Soap making, what????

 What have I gotten myself into now lol. I always seem to be coming up with something and doing new things without necessarily finishing old things. I just love doing all the things……sewing, baking, crocheting, knitting, painting, painting furniture, slip covering furniture, bookmaking, paper making, sign making, jewelry making, and the list goes on. 

But recently I found a new thing. I was looking around on YouTube and came across someone making bath bombs. Hmmmm……sounds interesting. And then of course, I went down the rabbit hole. I moved from bath bombs to lotion bars to soap. Soap!!!  What a magical, amazing, creative, beautiful, creation. How was this invented? Who invented it?  Who in the world thought to put these ingredients together and make soap???  I was enchanted by the whole process. I could not believe that with basically three ingredients (one of them being water) one could make soap. A bubbly, creamy, luxurious, satisfying little square of goodness. 

So I sauntered over to the grocery store and the hardware store (as fast as I could) and bought all the things.  Olive oil, coconut oil, castor oil, sodium hydroxide, and distilled water.

Once the soap is made, a soap mold is required to pour the soap into it to then be able to let it dry (cure) and then cut. I didn’t have a soap mold but I found an old long drawer from an antique dresser I had in the garage.

And so it began  with my few ingredients and feeling all the emotions, I made my first batch of soap and I fell head over heels in love.

You can see the photos below of my first batch of soap.  The drawer was lined with freezer paper and then the soap was poured carefully into it.  

Freshly poured soap

Here is my soap the next day after I removed it from the mold, removed the paper and cut the soap into bars. I seriously kept coming back to it every 5 minutes to look at the creamy colored soap and marvel at the glorious little squares.

Oatmeal and honey soap

 

And now guess what??  I have to wait 4-6 weeks to use the soap. Apparently the soap has to complete the saponification process.  The water will evaporate out and will yield a hard & mild bar of soap. 

The anticipation grows!