A while ago I started experimenting with making soap, and I thought I would make a thread to see if anyone else does it or if anybody would like to and wants some advice. I'm going to put some information here for people who have never made soap, though I'm sure many of you have. 
Homemade soap comes in two broad varieties; melt and pour or cold process soaps.
Melt and Pour
As the name suggests, this is a ready-made soap base that you melt and then pour into different moulds. So you don't actually make the soap yourself, you just craft it into whatever shape you like. You can create designs and colours using food colouring and other methods. You can find soap making kits in craft stores and they will be the melt and pour kind. This method is very quick and the soap is ready to use as soon as it is hardened. However, to be frank, the soap sucks. It deteriorates very quickly, it has a weird texture, it can be crumbly and it just is not the same quality as proper soap.
However if the soap making project is for a child, this is by far the better method. Cold process soap involves caustic soda which isn't something I'd want to see a child handling.
Cold Process
Cold process soap makes the kind of soap you are used to buying. It is of a much better quality than melt and pour, but the process is much longer, has an element of danger and a lot can go wrong. The soap also needs to cure for several weeks to allow the caustic soda to reduce to safe levels, or else it can burn your skin. It requires attention and patience. The initial start up costs are higher than melt and pour, but the equipment and some of the ingredients can be used for many many batches before they have to be bought again.
I can post an actual basic recipe if anyone wants, but the basic principle is that you add a lye (caustic soda) mixture to oils/fats, blend them together with a few other ingredients such as glycerine, which gives the soap its moisturising and lathering properties, pour it into moulds and let it cure for several weeks. As with melt and pour soaps the sky is the limit in terms of creativity; you can make soap of any colour, shape, fragrance and design.
Here is one of the bars from my most recent batch. All profits go to cow protection projects, hence the logo:
This one was lavender scented and uncoloured. We are trying to go for simplicity which is why we aren't making any fancy, beautiful soaps like you see on Etsy. But we may well do something more creative when we get the mail ordering set up, for people who want to give it as a gift.
Our first batch took two of us about 3 hours to make. We have since cut that time down to 1-1.5 hours, which gives us enough to make 35 bars of that size. We are producing it for sale which is why we make so much. For home use you would make a tiny amount which would take maybe 45 minutes. You can't rush it too much because a lot of care needs to be taken with making the lye mixture.
I don't want to present myself as an expert so I'll leave it there and if anyone has questions or wants to know more, please ask.
Homemade soap comes in two broad varieties; melt and pour or cold process soaps.
Melt and Pour
As the name suggests, this is a ready-made soap base that you melt and then pour into different moulds. So you don't actually make the soap yourself, you just craft it into whatever shape you like. You can create designs and colours using food colouring and other methods. You can find soap making kits in craft stores and they will be the melt and pour kind. This method is very quick and the soap is ready to use as soon as it is hardened. However, to be frank, the soap sucks. It deteriorates very quickly, it has a weird texture, it can be crumbly and it just is not the same quality as proper soap.
However if the soap making project is for a child, this is by far the better method. Cold process soap involves caustic soda which isn't something I'd want to see a child handling.
Cold Process
Cold process soap makes the kind of soap you are used to buying. It is of a much better quality than melt and pour, but the process is much longer, has an element of danger and a lot can go wrong. The soap also needs to cure for several weeks to allow the caustic soda to reduce to safe levels, or else it can burn your skin. It requires attention and patience. The initial start up costs are higher than melt and pour, but the equipment and some of the ingredients can be used for many many batches before they have to be bought again.
I can post an actual basic recipe if anyone wants, but the basic principle is that you add a lye (caustic soda) mixture to oils/fats, blend them together with a few other ingredients such as glycerine, which gives the soap its moisturising and lathering properties, pour it into moulds and let it cure for several weeks. As with melt and pour soaps the sky is the limit in terms of creativity; you can make soap of any colour, shape, fragrance and design.
Here is one of the bars from my most recent batch. All profits go to cow protection projects, hence the logo:
This one was lavender scented and uncoloured. We are trying to go for simplicity which is why we aren't making any fancy, beautiful soaps like you see on Etsy. But we may well do something more creative when we get the mail ordering set up, for people who want to give it as a gift.
Our first batch took two of us about 3 hours to make. We have since cut that time down to 1-1.5 hours, which gives us enough to make 35 bars of that size. We are producing it for sale which is why we make so much. For home use you would make a tiny amount which would take maybe 45 minutes. You can't rush it too much because a lot of care needs to be taken with making the lye mixture.
I don't want to present myself as an expert so I'll leave it there and if anyone has questions or wants to know more, please ask.
