Making soap...lots of pictures!

Hey guys...I finally did it. I took a few pictures while I was making soap. Its not a tutorial or anything just some pictures of the adventures I have in soap making.

Here you see the soap after I have mixed in the lye and oils...its well on its way to being soap now. Its in its "cooking" process where all the lye cooks out of it and makes it instant gratification. I can go shower with it in a couple of hours...I like that!

Here you can see the aftermath of the monster soap's destruction. I turned my back for a minute to get my molds ready and it was shooting out of the pan not unlike a volcano. The stove was clean when I started LOL



Here I am trying to scrape up some of the soap that spilled out while I was furiously beating it back down into the pot. I kinda got scared for a minute cause this batch was taking a beating and kept rising up outta the pan! I couldnt beat it quick enough to keep it down...finally it gave up and just had a nice long rest.






Here you see what the soap looks like after it has pitched a fit and tried to escape from the pan. Here it is just hanging out, chillin' doing its chemical process stuff....just working on being soap instead of being a raging monster.








Here to the right you see an up close shot of the soap. This is one of the many many changes it goes thru while it is cooking. You can see teeny bits of it has become white...thats soap! The brown part is still working thru the process to become the soap that we all love...











And here is the soap almost ready to go! You can see how a lot of it is white, and there is more white than brown...thats how you know its ready, but to be sure I break off a piece and stick it to my tongue...yeah I "zap" test it. If I get zapped, its not done...if no zap is present then we go to the next test...the "wash my hands in it and break my arm patting myself on the back cause the bubbles rock so much" test

Here you can see my hand in a bowl (notice its pink...I like pink) I am here kneading and mixing the soap around with my hands until it is the consistency of play-doh. It is obviously cool enough to touch so this is when I add in shea butter, cocoa butter...both unrefined and in their natural state with all the goodness left intact, and I also add in the essential or fragrance oils at this point. By adding them in now rather than when the soap is burning hot and crawling out of the pan, the oils retain their true scent and dont change. This is a good thing! I know whatever it smells like now is gonna be what it smells like tomorrow and next week and next month!






Here I have already mixed in all the goodies as well as some coloring and packed it in my square mold. This mold holds 2 and 1/2 pounds of soap and makes very nice 4 ounce rectangle shaped bars.



I made some of this soap a light green and the darker blueish color SHOULD turn a nice dark brown in a couple of days...theoretically this is what should happen, although we will see! This is scented with Nag Champa, and it usually turns my soap brown...I am shooting for a nice earth tone soap in dark brown and lighter green here...we will see how it turns out after it cures a bit.



Here is my round PVC pipe el Cheapo molds, but they make a nice good sized round bar of soap. They fit in the hand quite nicely...perfect size!




In the top container I have tangerine basil...with real dried basil in the soap! This one is made with essential oils of Sweet Basil and Tangerine...I LOVE the tangerine!!!

The bottom pipe has Tangerine Vanilla! It smells a lot like a dreamsicle. Creamy tangerine...its nice, and my house smells just like it...If I could only take a picture of how great my house smells right now LOL

The little blue-ish soaps are nag champa scented "Thank you" soaps. I like to throw one in if someone orders some clothing or something...if I think they will like the scent anyways. Nag Champa is my number one seller so I havent got any complaints yet LOL.



Here you see the finished, cut soaps. The orange-ish ones are the tangerine ones, the brown and white rectangle ones are scented with Patchouli and this has moroccan red clay in the reddish part...I love that stuff in soap. It makes the skin so soft!

The blue green ones are nag champa of course...even if they dont cure to the point they have brown in them, I like those colors anyways LOL I love the blue and green...like the ocean, but Nag Champa dont smell like the ocean so the color dont really match the scent but like I said, I am hoping for the brown to come out by tomorrow.


So thats it for my soapmaking adventure today. I hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for taking a moment to hang out with me and see how this awesome soap is made...sort of LOL.