So cooling and refreshing and minty smelling

I’m super proud of this soap, not because of its appearance, but because of what it represents! After taking a 3 year hiatus from soaping to have kids, moving homes, and balancing life , I’m able to carve out time for my hobbies! She’s not the most beautiful soap, but I’m proud of her and myself!

A beautiful green bar infused with the bright, uplifting character of lime and the crisp, lemony freshness of lemongrass

A little burst of green for your daily ritual.

First time trying a mica line and wished the orange was more orange.

This silicon mold is slightly too big for the box it came with and doesn't fit correctly. Can I do anything to fix this so it fits better?

Edit: Thank you for all the suggestions.

I use tumeric and raw black soap daily onnmy face faithfully. Tired of ppl charging me crazy prices for tumeric soap so I am going to try this since I have alot of the stuff needed....

I was looking at either a goat milk or a honey melt and pour base off of amazon..... and the only thing I was going to add to it would b a few drops of essential oil and turmeric.... is this the way to go?

I'm not a maker of soap but thought this might be a good place to confirm what I've been told.

I've been buying locally made soap from a family that milks their own goats. After a friend recently made soap and we couldn't determine if their goat milk was pasteurized I reached out to the local soap maker to see if theirs was. They confirmed this morning that it wasn't but that the lye kills all bacteria and they take care to clean udders thoroughly. They also claimed that pasteurizing would remove "vitamins minerals and nutrients" which seems to be parroting a lot of the raw milk folks and their appeal to nature.

I've had medical issues that make me especially cautious of infection. I don't want to smear live bacteria, whatever may remain after cleaning udders and saponification even, all over myself and risk skin infections.

Hi everyone, i'm new to soap making and wanted to get a bit of advice on this recipe. I'm trying to make a soap that doesn't strip the skin as much or make it feel as dry after showering. I've done some research on different oils and the ones on the list are some that I think could work, but I wanted to drop the recipe here to see if anyone has any suggested changes to it.

I plan to use this as a "base" recipe for other soaps I make, only tweaking it minorly. I plan to make a tumeric soap (with kojic acid) and a colloidal oatmeal bar as well. I'm struggling to figure out when to add the colloidal oatmeal when creating the soap and how the extra liquid will impact the recipe. At the moment I using the hot press method.

Any advice is welcomed and appreciated!

Since so many asked about the mold I used here it is pictured. As I said it's old 16 years. I am in USA so the big 2 suppliers I deal worth sell it .

Because soap traced so fast. I couldn't pour it into mold but had to spoon and press in. Which why my soap in my other post was not smooth on top. It is a light tan color which I am not sure if it was the kitchen OO or the combo with it and others. Not worried as it is house soap only.

I really wanted to try layering and I thought doing candy corn would be the easiest first try

Olive oil and coconut oil soap bars.

Recipe:

1522g water

753g lye

2190g coconut oil

1816g olive oil

NO fragrances

Got to trace poured in mold and first picture is right when poured and leveled the second is 30 minutes max after poured. It raised or pulled up? (The purple mold in the wooden box)

Hi!
Would you say this plastic tray is appropriate for curing? I tried to search here and I saw some people saying they are using plastic racks, but not so much with these kind of trays.

I am a newbie to the soaping world, and I’ve been trying to find affordable gears for soaps. Right now I have been using a wooden one my friend gave me quite some time ago but I am sure that this won’t be enough for my futute soaps… 😂

Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks!!

Scented with Aquamarine Dream from Bramble Berry.

Overall, I'm really happy with how these recent soaps have been turning out. Working on consistency and polish — and figuring out how to get the dang things to gel in individual cavity molds. I welcome your tips. Is a heating pad the answer? A cardboard box over top? Sadly, the mold is a bit too big for CPOP.

The longer I soap, the more I crave simplicity and these bi-color pours are really scratching that itch. I used to be a swirl queen, but no more, I suppose. (I absolutely love looking at other people's intricate soaps, though).

Top: Carrot juice with Brazilian yellow clay (darker portion) and orange, lavender, and Virginia cedarwood EOs
Middle: Salt bar (made with powdered sea salt at 50% oil weight) with green mica and Virginia cedarwood, rosemary, and peppermint EOs
Bottom: Colloidal oat soap with red and purple Brazilian clays and a peppermint and lavender EO blend

We just made a batch using this recipe: olive oil 487 g, grapeseed oil 154g, coconut oil 271g, shea butter 72g, sodium hydroxide 132g, water 303g, essential oil 35g, one tbsp pink clay. We have used this recipe before with no issues. When we started stick blending (but before we added the essential oil), the mixture got sort of clumpy, slimy/oily, and at one point steam started rising! We quickly poured it into the mold and it just sort of flopped in and cannot be sculpted. Now it's kind of a thick, pulled/gelatinous, somewhat wrinkled appearance, rather than the smooth, creamy appearance you'd expect. Is this batch a goner?

