How to make soap?

The homemade soap can be refined with coffee, honey, or milk, embellished with lavender flowers, rose petals, dried cloves or lemon wedges, and colored with beetroot, etc. Afterward, you know exactly which ingredients are contained in the soap (or not), and last but not least, you have the satisfying and proud feeling of having created something with your own hands. In addition, homemade soap is a great and extraordinary gift idea, which is also healthy and practical.

How do you make soap yourself?

There are two basic ways to make your own soap. Either you buy ready-made raw soap (also called basic soap or soap base), which you just meltdown and then refine with color, fragrance, and other ingredients (e.g. flower petals), or you even make the raw soap yourself. With the first variant you have finished, individual soap in less than 30 minutes, with the second variant it takes a few weeks until it is ready. For this, you really made this soap yourself from start to finish.

Make raw soap (basic soap) yourself or buy it and melt it down?

As already mentioned, there are two ways to make your own soap:

1. Buy raw soap, melt it down, refine it and pour it into molds
2. Make raw soap yourself from (chemical) raw materials and then refine it

If you want to buy raw soap, the easiest way to do this is via Amazon. There is transparent raw soap, white raw soap, or soap base with shea butter and goat milk. When you have all the ingredients, your homemade soap is ready to be given away in less than 30 minutes. So it is also a great last-minute gift.

But if you want to make your own soap completely yourself from start to finish, you can do that too. This takes a few weeks (in which you don’t have to do anything except leave the soap alone), but afterward, you have the great feeling of having really created this soap with your own hands. 🙂

1. Instructions for homemade soap (with purchased raw soap)

Ingredients:

• Raw soap
• Soap color
• Fragrance oil
• Other ingredients for decorating (coffee powder, flower petals, colored sand, dried lemon wedges, etc.)

Preparation / manufacture:

1. Melt the raw soapy in a saucepan over low heat
2. Add fragrance oil and soapy color
3. Possibly add other ingredients (e.g. coffee powder)
4. Fill the liquid soaps into soaps molds and allow to cool/harden for approx. 15 minutes
5. If necessary, decorate the surface before it hardens (e.g. with dried lemon wedges)
6. Pack it nicely and give it away 🙂

2. Instructions for homemade raw soapy (basic soaps)

Ingredients:

The basis of all soaps is raw soapy. In later work steps, this is then turned into lavender soapy, coffee soapy, cinnamon soap & Co.

For almost 2kg basic soaps you need the following ingredients:

• 650g  coconut fat  (hardened)
• The 650g  sunflower oil
• 650g  olive oil  (clear, not naturally cloudy)
• 290g caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) 1 liter of mineral water

Preparation:

1. First, put the coconut oil in a saucepan and heat it together with the remaining oil to 35 ° C – 36.5 ° C.
2. At the same time, weigh the caustic soda in a plastic bag. This is disposed of at the end.
3. Put the water in a big enough plastic bucket.
4. Then add the caustic soda to the water to obtain lye water.
   Caution: do not pour the other way around!
   The first wave of water that comes into contact with the caustic soda would heat up very quickly and evaporate violently.
   A note: When the powder is added to the water, it heats up quickly and strongly. It can boil over (-> hence the large container) and develop steam. If possible, do this work step outdoors (balcony or terrace) or at least with the window open and do not stand directly above the container. Don’t forget to wear protective goggles and gloves.
5. Now comes the most complicated step: Both the oil and the lye water must be heated or cooled very precisely to 35-36 ° C. For targeted cooling, it works best with a cold water bath. If the temperature is not right when pouring it together, the saponification will not work.

Bottom Line

6. When the temperature is right, add the soapy water to the boil and stir continuously until the mixture becomes thick and “a trail” forms. This can happen after a few minutes, but it can also take three-quarters of an hour. If you have one leftover, you can also use an old food processor with a dough hook on the lowest setting.

7. Finally, you put the raw soaps in a mold that has been greased or lined with baking paper to harden. Attention: At this point, the raw soaps are also still corrosive!

8. Then leave the raw soaps with a cardboard box as a lid and wrap in a couple of towels in a quiet, cool place for one to three days, out of the reach of children and pets. The towels are needed so that the soaps release their heat slowly and evenly, which has a positive effect on the appearance and structure.

Make raw soaps yourself

After a few days, you can carefully test how firm the soaps have already become. If there is no longer any risk of it flowing away, you can now cut it into cubes with a (Japan) spatula, for example. After that, the soaps have to harden for a few more weeks. Then test them with a pH test strip. The pH of soaps can be between 5.5 and 10. Mild soaps have a value between 7.5 and 8.5.

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