Soap Making - The Recipes

Now you know Soap Making - The Basics, Adding Colour, and Adding Texture. 

Here we will go over Soap Making - The Recipes to get you started. 

Like I said earlier in this series, I started making soap with simple household oils, those easily found at the grocery store. When I began Soap Making I followed recipes that I found in books and online. And when I became more comfortable with the process I started to calculate my own recipes using online soap making calculators. 

Each oil has its own properties and each blend of oils in your soap will create a different bar. For example, olive oil is nourishing and gentle on the skin but it makes a soft bar of soap that takes many months to dry completely; lard makes a hard, white bar of soap that will lather well with lots of bubbles but it tends to be very drying on the skin. So a mix of these oils will craft a bar of soap that has all the properties you want, gentle on the skin with lots of bubbles! See? You can craft whatever blend you want. 

First, figure out what size of mold you have. My silicone loaf mold holds about 1 kg (35 oz) of liquid. I count all the oils and the water in this measurement, but do not include the lye. If I find a recipe that makes about 1 kg of soap, I can just follow it exactly, but rarely do I find a recipe exactly the size I need. You will find people online who make 17 kg of soap at once, or just one 4 oz. bar at a time. That's not for me! So I just cut back the recipe or expand it to suit me, keeping the proportions the same. As long as you have the same ratios, you will have the same soap in the end. 

Recipe 1

Canola Oil      340 g (12 oz)  

Coconut Oil    227 g (8 oz)    

Olive Oil         227 g (8 oz)   

Water             241 g (8.5 oz) 

Lye                 113 g (4 oz)

Recipe 2 

Lard                454 g (16 oz)

Olive Oil          227 g (8 oz)

Coconut Oil     227 g (8 oz)

Water              255 g (9 oz)

Lye                  128 g (4.5 oz)

Recipe 3 

Coconut Oil                  163 g          

Vegetable Shortening  451 g

Canola Oil                    182 g

Water                           262 g

Lye                               111 g

Recipe 4

Canola Oil           245 g 

Olive Oil              240 g

Lard                     215 g

Grape seed Oil    150 g

Water                   281 g

Lye                       111 g

Once you have mastered Soap Making - The Recipes, you can craft your own recipes.

 I use this soap calculator to create my own oil blends for soap making, and you can too, it's so easy.

 Welcome to the Soap Making Club! Good Luck!
~Jess

Soap Making - Adding Texture

Now that you know Soap Making - The Basics, and Adding Colour, you can add a bit more fun to your soap by adding texture. The texture to the soap can act as a gentle exfoliant, and will make your handmade soap even more unique. 

In the past I have used rose petals, lavender buds, green tea leaves, mint leaves, coffee, and coconut to add texture to soaps. You can pretty much use anything that is safe for the skin, think food grade products, herbs, spices, or botanicals. It is important to make sure your texture additive is very dry before using it. Adding fresh flower petals or citrus rind to your soap is a likely to cause your soap to discolour, to go bad, to mold, and to ruin. Dry them completely and they would be great!

Use any recipe you like and once you reach trace you can add in your texture. 

Here I have added about 3/4 cup of dried lavender buds to my soap batch. 

Use a spoon to gently mix the texture until it looks even. For this soap I then separated it in half and made one half purple. I poured layers of purple and then white into the mold and did the swirl technique. Then I placed a lavender stalks over the top, and pushed them down just a bit. 

Here it is 24 hours later. 

 

The lavender buds add texture as well as a bit of purple colour and a nice fragrance.  

A really easy way to add texture to your soap is to top it with whatever you like. Here I added dried rose petals to the top of my pink and white swirled soap. 

For this one I added crushed dried mint leaves to the mix before separating and making half green. 

I swirled the green and white and added dried mint leaves to the top. 

Coming up next - The Recipes! 

~Jess

Soap Making - Adding Colour

A bar of handmade soap is always awesome but you can add your own twist to it with colour. 

Make any recipe you like and once you achieve trace, you are ready for colour. You already know Soap Making - The Basics, so let's go!

You can add colour a few different ways. 

You can use hard white oils (lard and coconut, for example) to create a white bar of finished soap. Using olive oil can add a hint of green, canola and corn oil give a more beige kinda colour.

 Instead of using just distilled water, you could use milk, green tea, or coffee. 

And once you achieve trace you can add in colour using food grade dyes, cosmetics, micas, or pigments. 

For a simple swirled or layered look separate your soap into two halves. 

This is my Pink Lemonade soap, so I am making it half yellow and half pink. 

I added yellow food colouring and gold eye shadow to one half. The food colouring is from the grocery store and the eye shadow I found at the dollar store. 

Hard to tell in these photos but it turned out a nice yellow, with a pretty shimmer.

To the other half I added red food colouring and pink eye shadow.

Now half is yellow and half is pink. 

Pour in a thin layer of pink.

Pour yellow on top. Sorry for the blurry action shot!

