Soap

I decided to try and make soap. It's been something I've thought about doing for a few years but for whatever reason over the holiday break I got motivated. I found a book at the library, read it in about a day, bought the ingredients, and gave it a whirl.

Things started out well. The lye and water were mixing well, the oils were combining well, and I started mixing the lye/water with the oils to begin the saponification process. The book recommended using a stick blender to mix the soap but it said you could do it by hand. I tried by hand but it didn't work out. It never fully fixed. I poured it into a mold anyway to see what happened.

I was super bummed about it not mixing was talking to Jessi about it, so she did a little searching and found that you can't really mix soap by hand...it'd take something like three days. So she went and picked up an inexpensive stick blender.

I made another batch of soap and it's true, you really need to have a stick blender. This second batch mixed correctly and poured nicely. The next day batch one had a nice thick layer of oil on top. Batch two was just as it should be. It looked and smelled like soap. I remixed batch one and set it aside to see if it would cure but it didn't. It's just like the regular soap but creamy like lotion.



The strangest part that I didn't know is that the bars of soap need to cure for one month to fully harden. We've tested the creamy soap and the shavings and bits from the other soap and so far so good. We just have to wait it out.



Next up comes fragrance oils and exfoliators. The bars are super rough looking. I didn't try to clean them up at all.