes, I know palm oil is apparently evil) Anyway, it seems to be both soft and crumbly. I very much don't think it has too much lye, because I've made this before, and I use a scale and am quite OCD. Maybe I'll pick up a tester to be sure but I've used it and it suds and doesn't seem to dry my skin. Maybe I didn't let it get to the right trace, but again, I know what it should look like.

I got as much of my supplies as possible at Good Will. Brambleberry is based in my town, so I'm lucky and I can just go downtown to their storefront to pick up any scents or molds.

[Yfandes]

I make soap too! All sorts, plus my own M&P, liquid soap and even 100% coconut soap for laundry. I also prefer essential oils. I like the soap making forum for learning and Pinterest for ideas. I've recently gotten into making lotions, and I'd really like to try making hair conditioners and sybdet shampoos.

[Kittish]

orange essential oil.

My last batch actually failed, and I'm still not sure why! It's soft, even though it cured forever. It's a very basic 80% olive oil, 10% coconut oil, 10% palm oil. (yes, I know palm oil is apparently evil) Anyway, it seems to be both soft and crumbly.

Sounds like that batch would be a good candidate to rebatch, possibly even into a clear soap.

Yfandes- I came across a thing called jelly soap, it's made by adding gelatin to liquid soap. Agar might work for a vegetarian option, but I'd think it would need lots of preservatives (since agar is the stuff used in bacterial culture mediums...). The end product has about the consistency of soft gummy candy or stiff jello jigglers. Mostly, you cut or mold it into pieces sized for using once or just a few times. I understand Lush sells jelly soap in jars, so you can scoop out however much you want.

[wolfie]

Agar might work for a vegetarian option, but I'd think it would need lots of preservatives (since agar is the stuff used in bacterial culture mediums...).

Wouldn't need preservatives. While agar is used in bacterial culture media, it's merely to gel the medium (so that you have liquid for the bacteria to grow in, but it doesn't flow). "Petri dish liners" are made with NUTRIENT agar - an agar gel to which nutrients for the bacteria have been added.

[Kittish]

Interesting to know, wolfie. Though I think that if I do get into making liquid and jelly soaps I'm going to come down on the side of "better safe than sorry" and use preservatives since liquid soap is mostly water, and can be quite a habitable environment for bacteria, molds, and fungi.

[raw1989]

I had ordered from someone who made unbrithday cake soap god I miss that soap I love the smell of birthday cake.

[Kittish]

raw1989- check out etsy. There's one listing for "Unbirthday Cake Soap" and lots of listings for "Birthday Cake Soap".

[raw1989]

raw1989- check out etsy. There's one listing for "Unbirthday Cake Soap" and lots of listings for "Birthday Cake Soap".

I will when I can I thought about that after I posted or even looking into maybe finding a recipe on pintrest, since I like body wash and no soap bars to me soap make me feel like ive left soap on even when I haven't.

[Food Lady]

I've never made soap but I am always willing to buy bars with vegetarian ingredients from anyone who makes them. hinthint

[Kittish]

At this time, I'll be making vegetarian soaps- no animal fats. I might try using tallow or lard at some point, but not right off the bat.

I'll PM you when I have a selection of bars ready to use, Food Lady. Though you should know that it's going to be a minimum of four months. It's going to be six weeks before I can make my big orders for ingredients, then figure another week or two to actually GET the stuff, then make the soap. Fresh cold process soap needs to cure for four to six weeks, so the saponification finishes and most of the water evaporates out. Hot process and glycerin soaps both benefit from a few weeks of curing, though technically they're both usable as soon as they harden. You have any problem with palm oil or palm kernel oil? Some people object to it on apparently ethical grounds.

[Food Lady]

I don't currently have a prob with palm oil. I do hear coconut oil makes excellent soap, if people find that better. I can grab a bar or two of Kirk's as I need them until you have some. Rose is an absolute (haha, pun) favorite of mine but I'm amenable to many scents. I tell people that a good gift for me is a giant bar of smelly soap!

[Kittish]

Rose is an absolute (haha, pun) favorite of mine but I'm amenable to many scents.

Puns, good, clean fun. I really otto work on a few of my own.

[dalesys]

... I'm amenable to many scents....

That's very scentsable of you.

[Kittish]

So my very first batch of of soap is in the mold! I wound up scrapping my initial plans and jumping straight in with an orange scented soap that has dried orange peel powder added to it also. Very pretty color that should get even brighter since I'm forcing the soap to go through gel phase.

Alas, I had to drop the notion of getting rose absolute or otto for now. Just too darn expensive. Maybe down the line I can drop $50 or $75 for scent for a single batch of soap but for now I've got lots of other essentials to work with. I got orange, frankincense, lavender, cedarwood, fir needle, and ylang ylang. I'm also doing a sort of a take on coffee fragrance oil. I've got coffee grounds in some canola oil in a jar. So far it smells ok. I'll probably give it a hot water bath to help get more of the scent into the oil. I might leave the coffee grounds in, they'll provide some exfoliation in bars of soap. I'm also going to buy half a pound of vanilla beans when I'm able to, and do a fragrance oil type thing with them as well. Scrape out the seeds to use in cooking, then soak the bean husks in oil for a few weeks. Should give me a lovely vanilla scent I can use in soaps. Vanilla oleoresin (the nearest thing to vanilla essential oil there is) is pretty close to rose, price-wise. Jasmine is another one that I'm going to have to either find an alternative for or just not use. It's even more expensive than rose! By a lot. Couple hundred dollars for a two ounce bottle.

And I've got colors! Green, red, yellow, blue, white, black, pink and lavender mineral pigments and blue, purple, orange and yellow botanical colorants. I won't be able to use the words "All Natural" on my labels with the mineral pigments, though, since they're not of animal or vegetable origin. At least I can still say "No Artificial", because while the mineral pigments are made in a laboratory, they are nature identical. Just without all those pesky impurities that mined pigments tend to have. Like arsenic, and lead, and mercury...