Then pink again.

Then yellow, pink, yellow, until all the soap is in the mold layer by layer. 

If you want to half the result look layered just leave it as this. It will look great and you will see the distinct layers of colour when you cut the soap. 

But you can swirl it together a bit too. Use a chopstick, or a spoon handle and gently draw S shapes through the soap, or draw lines across it, or whatever you want. Don't swirl to much or the distinct colours will be lost. 

I did the lines first then did the S curves. 

I gently tapped the top with my fingers to add a texture to the top of the soap.

Here it is 24 hours later. 

Now cut into bars, you can see the layer pattern of the pink and yellow and a bit of swirl that I did. 

I separated this batch in half and made half green sparkle, half red sparkle. First get to thick trace, this ensures that the sparkles will stay suspended and not all sink to the bottom. 

Now add the green and red sparkles.

Layer it and gently swirl!

Another option Adding Texture
~Jess

Soap Making - The Basics

The first rule of Soap Making Club is - You do not talk about Soap Making Club. 

The second rule is - You do not talk about Soap Making Club. 

Third rule is...

Just kidding, it's kind of like Fight Club but without the fighting. 

Please tell me you've seen that movie and know what I am talking about! It's the only soap making movie out there!

Last summer I bought some handmade soap while we were on vacation and I really liked it. Months later it was all gone and unfortunately I wasn't able to just go get some more. I thought maybe I could try and make my own soap, I read a few books and a few blogs and I got started.

 Since then I have made many batches in different colours and fragrances. 

Have you ever wanted to make some soap? Here are the basics...

You will need safety gear, apron, gloves, goggles. 

A scale, stick blender, thermometer, containers, spatula, and mold. For the mold, use an empty 2 L milk jug, a yogurt container, a Pringles can, or a silicone one. It doesn't matter. Line the recycled containers with parchment paper, or use a non-stick oil spray. You do not need to line the silicone molds.

Ingredients include oil, lye, and water. That's it!

You can use any oil and any mix of oils. I started with basic grocery store oils - canola, coconut, olive, vegetable shortening, lard. These oils are easy to find and not too expensive. The water is distilled, just to ensure it doesn't contain any impurities. The lye (sodium hydroxide) can be hard to find, check at home improvement stores or online.

The entire process takes about an hour. Find some time that you won't be disturbed - no kids, no pets. The process can be dangerous if not done carefully and certainly should not be done with children. Please read and follow all caution info on the lye crystals!

First step is to put on your safety gear. Wear this gear for the entire process!

Then, weigh out all ingredients. I put the oils together and keep the lye and water separate. I use a large measuring cup for the water, it doesn't come close to being full, but this way there is lots of safety room for the chemical reaction that will take place. 

Take the lye and water outside if you can, if you can't put on the fan or open a window. The mixing of lye and water will start a chemical reaction that creates a lot of heat and nasty fumes.

Do not breathe in these fumes! 

OK? Ready? Slowly and carefully add the lye crystals to the water. Do NOT add the water to the lye, it will likely splash or overflow and could burn you. Only ever add the crystals into the water. 

Stir gently. It will be cloudy and frothy and VERY hot. Stir until all crystals are dissolved. Then let it cool down. 

If you want to chill the solution a bit faster, place it in the sink in an ice water bath. 

Mix the oils and the lye solution together when they are roughly the same temperature. You can wait until the lye solution reaches room temperature and then matches your oils, or you can heat the oil to match the lye solution. Try using the microwave in short 30 second intervals or put all the oils in a pot on the stove and gently heat. 

I have done both ways, you have to wait a long time for the lye solution to cool enough, but be patient.

I prefer to heat the oils a bit, especially if I use oils that are solid at room temperature (like lard and coconut oil). Heat the oils to about 110-120 F and let the lye cool to about the same. 

Once they are roughly the same temperature, you can slowly and carefully pour the lye solution into the oil. 

The reaction will begin immediately, the clear oils will become cloudy and creamy looking. 

Use a stick blender to mix the two together. You will have to mix and mix! It can take up to 25 min to reach "trace" for some recipes. Trace is achieved when the mixture leaves a "trace" when you pull the blender out. Like when you can see it is thick enough that it doesn't just mix right back in. It will kind of look like pudding or a thin custard. 

Here is is starting to thicken up. Keep mixing!

See how the drips off the blender just disappear?

Here is is thick enough that the drips are still visible. This has reached "trace". 

Now pour this mixture into a mold. You can wrap the mold in an old towel or blanket for added insulation. Now, just leave it for 24 hours. In this time the chemicals of the oils, water, and lye will react and create soap!

The next day, remove the soap from the mold and cut it into bars. Cut whatever size and shape you want. 

This soap is now safe to use, but will only get better with time. Leave the bars of soap to dry out for 4 to 6 weeks or longer. The water will evaporate out and leave you with a solid, long lasting bar of handmade soap.
~Jess

 Up next Adding Colour!