The Aromatherapy Scene

Soap Making With Jeny - Making Soap For Fun & Profit

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Retail Price: $29.95

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by Clara Buton

It has only become common to buy your soap from a store in the last hundred years. Before this our great grandparents would commonly make their soap at home using fats and other ingredients. One ingredient in normal soap making is Lye, and it is a caustic agent that needs to be handled with care. So you may choose to make soap in the hand milled method detailed below. How to make soap is simple and can be done with four easy steps.

Because this method uses commercial soap as a base it is sometimes called the hand milled soap technique. Its ingredients also mean it is safe to include your children in the process if you wish.

Step one: Use a household grater to grate an unscented bar of soap. The finer you grate your soap the easier the melting process will be. You will need 1 cup of grated soap.

Step two: Add 1/8th of a cup of water plus 2/8ths of a cups of essential oils. You might choose to use a mix of coconut oil and safflower oil. The choice of oils is yours and experimenting with combinations is part of the fun of making soap.

You need to melt the mixture over a double boiler on medium. The benefit of using a double boiler is that the mixture is not against a direct heat and is less likely to burn. Stir the mixture occasionally. Do try and stir gently as this will limit the amount of air bubbles you add to the soap. The cooking is done when it gets to a stringy stage. If it is not allowed to get to stringy, you will find that the soap will fail to harden as it should.

Step Three: This is where you add you signature to your soap and put in scents, colours or other additions. For a scented soap add 5 drops of lavender oil, for example and perhaps a teaspoon of dried lavender. Mix to combine.

Step Four: Moulding. The moulding form you choose will depend on what you have on hand. You may want to mould it into one large slab and cut the soap when it is set. Or you may choose to mould in a number of small shaped moulds. Do avoid this plastic as it is likely to break or melt. When poured tap the mixture to eliminate any air bubbles and leave to set.

The setting process should take about five hours. Then you will have your own hand milled soap.

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