Soapmaking 101

Introduction

So you want to make handmade soap? Handcrafting your own soap can be an extremely rewarding experience, and I warn you, can develop into an addictive hobby!

There are a variety of reasons for making your own soap at home. Perhaps you want to produce an all natural soap bar for someone in your family who suffers from skin problems caused by the harsh ingredients found in store bought soap. Perhaps you are concerned about the preservatives and additives in store bought soap—or about the dangers of foaming agents such as sodium laureth sulfate or petroleum based ingredients. Perhaps you already make your own beauty products at home and you want to expand your horizons.

Whatever your reasons, when you make your own soap at home following age old methods, you produce a high quality, all natural, pure bar of soap. Soap you make yourself is gentle and nourishing to the skin in a way that store bought soap cannot be.

In cold process soapmaking, oils and/or fats are combined with lye without adding heat and saponification (the chemical process that produces soap) takes place slowly, over several weeks. Using different combinations of oils and additives, you can produce many different soaps at home, from a basic Castille soap following the same recipe used for centuries, to a natural shampoo soap bar for your dog with essential oils to ward off mosquitos!

When I tell people I make my own soap at home the old fashioned way (including laundry soap for my delicates), they invariably ask "Isn't that difficult?" It depends what what they mean by difficult. You can make soap if you can bake a cake. After all, all you need to do is measure ingredients, mix them up and pour the mixture into a mold. And you can make soap with ingredients from the supermarket and with supplies from a discount department store - no special equipment is required.

So start making soap now!

This is a wonderful course that is well written. It teaches us how to make our own soap without the use of preservatives. This is great for anyone who has skin disorders or allergies. Mary Alward