My First Soap

My First Soap

I've been doing a ton of research into soaping and decided that this looks like something that would be a fun hobby for me. I've always loved being creative so this seems like the right move for me. I want to start out making cold process (CP) soaps because I love the swirling that people like Handmade in Florida do!

My first soap was suggested by Susie at soapmakingforum.com. The recipe consists of:

55% Lard
20% Olive Oil
20% Coconut Oil
5% Castor Oil

Water set at 38%
Superfat at 8%

I ran this through soapcalc.net in order to get the right amount of lye for my mold. 

I don't have many materials yet, so I decided to use something I've seen online - a 3" PVC pipe. Here's the pipe along with my 9 year old who is VERY excited about my new hobby.

I covered the bottom of the pipe with duct tape - yes, it can be used for just about ANYTHING! And then, I gathered my basic supplies. Some of these things I already had laying around the house. The oils I used can easily be purchased at any grocery store - which is a good thing for me because I'm not quite sure where to get cost-effective ingredients yet.

Here are the supplies:

The one thing I was freaked about about was using lye - not because I was afraid of burning myself, but because of the fumes it creates. Toxic fumes and breathing don't go well together :). So I made my lye water and mixed up my oils.

   

Using my husband's temperature gauge gun, I kept tabs on the temperatures of both the lye water and the oils to make sure they were within 10 degrees of each other. This is what I understand to be the right range.

So I poured the soap and let it sit for 24 hours until it hardened up. I un-molded it and my husband decided he wanted to cut the soap and he branded it with a "B" for our last name. Here are some pictures of that: