I'm Heading To The Commune

Between my baking, flourishing garden, and now soap making, I think it's time I headed to a commune. I'm sure this will be the year the kids and Tom will remember as the year mom went off the deep end. I realize it's all a little kooky but I enjoy it for a number of reasons. I guess maybe I'm getting a little tired of everything mass produced. Nothing says I care about you like a homemade/grown item. Yup, to the commune with me!

Why make soap? I bought a bar of homemade soap a few months ago and I LOVED it. I have dry, sensitive skin and this bar worked wonders. I did some reading about how to make it myself and what I found was pretty interesting. Most commercial soaps use a form of animal fat in their production. That kind of grossed me out. Ends up homemade soap can avoid that step all together.

There's a few different ways to make soap: hot process, cold process, and melt and pour. Both hot process and cold process use lye. Initially I was put off by this but after doing enough reading, I'm not so scared. But I am going to wait until the kids are in school because I don't want them anywhere near lye. Lye is the acid that combines with the oils of your choice to form a nice creamy bar of soap.

With melt and pour soap, you pick a base, melt it, add your own oils, scent it, and color it, and mold it. I ordered my supplies from a distributor on line. I opted for a plain white soap with no scent. But you can get a goat's milk base, olive oil base, oatmeal base, clear base (fun to hide little trinkets in for kids!) Here is what it looks like:
Here are the other supplies you need:

From left to right: a glass measuring cup to melt the soap, a coffee grinder if you're grinding up any additives (like oatmeal), honey, essential oils like vitamin E and jojoba, a spray bottle with rubbing alcohol to spritz the bubbles away, scents, coloring. What you don't need is vaseline. Don't even look at the vaseline.

I cut a chunk of the soap and put it in the measuring cup, covered it in saran wrap and microwaved it for 30 seconds. You don't want it to get too hot or it will loose moisture. While it was melting I ground up some oatmeal (not instant). Then I added my oils:
You have to mix it some to get the oils to combine. Then I added some scent to it. There are a million varieties of scents out there. Everything from designer knock offs to traditional flowers and fruits. I chose honeysuckle.

I then waited for the soap to thicken some before I added the honey. The honey is heavy and I didn't want it to sink to the bottom. Then I poured it into my mold.

I used a muffin pan. Do not use a muffin pan. You can use a silicone muffin pan but you need to use something you can twist. I had read if you coat it with vaseline, it would pop right out. This is not the case. Believe me. This is not the case at all.

Once the soap thickened I poured it into my molds and sprinkled the ground oatmeal on top. Then you basically let it sit for a little bit and, if you did it right, it should pop right out. If you use a mold that doesn't bend much and vaseline you might find yourself crying to your husband to help you. Then you have to endure the eyebrow raise, the eye roll, the grunting and grimacing, but the ultimate removal of the soap.

So here is what it looks like when it's done:

I like that they turned out like little creme brulees. The honey gave it a nice brownish color and you can see the flecks of oatmeal. The other two larger bars I did the previous day and are lavender scented and colored. The little cremes have oatmeal, dark honey, vitamin e oil, jojoba oil, and honeysuckle scent.

So there it is. How easy is that? And it will make a wonderful present for a friend;)