How to Make Natural Soap at Home?

August 25, 2010- Making handmade soap serves at least two purposes- one, you know what all soap and detergent ingredients are being used for making it and two, if you so wish, you can reduce the quantity of harmful soap ingredients and include more natural soap ingredients for making an all natural soap! After all, natural soap ingredients help in natural glowing skin! This article will help you in determining what all safe and natural ingredients you can use for making handmade soap at home and by giving you step by step instructions for making soap.

Ingredients for Making Handmade Soap

Soap making is based on chemical reaction among fats or oils and lye. The difference between a commercially made soap and hand made soap is due to the choice of ingredients. If you carefully make a combination of quality oils, fragrance or essential oils with colorant, your natural handmade soap will be better than the products of any soap making business. Here we give you the soap manufacturing process that is known as cold process soap making. Get the following materials and ingredients for making soap at home.

• Heat source and access to water
• Some vegetable oils
• Pitcher of lye-water
• Soap pot, glass pitcher, spoons, measuring cups, spatulas and whisks
• Fragrance (you can alternatively get essential oil)
• Colorant(natural or synthetic, preferably natural if desire to make all natural soap)
• A mold (to pour the raw soap into it)

Step-by-Step Instructions for Making Handmade Soap

To make natural handmade soap through cold soap process, you have to heat the oils in your soap pot until they are at about 100 degrees. Then you must slowly add the lye-water mixture and blend the soap till it thickens. When the soap mixture reaches trace, you must add fragrance, color and additives and pour it into the mold. Then you must leave the raw soap for about 24 hours to harden.

• Get a natural soap recipe. You might take help of Ineternet.
• Make your lye solution and keep it aside in a safe place where no one can reach it. Its risky and you too must exercise all precautions like gloves etc. while handling the lye for making soap.
• Put the soap pot onto the scale and zero out the weight. According to your soap recipe, weigh the oils one by one into the pot. Ensure to zero out the weight after you have measured each oil. Do the pouring slowly as you can not take it out once its put in the mix.
• Solid oils like coconut, palm, cocoa butter etc. can be weighed into soap pot and liquid oils like olive, sunflower, canola or castor can be done separately into a glass pitcher.
• Place the soap pot having solid oils onto the stove (medium heat.) Stir gently and let the oils melt slowly. Turn off when the oils get to about 110 degrees. However, keep stirring till all the solid oils get melted.
• Now add the liquid oils, which are at room temperature, to the soap pot. This will bring the overall temperature down. You want the oils to be at about 100 degrees when you add the lye-water.

Making Homemade Soap

• Add the lye-water mixture to the soap pot slowly. With the help of a stick blender, without turning it on, blend the lye-water into the oils.
• While stirring the lye-water-oil mixture, you may now turn on the blender for short moments like for 3-5 seconds and then stir again. Keep blending like this till the oils and lye-water are completely mixed together.
• When you see the soap mixture completely blended (but before it begins to get too thick), slowly mix the fragrance or essential oils to this mixture. If your soap recipe requires you to add other ingredients like flower petals, spices or moisturizing oils etc. add them now. Gently stir them into the pot with the help of stick blender.
• After blending the fragrance and other soap ingredients well into the mixture, add the colorant.
• Pour this raw home made soap into your mold in a to and fro motion for equally spreading out of the mixture. If you see the top of the soap in the mold uneven, smooth it out with the help of spatula. Gently tap the mold on the counter top to dislodge any air bubbles that may have been trapped.
• Set the soap in a warm, safe place for about 24 hours so that it gets harden. Then only, it can be taken out of the mold.
• After at least a day, take out the soap out of the mold. Slice it into size bars as per your choice and then set it aside to cure.

Don't be tempted to use your handmade soap for about four weeks which is the time it needs to cure before before being ready to use. If you can manage to get some help and make these natural homemade soaps in bulk, you can even start your own handmade soap wholesale business! For this, you have to add an extra step for making soap and that is to wrap your home made soaps in beautiful wrappers for selling as natural beauty products!

Know Why are consumers shifting to natural beauty products?