Yep! You don’t need literal machinery other than a stick blender (stainless steel, NOT aluminum because lye and aluminum aren’t friends) and sturdy plastic (lye will etch away at glass over time and cause it to break) to mix everything in. It’s a lot like cooking but some of the bowls and things used need to be a bit more specific (and NOT used for cooking afterwards!)
Okay this is actually fascinating. Since your reply I’ve been doing some Googling… I’d always thought making soap was a difficult / expensive / complex process that required a lab, special equipment, etc. Like if you look at the ingredients for any soap off the shelf there’s always a bunch of chemical stuff and I always assumed it was some complex interaction between them that makes you clean. Then you say all you need is a blender.
Turns out it’s all just some variant of ‘lye, fat, oil, dye, fragrance’. And the lye gets mixed with something else so they don’t have to call it lye. I feel I’ve been lyed to my whole life </bad pun>.
So thank you for opening my eyes to something fascinating that I didn’t know existed yesterday :) I may actually try making soap at some point.
Two questions if I may–
First- for the colors, I assume you prepare two or more batches of the soap liquid, and then layer them in the mold with a small stir. How do you get the honeycomb effect on the oatmeal/milk/honey flavor?
Second- I once was gifted a bar of ‘fancy soap’ that looked similar to yours with larger blocks of solid color, but the different colors all seemed to dissolve at slightly different rates and didn’t adhere together well. Within 2 showers it had fallen apart. How do you prevent that when making soap?
Oh it can be 100% expensive when the ingredients and fragrance/essential oils come into play, trust me! I’ve seen some essential oils go for close to $75/oz. They also need to be soap stable and skin safe, and not something you pick up at a craft or grocery store.
For the Oatmeal, Milk and Honey soap, I put bubble wrap on top, which is how I get the honeycomb effect!
And that sounds really bizarre with the different colors dissolving at different intervals! My best guess is that it wasn’t cold process and was melt and pour (different soapmaking process where you just cut up a soap base, melt it, and add color/fragrance of your choosing. Good for people who don’t want to deal with lye and fun to do with kiddos!) and the different melt and pour bases reacted differently to the water and some melted faster than others. Like a frankensoap if you will!
Yep! You don’t need literal machinery other than a stick blender (stainless steel, NOT aluminum because lye and aluminum aren’t friends) and sturdy plastic (lye will etch away at glass over time and cause it to break) to mix everything in. It’s a lot like cooking but some of the bowls and things used need to be a bit more specific (and NOT used for cooking afterwards!)
Okay this is actually fascinating. Since your reply I’ve been doing some Googling… I’d always thought making soap was a difficult / expensive / complex process that required a lab, special equipment, etc. Like if you look at the ingredients for any soap off the shelf there’s always a bunch of chemical stuff and I always assumed it was some complex interaction between them that makes you clean. Then you say all you need is a blender.
Turns out it’s all just some variant of ‘lye, fat, oil, dye, fragrance’. And the lye gets mixed with something else so they don’t have to call it lye. I feel I’ve been lyed to my whole life </bad pun>.
So thank you for opening my eyes to something fascinating that I didn’t know existed yesterday :) I may actually try making soap at some point.
Two questions if I may–
First- for the colors, I assume you prepare two or more batches of the soap liquid, and then layer them in the mold with a small stir. How do you get the honeycomb effect on the oatmeal/milk/honey flavor?
Second- I once was gifted a bar of ‘fancy soap’ that looked similar to yours with larger blocks of solid color, but the different colors all seemed to dissolve at slightly different rates and didn’t adhere together well. Within 2 showers it had fallen apart. How do you prevent that when making soap?
Oh it can be 100% expensive when the ingredients and fragrance/essential oils come into play, trust me! I’ve seen some essential oils go for close to $75/oz. They also need to be soap stable and skin safe, and not something you pick up at a craft or grocery store.
For the Oatmeal, Milk and Honey soap, I put bubble wrap on top, which is how I get the honeycomb effect!
And that sounds really bizarre with the different colors dissolving at different intervals! My best guess is that it wasn’t cold process and was melt and pour (different soapmaking process where you just cut up a soap base, melt it, and add color/fragrance of your choosing. Good for people who don’t want to deal with lye and fun to do with kiddos!) and the different melt and pour bases reacted differently to the water and some melted faster than others. Like a frankensoap if you will!