Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey Soap

My Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey soap

I have been wanting to make goat's milk soap for a while now, so a couple of weeks ago I decided to give it a whirl. I have used goat's milk soap made by other soapmakers, and I love the rich, creamy lather.

Usually I use distilled water for the liquid portion of my recipe, but many liquids can be used instead - beer, wine, tea, milks, fruit or vegetable juices and purees, etc. I substituted the entire water portion of my recipe with fresh goat's milk.

Honestly, I was a bit afraid to try goat's milk soapmaking before now because I had heard that it can be a temperamental process and requires more experience. After 15 months of making cold process soaps, I felt I had enough batches of regular soap under my belt to give goat's milk soap a try.

Making goat's milk soap does require some preparation in advance. Milks contain natural sugars, which can make the lye solution or the soap overheat. Ever curdled milk on your stovetop? Blech. Scorched milk-lye solution turns orange-brown and smells horrid; also, the lye can bubble up and volcano, which is not an ideal situation. Overheated soap can crack, separate into an oily mess, or become a lumpy disaster commonly referred to as "alien brains." To avoid overheating, it is best to freeze the goat's milk, add the lye very slowly, and keep your oils cool.

Frozen goat's milk

The day before I was planning to make my soap, I took out my scale and measured the amount of goat's milk I would need for the batch. I poured the measured milk into a plastic baggie so I could lay it flat in my freezer. (I froze the rest of the milk like this, too, since I pretty much stick to the same recipe and use the same amount of liquid each time.)

On soapmaking day, I took the milk out of the freezer and let it sit on the counter to thaw a bit while I set up my work space and got my oils and additives ready.

Because I was going to use an Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey fragrance oil, I decided to add honey and ground oats to my goat's milk soap, too. I bought a coffee grinder just for soapmaking, and I used it to grind up my oats. (The oats were the regular old-fashioned oats - quick-cooking oats can go mushy in soap. I used one Tablespoon of oats per pound of oils.) I dissolved my honey in a bit of warm distilled water to make it more fluid. (I used two teaspoons of honey total for two pounds of oils, mixed with one Tablespoon of warm distilled water.)

Grinding oats (1 Tbsp oats per pound of oils); ground oats and honey (1 tsp honey per pound of oils)

Once my oils were heated and combined and my additives were ready, I got to work on my milk-lye solution. I added my slushy/frozen goat's milk to my lye pitcher, breaking the frozen milk into chunks as I went, and then set the pitcher in an ice bath that was waiting for me in the sink. (Wondering why I make my ice bath in a dishpan instead of just using the sink basin? Well, the drain stopper for the sink has gone disappearin'. I've bought two replacement stoppers, neither of which worked out. I figured it was cheaper and easier to just get a dishpan and be done with it.) Then I gradually added my lye to the milk. I sprinkled some lye flakes on the milk, stirred for a bit, added some more lye, stirred for a bit, etc., until I had added all of my lye. Then I kept stirring the solution in the ice bath until the milk was melted and the lye was fully dissolved. I monitored the temperature and made sure that the lye solution never got hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The milk stayed a nice creamy yellow color.

Frozen goat's milk in lye pitcher (l); goat's milk-lye solution (r)

I was quite pleased with myself - my milk-lye had stayed cool and it hadn't changed color much. I did a temperature check on my oils; they were around 110 degrees, about 15 degrees warmer than I wanted them to be. So I took the milk-lye solution out of the ice bath and replaced it with my bowl of oils so I could cool them down faster.

That's when things got interesting.

During the few minutes I was stirring my oils in the ice bath, my milk-lye solution thickened up to a pudding-like consistency! I am kicking myself now for not taking a picture, but honestly I was so freaked out that all I could think to do was to hurry up and get it into the oils before it set up any further. I quickly added my fragrance oil and honey to my oils and then spooned/scraped my lye solution into the oils. After giving everything a buzz with the stick blender, the soap smoothed out and behaved beautifully, just like a perfect batch. After reaching a medium trace, I stirred my ground oats in with a spatula and then poured my soap into my lined mold.

Adding ground oats at trace (l); pouring soap into mold (r)

So what was the deal with the pudding-like lye solution? I consulted my friends at a couple of soap forums I belong to and the consensus seemed to be that the lye had begun saponifying the fats in the milk, which made it thicken up. I had never heard of this phenomenon before. No one had ever mentioned it in anything I had ever read, and none of the videos I watched on making goat's milk soap featured pudding lye. But after some discussion, it seems that this is fairly common when working with milks. Good to know for next time.

Gel phase! See how it's getting hot and gelatinous in the center?

I decided to let my goat's milk soap go through gel phase, which occurs when the soap heats up and becomes gelatinous first in the middle and then all the way out to the edges. Some soapmakers choose to avoid gel phase by popping the soap into the refrigerator or freezer after pouring it into the mold. Ungelled soaps tend to retain a lighter color, and the fridge keeps the soap from overheating. I usually gel my soaps, though - I like the texture of gelled soaps, and I'd rather have a darker gelled soap than a partially gelled soap. Partial gelling leaves a dark circle in the middle of the soap - totally harmless, but not pretty. I insulated with a single towel layer and checked the soap frequently to make sure it wasn't overheating. Once I saw that it had gelled completely to the edges, I removed the towel and the lid of the mold.

Cutting the soap

A few days later, I cut the soaps. Another thing about goat's milk soap is that it can sometimes smell a bit like ammonia for the first few days, especially if soaping temperatures are too warm. I really didn't notice too much of an ammonia smell. Maybe slightly funky, but nothing significant. When the ammonia smell does occur, it usually cures out within a few days.