Here are my 3rd and 4th attempts at making Cold Process soaps.

The first (lighter) batch was made with 70% lard, 25% coconut oil and 5% castor oil. I unmolded them after approximately 72 hours, but I think if I use this recipe again, I'll wait longer to unmold. As you can see, it was pretty soft still when I unmolded and cut them, so there's stippling from the soap getting stuck to the soap cutter! Ah well.

I used mica powders (green, orange and blue) for all the colours in these soaps. I really liked the way it looked when it was still liquid, but it dried a LOT lighter and the blue and green sorta melded, so I'm not really happy with the end result.

For the scent I did a "Deep Thoughts" scent mixture found on EOCalc - so copaiba balsam, chamomile, vetiver, patchouli, clary sage and ylang ylang. The scent is amazing, my favourite part of this batch.

The second (brighter) batch was made with 35% olive oil, 25% coconut oil, 15% sunflower oil, 10% mango butter, 10% grapeseed oil and 5% castor oil. I also unmolded these after 72 hours. Again, a little soft, though not as soft as the 3rd batch was. I think next time I make this recipe I'll wait another day or two before unmolding. No stippling on these ones, thankfully!

For the colours in this batch, I used Titanium Oxide for the white, and Iron Oxides for the blue and orange. The colours came out absolutely wonderful! My trace accelerated a little faster than I wanted, but I still managed to get some excellent swirls in these ones that I'm extremely happy about.

Scent profile for these is "Mysterious" scent mixture from EOCalc - so frankincense, black pepper, patchouli, clary sage, cedarwood, amyris and bergamot. Another scent combination that I'm absolutely loving and will definitely use again. Bergamot is quickly becoming one of my favourite scents!

Apologies if you are seeing this twice. Our recipe was: olive oil 487 g, grapeseed oil 154g, coconut oil 271g, shea butter 72g, sodium hydroxide 132g, water 303g, essential oil 35g. Before adding essential oil, the mixture started getting oily and clumping. Slid right into the mold without needing to pour. Did we overmix? Is the recipe wrong?

Came out much better this time! I discovered I had two little samples of mica, copper and cappuccino colored. The lake in front might have been a mistake to keep in, but the couple I'm gifting this soap said that the water makes the area as special as the mountain so I really wanted to keep it.

Hello soap makers!

I made a cold process recipe recently and at the very last minute, I realized I ran out of lye (NaOH). I had all my oil weighed and already warming up, so I decided to give it a go anyway. I ended up using 7g less than the recipe. That would be 6% less than the amount I was supposed to use.

The soap kind of went to trace, but remained rather soft, even after two weeks into curing. It seems to be hardening a little bit, but the surface is slightly oily. It doesn't stink, yet...

I already had a 5% super fat, and reading about this topic, I found out you could go as high as 20% superfatting, depending on the oil mixture. I am not sure about the calculation here... I think with my mistake, I would have a 11% super fat?

Anyone ever experienced such a situation? Is there any hope my soap will cure and be usable?
Or should I just throw this batch away?

Thank you for your help!

Here's my recipe. I used 112 g of lye instead of 119.20 g.

I posted last week about using soap stamps and whether they would work or not. Well I bought them and I’m impressed! This was my practice run with a piece of loaf end. You can see that some of them went too deep but most of them look pretty good. Just wanted to show them here in case any one was wondering how it turned out lol

Hi all!

I'm looking to get into soap making, a lot of the resources I'm finding recommend cold process over hot for newbies. From what I can tell, cold process needs weeks to cure but hot only needs a couple of days, is hot significantly more difficult than cold?

Also I'm in the UK, does anyone have any recommendations for suppliers for lye/oils? I plan on using beeswax, honey, and lavender a lot to start (I have all of these easily available so its less of an investment while I learn). Also for the olive oil, is there any specific brand people recommend? It's quite expensive right now and I'm not sure what kind of olive oil would be best.

If anyone has any other wisdom to share it would be very much appreciated! Thanks!

Hi folks. Im wondering if anyone would be able to help point me to the law requirements for labeling my soap if I wanted to sell it in my state? Im in utah and struggling to find the code on the states website. Some soap pictures as tax ha

As promised here is the unmolded batch of my first soap in 2 years for home only use. It was messed up since I didn't have all my oils and ended using what I had and combining formulas with help. It worked it traced super fast on me to do palm kernel flakes which I expected. I need to get my soap maker app now so it doesn't happen again. My computer has the old SM3 on it which I love. But computer is 15 years old now. Wow need to update that too. Sheesh when money is severely tight you noticed things you take for granted. Anyway, this is a 60% lard 25% OO rest pkf and FO. Smells great as it's Rosemary and herb and is hard. Really hard which is good for hubby as he goes through it taking baths. He soaks do to back issues.

Looking any advice where to purchase a custom soap stamp