This video is an updated version of a previous video that had audio problems. This is a quick video to show the process I went through to create a very nice soap with lavender flowers embedded in it. The soap is made with milk (heavy whipping cream) and then palm oil, coconut oil, soybean oil and cocoa butter. I added Vitamin E, Peach coloring and Lotus Blossom fragrance after the soap reached trace. Enjoy!
This video talks about some tricks you can use to preserve the oils that you use to make soap. You can use Vit. E, BHT, Rosemary oil or just put the oil in a fridge. Here is the recipe: http://metaphysicalfarms.com/r/3e
Buy a download of this video here.
Fluid (goat's milk) needed: |
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When making natural handmade soap, you can make all types of soaps to fit your desired niche. One of the possibilities is that of including an exfoliant in your soap to help lift away any dead skin or caked on dirt that needs a little extra scrubbing to get clean. One such exfoliant is Sodium Bentonite Powder which can be found at most health-food stores. This exfoliant will not only remove dirt and dead skin but also help to lift away the toxins in your skin. If you don't have access to this clay, you can also start using products you probably have sitting around in your kitchen right now. You can use poppy seeds, blueberry seeds, ground almond meal, ground walnut husk meal or even ground oatmeal. Below you will find a more complete list which you can experiment with.
Once you have chosen what exfoliant to use, you will need to add it to your soap recipe. The perfect spot to add exfoliants is right after your soap has reached trace and you are adding your fragrance, superfat or color to the soap batch. With most exfoliants, because of their fine granular nature, you will want to mix them beforehand with a carrier oil so you don't have to worry about lumps in your soap. There is nothing worse than finding huge pockets of exfoliant in your soap when you are using the soap. Once you have added the exfoliant to the soap mixture, you just need to mix it in thoroughly. Some exfoliants may thicken your soap batch while you are stirring it. Don't panic! Your soap will be fine. Just continue to mix the soap but get it into the mold quickly before it thickens beyond your ability to fill the mold. At this point, you would treat this soap as you would any other soap and allow it to saponify for a few days, cut it and then let it dry in bars.
Fluid (kombucha tea) needed: added patchouli and cedar essential oils |
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If you are a soap maker, you have at some point come across the controversy of soaps verses detergents. Many see soap as a natural product whereas detergents are synthetic creations coming from a lab. In reality, both soaps and detergents are synthetic products that take naturally occurring chemicals and synthesize them into a new product. The big difference for soapers is that soap is easy to make at home while detergent is far too complex. Soap and detergent, while both good at cleaning, have different properties when placed in different environments. The biggest difference is that when soap is placed in hard water or an acidic solution, it forms a scum that is difficult to get out of clothes (if using for washing). Detergent does not suffer from this problem. The other major difference is that detergent works as efficiently in cold water as in warm. It is really these two reasons that detergent has taken over the laundry soap business.
The basic ingredients you will need to make your own laundry soap are:
Soap: You really can use any bar of soap you like for this. I tend to like to use a simple soap that is made of 1/3 olive oil, 1/3 palm oil and 1/3 coconut oil that has been made with very little superfat discount. You will need to use about 3-4 oz of soap for this recipe.
Washing Soda: The biggest supplier of washing soda is Arm and Hammer. Because of this you might get confused between this product and their baking soda product. They are not the same! Washing soda is sodium carbonate whereas baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. This powder will give your soap a boost in removing dirt and odors.
Borax: This ingredient is a naturally occurring mineral that helps remove various forms of oils and dirts as well as deodorizing the laundry. Borax is just another name for sodium borate and can be found in most grocery stores in the laundry aisle.
The process of putting these ingredients together is not very time consuming and is well worth the cost savings per load of laundry (it costs about a penny a load). Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket. Now add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel. You use half a cup per load. You now have homemade laundry soap!
When you use this soap, you will notice it does not act like laundry detergent when cleaning your clothes. The homemade soap will be a little thiner of a gel than detergent and you will not notice as many soap bubbles when washing. This is perfectly natural and in fact, the bubbles do not indicate any type of cleaning properties. Now enjoy your freedom from the laundry detergent companies!
One of the major ingredients in soap making is Caustic Soda or Lye. Most soap-makers use industrial grade Sodium Hydroxide as their Caustic Soda but really any strong base would work in the soap making process. One such caustic that can be produced at home is Caustic Potash, or Potassium Hydroxide. While potassium hydroxide is often used to make softer bars of soap or even liquid soap, the type of wood ashes that are used can be selected to impart extra properties to the soap that would not be available to industrially purified chemicals. What every lye you choose to use the metaphysical farms lye calculator lets you choose either sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide when making soap. If you want to know how to make your own lye you will need the following equipment:
The first ingredient you will need is soft water. You can obtain this by buying soft distilled water (no mineral water), getting water from a dehumidifier or the traditional way is to collect rain water in a barrel. This ingredient by far is the most important to get right to ensure a good leaching of lye. Next you will need a container with a spout at the bottom. Traditionally this has been a wooden barrel with a hole drilled on the bottom big enough for a cork but if you don't have access to wooden barrels, you can easily use a cooler with a spout at the bottom. You will also need rocks and straw or cheese cloth to filter the ash. The final ingredient you need is wood ashes. The best ashes to use are hardwoods and you want to avoid evergreens (like pine and fir). Other things you can use are ashes of herbs and flowers to add a special touch to your lye.
