Making soap at home allows you the comfort and knowledge of hand-selecting ingredients that will be used on your body. Eco-conscious individuals, those with sensitivities to chemicals or those wishing to get crafty find making homemade soap a luxurious and gratifying endeavor. While the process takes time, you can create unique soaps that meet your own preferences, needs and aesthetic tastes.
Base Ingredients
There are four basic methods of making handmade soap: melt and pour, rebatching, cold process and hot process. All of these involve the same basic ingredients: fats, oils, and a caustic alkali such as lye, according to "Making Candles and Soaps for Dummies." In the rebatching and melt and pour soap-making methods, these ingredients are already mixed. Cold process and hot process soap making involves mixing the ingredients yourself. Olive oil, animal fat, coconut oil or vegetable oils are all utilized when creating a soap base. Potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide, two caustic alkali substances, create a chemical reaction where the fats or oils turn into a mixture of glycerin and salt, which forms the soap base, a process outlined in "Scientific Soapmaking."
Fragrance
Homemade soap gets its scent by adding fragrance oils or essential oils to the soap base during the soap-making process. Essential oils are fragrant oils distilled from plant matter. Fragrance oils are essential oils mixed with synthetic oils which may or may not alter the fragrance. According to "Basic Soap Making," essential oils are almost always more expensive than fragrance oils. If you're planning to make all-natural homemade soap, or have sensitivities to synthetic fragrances or oils, avoid fragrance oils. Handmade soap can also be made without fragrance.
Additives
There are a variety of additives for handmade soap. For an exfoliating soap, salt or sugar may be added to give the soap more scrubbing power. For an extra-moisturizing soap, goat's milk, lanolin or honey might be included in the recipe. Homemade soap might also include dried herbs for scent, texture and decoration. Coloring additives may be natural or synthetic. Turmeric provides soap with a rich yellow color and has exfoliating properties, as noted by "Natural Soapmaking." Paprika adds an orange tint to soap and, depending upon the amount used, may give off a tingling sensation when the soap is used. "Soapylove," a book on making unique melt and pour soaps, notes that some soap-makers may find themselves becoming creative with their additives, including toys or trinkets in the soap that can only be retrieved after the soap has been used.
References
- "Scientific Soapmaking: The Chemistry of the Cold Process"; Kevin M. Dunn; 2010
- "Making Candles and Soaps for Dummies"; Kelly Ewing; 2004
- "Basic Soap Making: All the Skills and Tools You Need to Get Started"; Elizabeth Letcavage, Alan Wycheck, Patsy Buck; 2009
- "Natural Soapmaking"; Marie Browning; 1999
- "Soapylove: Squeaky Clean Projects Using Melt and Pour Soap"; Debbie Chialtas; 2009
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