How do you make your own soap?

Question

I really love Lush (www.lush.co.uk) and have recently bought some homemade soaps from other places on the internet.

How would I go about making my own soaps? I mean the creamy looking and feeling type rather than just glycerine.

As many natural products as possible would be good.

I don't plan to sell them on, I just find myself spending LOADS on soap and want to see if I can cut costs, as well as making some personalised smells.

Any help would be greatly appreciated :)

Answer 1

I would get the book Smart Soap Making by Annie L. Watson.

The reason is, if you want to make your own soap base, then you have to have a fat and in proportion to the fats you are choosing to use you have to have lye. Lye which, is an ingredient in drain cleaners...but you want to use pure lye, will turn fats, animal or otherwise into soap.

Soapmaking can be dangerous and you also need the correct safety equipment like rubber gloves and safety goggles but, it is a lot of fun.
Once you have a soap base, then you take and grind up that base into small pieces and then melt it on a stove and then you can add fragrences and spices...and even sand to make a good 'scrubby' soap for gardeners. The milling also known as 'French Milled Soap' also helps to get rid of any 'free lye' that might have stayed in your soap base, and makes the resulting soap nicer and more like you would get in a store. Other books can give you recipiews for how to mill the soap to make different smelling soaps, laundry soaps and all.

If you don't want to make the base, then you can get some soapmaking kits which comes with a glycerine soap base and then you mill it and add ingredients to make it smell good and all.

I can't tell you exactly how to do it, because it can be an involved process, and the ratios of fat to lye must be exact. So you should have a book to start you out, especially if you intend to make your own base, which I find the most rewarding. Just because you are making your own base means you can control the type of fats you want to use...I like Olive Oil soap the best.

Answer 2

Alot of craft shops and health shops probably sell alot of kits to make soap. Hope that's a bit of help!

Answer 3

Here is one site
http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/beyondbasics/a/lyemilk.htm
.