Hot Process Homemade Soap

Our weekend wasn't too eventful but it was enjoyable; garage sale-ing and hanging out with friends on Saturday, and Sunday saw me finally getting to make soap!

I've been crazy excited to make homemade soap - I ordered lye and other soap making supplies about a week ago - and they finally arrived late Saturday! So on Sunday I gave it a try.

I did a lot of research into homemade soap because I wanted to know which oils would be best in my soap recipe. I tend to have dry skin and didn't want a soap that would further dry my skin out. I found a few great resources on oil properties so I could wisely choose oils that would be best for my skin.

First I choose a few fatty acids that I thought would be best, I settled on Oleic acid because it's a great moisturizing oil and Ricinoleic acid, also a great moisturizing oil, is a fatty acid that occurs in mature castor oil plants and castor oil is great for you skin.

After I choose the fatty acids I wanted to focus on, I then found oils that contain those acids in high levels so I could make my soap with those super moisturizing oils.

For this soap I choose olive oil, macadamia nut oil, jojoba oil and castor oil. Because I have never made soap before I only made a very small batch just to be sure that I would like this particular recipe.

This is my recipe:

Olive oil                      55%
Macadamia Nut oil     35%
Jojoba oil                   7%
Castor oil                   3%
Steric acid                 .2% (steric acid is used to harden the soap, beeswax may also be used)

I then entered all of my oil amounts into a lye calculator so I would know exactly how much lye to add to my recipe without having any un-reacted lye left over. (Which would produce a very harsh soap that may even burn skin)

After I got my exact recipe amounts, I gathered my ingredients and began making my soap!

My supplies: Crockpot, immersion blender, safety glasses, glass measuring cups, digital scale, steric acid, lye, and oils

Oils added to the Crockpot

CAREFULLY measuring the lye

CAREFULLY adding the lye to the water

After the lye/water mixture was added to the oils

Mixing 

More mixing

Finally there, trace (when the mixture thickens and is ready to "cook")

"cooking"

Lavender is ready to be added and then it's time to put into molds

my prepared mold

soap in the mold cooling and hardening overnight

I scraped the Crockpot and now have soap that doesn't need to cool!

After setting overnight

Bars of soap! 

My soap still needs more time to harden (and it will over time) because the harder the soap the longer each bar will last but I still intend to use this soap today!

I used the soap yesterday on my hands and Brett used the soap this morning and said he liked it and it didn't dry his skin out so I can't wait to use it! 

Sleepy girl while watching Mom make soap

She has her two top teeth coming in!