Monday, December 13, 2010

Making Soap

Last Spring I went to a great class on soapmaking.  It was a fabulous time and my friend Kerry and I decided we needed to do it again.  Kerry has a fabulous candle business and is into all the crazy crunchy things that I am.  We did all of this at her house with a few other friends.  Since Kerry is thinking about teaching and/or selling soaps, she bought a large amount of the tools we needed.

Things got set up.  We were making a soap with oatmeal and honey along with some nice scents that she had.

 This is Stephanie getting ready to make some soap.

 Everything ready to go.  

Starting to show trace.

Pouring soap into some of our makeshift molds.

These were some that I made with orange oil.  I don't do well with scents and actually ended up having a mild allergic reaction to something there.  I'm relatively sure it was one of the other scents we were paying with before we got started.

They all need to sit and harden now.  

The soap we made used coconut oil, organic palm oil, soy oil and olive oil.  The additives for mine were oatmeal and honey and one batch with orange oil added for some scent.  They were done using cold process.  I'm anxious to delve into soap more now.  This summer will be fun as I'm planning to use some of my veggies in place of the water for some of the soaps.  How cool would it be to have soap with some of my cucumbers, melon, tomatoes or carrots?  I can't wait to try it. 

8 comments:

Kerryanne Cummins said...

Heather...I love having you as a friend! (even if we converse mostly via the computer these days) Making the soap was fun and I cant wait to do it again! Thank you for posting the link to the canldes...you might just see some or "our" soap up on the site in a few weeks!

Karen Anne said...

I'd love to make soap, but I have Fear of Lye :-)

The Mom said...

Kerry, it was fun! I love having you as a friend too!

Karen Anne, the lye is pretty scary stuff. I'll be doing this outside this summer.

meemsnyc said...

Oh wow! That is so awesome! You should put poppy seeds in the next batch! And lemon. Yum!

Michaela Dunn Leeper said...

They look so pretty! Can't wait to see what you do with some of your veg this next summer.

Speaking of which, I got my first p*r-n mag of the season today. OOPS, I mean seed catalog!!! :D I am so excited, hehe.

The Mom said...

Meemsnyc, that would be a great scent!

Kayla, I love me some seed p*rn mags!

kitsapFG said...

A soap with cucumber in it sounds really refreshing! Those bars look really good - have you tried them out to see if they make a good lather and clean well? I have purchased homemade soaps at the local farmers market and some are really good soaps and others are practically useless for actually washing with. I am sure it is all in the recipe and ingredients.

The Mom said...

Laura, we used the same recipe that was used when we made soap in the Spring. It lathers up nicely, I believe as a result of the palm oil.