Quick Reference
Fluid (water and honey) needed: vanilla and rose fragrance |
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The process for making soap via the Hot Process method is quite similar to the Cold Process method. In fact many of the same recipes can be use interchangeably between the two methods. In the extended entry below, I have listed the materials needed to start the soap making process. The basic premis behind soap making is to take an acid (fat) and mix it with a base (lye) to form a salt like product that is able to change the surface tension when mixed with water making it ideal for whisking away particles of dirt and oil.
Safety Equipment
Safety First! You will need a pair of safety goggles and a pair of safety gloves. Lye is extremely caustic. You'll notice just how caustic if you leave it open on a humid day. You might want to also consider an apron specifically for making soap. Unless you're like me and you think holes in your jeans are cool.
For some soap makers, the melt and pour method is a simple alternative to the cold and hot process of actual soap making. The different in the melt and pour method is that no saponification actually occurs in the process. This limits the ability of the soaper to control the quality of the soap because the oils that go into the soap are not chosen. Some soap crafters choose to use this method because it removes the need to use caustic chemicals like lye during the process of making soap. This process has already been handled before the soap base has been purchased. The process of melt and pour soap crafting is actually fairly simple. Once you have obtained a melt and pour soap base, you simple place the base into a double boiler and heat up the product. At this point additives such as fragrance, essential oils, colorants, exfoliants or moisturizing agents can be put into the mixture. While the mixture is still hot, you pour it into individual molds or trays just as you would in an actual soap making process. Once the mixture is cooled, it can be sliced and used.
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Fluid (water) needed: blue coloring |
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Fluid (mint tea) needed: green coloring, rosemary for preservative and lilac and sage scents |
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Castile soap is just another name for an olive oil based soap. The major feature of these soaps are the moisturizing qualities attributed to the olive oil. When you make this recipe, be sure to use a stick-blender, otherwise it will take a very long time for the soap to reach trace. I've added some palm oil and coconut oil to harden the bar a little bit.
The processes of making soap are all centered around the chemical process of saponification. Soap makers have for years had huge lists of SAP (saponification) tables that describes the basic process of converting fats into soap. For new soap makers, the process may seem almost like magic because of all the mathematical formulas and conversions. Really, what every soap maker is doing when he or she makes a batch of soap is stepping into an organic chemistry lab and forcing a chemical reaction to take place.
The basic ingredients in any batch of soap are a strong base (lye, caustic potash, etc), water and an oil of some kind. When you put the lye into water, the water molecules ionize the bond between the sodium and hydroxide forming: Na+(aq) + OH-(aq). The final ingredient is where the complexity and the artistry of soap making enters the equation. Most oils are comprised of triglycerides. This basically means that oils are made up of three fatty acids with a glycerol backbone. The glycerol molecule has three hydroxyl (HO-) groups. Each fatty acid has a carboxyl group (COOH), a central long unbranched aliphatic chain (saturated (CH2)n or unsaturated (CH2)nCH=CH(CH2)n) and an omega carbon at the end that has 3 hydrogens (CH3). It is in the middle chain that the properties of the oil come from. Because of the limitless number of repeats and configurations of this middle chain, there are literally an unknown number of fatty acids in the world. Fortunately for us, when mother-nature finds a formula she likes, she reproduces it quite a bit in different places. The most common fatty acids that make up vegetable and animal lipids (at least the ones soap makers are interested in) are Lauric, Linoleic, Linolenic, Myristic, Oleic, Palmitic, Ricinoleic and Stearic acids. So, it are these three ingredients, when broken down to their base molecules, that form the palette for a bar of soap.
As any kid playing with vinegar and baking soda knows, when you mix an acid and a base together, you get a reaction. When soap makers mix their lye water into a vat of oil, what they are doing is really just this simple process of mixing a base with an acid. The first thing that takes place, is that the hydroxide (OH-) attacks the carboxyl group of the fatty acid which is attached to the glycerol. This causes the carboxyl to break away and form carboxylic acid. The lye base is attracted to the carboxylic acid and forms a salt with the aliphatic chain hanging off the side. At this point a single molecule of "soap" has been formed. This chemical reaction continues until all the lye or fatty acids are spent. Soap makers can play with this knowledge and discount/superfat the soap. That is to say, they can reduce the amount of lye they add to the oils so that the reaction stops before all of the oil has been converted to soap. While this saponification process is going on, a lot of heat is released during each of the reactions. This is why soap goes through a "gel" phase before it hardens into its final product.
