Making Cold Process Soap

Last night my BFF Jacque came over to do crafty stuff, as we try and do at least twice a month. I'm sure those of you with kids understand how precious girlfriend time is. :) So my girls went to Nana and Pawpaw's house for the night. (They LOVE going there and they usually spend a few nights a month with them.) We had been wanting to try our hands at soap making but only recently got the nerve. I was hesitant due to the use of lye since me and both the girls are asthmatic, (I could only imagine the stress the fumes could put on our lungs) but with them out for the night and with my fearless hubbs offering to help  we decided it was game time. I have been collecting the items needed for about a month now and we finally had everything we needed. Yay!

So here is what we did to make our very first batch of soap...
First I read every blog I could find that talked about making cold process soap. While everyone had different recipes, the one recurring theme was how careful to be with your lye. Also most mentioned getting your lye wholesale or from Lowe's. Well since I march to a different drummer I went to Home Depot and got mine. I'm not sure that was a good idea. It had purple tinted crystals in it and once made it was a dark blue hue. I know this is not right from looking at everyones nice clear lye mix. But it was late and Lowe's is about 15 minutes away so we decided to just go with it. We used the recipe from Soap Deli News as it seemed the easiest for newbies. I used a George Forman Smart Kitchen 30 cup Multicooker that I picked up at Essex for 20$. Think crock pot meets electric skillet. (It worked fabulous by the way)

I'm not going to post the recipe here as the woman from Soap Deli News is awesome and I want you to go there and take the time to read all the wonderful information she has for soap newbies.

In addition the the Multicooker we bought Chemical resistant gloves and Eye protectors, as modeled by my wonderful hubbs below...

We picked up a wooden spoon (to stir the lye) and plastic soup server (to pour the soap from the pot into little soap forms) at Goodwill. We got soap molds at Hobby Lobby (this recipe will make 16 bars). We got a stick blender at Essex but we blew the motor on it half way threw the night, even though we used it as directed, so I'll be returning it and looking around for a better quality one for next time. We got an empty cardboard box to put all of our soap molds in so we could get them out of our very small kitchen easily. We got our Olive Oil and Coconut Oil at Whole Foods and our Palm Oil at Bramble Berry. 

***I wanna talk about Palm Oil for a moment so nobody freaks out on me. When I purchased it I was unaware of the huge conflict of using it. I've looked into it a little and while I'm not going to voice my opinion as to how I feel about it, I will say that I plan on looking into sustainably harvested oil next time I need to purchase some.***

Back to it now. We also got some peppermint oil to use as our scent but we actually had to change plans. Since the lye was a deep blue color when we mixed it with our golden oils it turned into a mossy green color. While I actually really like the color, you don't see it and then expect to smell peppermint. So instead we used Indian Sandlewood (before you jump on me - it's not endangered - I promise) since it's a much more earthy smell. I already had an old food scale that comes with a little dish on top and we used that to measure out the weight of all the oils. We measured out the weight of the lye in a disposable cup. 

Even without the girls home we didn't wanna chance making me or the baby sick with lye fumes so we mixed it outside. And boy was I glad we did! The fumes where horrible and seems to take forever to dissipate. Jacque held an open bottle of vinegar just in case while I snapped a shot of hubbs getting to work.

We got so excited once we got started mixing the lye mix into the oil that we forgot to take pictures. Not that I take the best pictures. Me and my camera are just getting to know each other, LOL. We followed all the directions to a tee and finally after about 45 minutes of hand mixing with a few minutes of stick blending thrown in (before the stupid thing died) we had soap! 

Now I was expecting cleanup to suck and since it was late I decided to leave it until this morning. Boy was I glad I did. It was a breeze. I just rubbed off all the left over soap with paper towels and then gave everything a quick wash. :)

Then after cleaning up, I took a knife and cut across the top of the molds to take all the lumps and overflow off and now they look really nice. I'm not going to jump up and down and yell "I can make soap!" until it's cured and I can give it a test run. But I'm super excited and it was so much easier than I expected.