The soaps are pretty dark, partly because they gelled and partly because of the fragrance oil, which discolors brown, and the honey.

I can't wait to try this one out! I think this soap will be extra nice with the added honey and oats. And the Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey fragrance is one of my favorites - slightly sweet, warm, and toasty. I still have to wait several weeks for the soap to cure before I can use it. Waiting is the hardest part of soapmaking!

I'm excited to make my own goat's milk soaps since all of the ones I've ever tried have been a real treat. The lather is always so soft, bubbly, and creamy, and it feels great on the skin. One of my favorites was a bar I picked up at a farmer's market that was made with goat's milk AND beer. Talk about great lather! I will definitely have to try that someday in my own soap kitchen.

Are you a fan of goat's milk soaps? Do you have a favorite goat's milk soap that you enjoy making or using? What is your favorite thing about goat's milk soaps? Any interesting stories or mishaps?

Tell me all the goaty details!

Honey Soap for My Honey

I used to think that my husband, Ken, wasn't too particular about his soap. I know that he likes the soap I make - he cast away his favorite shower gel in favor of my soap. He even bought a special plastic box so he can carry a bar around in his gym bag.

But usually when it comes time for him to select a new bar of soap, he doesn't seem too concerned about what the bar looks or smells like. He'll say, "I need some more soap for my gym bag." And I'll ask, "Which kind do you want?" And he'll answer, "I don't care, as long as it smells manly."

And I'll go into the soap room, come back with a few paper bags of manly-smelling soap, and prepare to tell him all about his choice of scents and the aesthetic qualities of each bar. After I present the first bar, he'll usually say, "Okay, I'll take that one." And I'll say, "Don't you want to see the rest?" To which he replies, "No, I like this one."

Maybe he loves all of my soaps so much that he knows that no matter which bar he ends up with, it will be extraordinary. Last time, he got the last bar of my honey soap.

And so a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised when our new-soap-for-the-gym-bag conversation went like this:

"I need some more soap for my gym bag."

"Which kind do you want?"

"I'll take another bar of the honey soap."

"That was the last bar. I don't have any more."

He turned to me with this worried look on his face and said, "What? You're going to make more, aren't you?"

My heart melted, I tells ya.

Slab mold lined with bubble wrap

So I told him, yes, I would make more honey soap. I was planning to make more anyway because I love it, too. And I decided I would make it sooner rather than later so my sweet hubby can have some for his gym bag.

The first thing I did for my honey soap was cut some bubble wrap to fit the bottom of my slab mold. Then I placed it textured-side up in my mold. (By the way, I love that my acrylic slab mold from Soap Making Resource doesn't have to be lined. Yippee!)

Next, I got my oils ready. For this batch, I used olive oil, coconut oil, sustainable palm oil, and shea butter. Once my oils were cool, I mixed in my fragrance oil, Honey (L'Occitane Type) by Elements Bath and Body. This fragrance is super-yummy and strong - I used it at .5oz./per pound of oils and that was plenty for me. There are a few fragrance oils that I want to drink, and this is certainly one of them.

Honey dissolved in warm water

You know how honey can be pretty sticky and viscous, and how it can leave streaks in your soap? Well, here's a little trick to working with honey: Dissolve it in a bit of warm water before adding it to your soap. I used 2 teaspoons of honey in this batch (which was made with 2 pounds of oils). After I measured out my distilled water, I pulled 1 tablespoon from my total water, placed it in a heat-safe bowl, and then warmed it briefly (very briefly, like for 8 seconds) in the microwave. Then I added my honey to the warm water and whisked it. I added my honey water to my cooled oils, gave it a buzz with the stick blender, and then added my lye solution.

Pouring soap (l); soap in the mold with dividers (r)

Because the sugars in honey can cause the soap to overheat, I kept my temperatures right around 100 degrees. Once I reached trace, I poured my soap into my bubble-wrap lined mold and put the dividers in.

I lightly insulated with a single towel layer and checked my soap often to make sure it wasn't overheating.

A few days later, I unmolded the soap. The bubble wrap pulled right away, leaving me with a cool honeycomb effect on the tops.

Now my honey just needs to wait a few weeks for the soap to cure and then he can have more honey soap for his gym bag! (I'm going to steal a few bars for myself, too. Shhh, don't tell him.)

So, tell me, my soapy friends, do you love honey in your soap, or do you looooooooooooove honey in your soap?


                                                                                

Clean Cotton Faux Funnel Pour Soap

Do you know about the funnel pour technique? If you are a soapmaker, you've probably heard of it, and you may have even tried it. As you might suspect, a funnel is involved. Soap is poured in alternating colors through the funnel into the mold, creating circular pools of color. The cut bars have cool ribbon-like bands throughout. The funnel is usually held in place above the center of the mold by chopsticks, spoon handles, or - as Bramble Berry's Anne-Marie cleverly uses in this Soap Queen TV video - an overturned cup with a hole in the bottom:



There is also something called the "faux funnel pour" technique. It is like the funnel pour, only no funnel is involved. But the idea is the same. Soap is poured in alternating colors one on top of the other, creating a similar pooling effect as with the funnel method.

I decided to take a stab at the faux funnel pour recently. For this soap, I used a Clean Cotton fragrance oil, which made me think of blue and white.

The goal was to have two distinctly different shades of blue to go along with the white, giving me three colors to pour. I used ultramarine blue oxide and titanium dioxide (mixed with a bit of glycerin) to make blue, light blue, and white colors. (The white looks kinda yellow because I mixed the titanium dioxide into my fragrance oil. It turned out pretty white in the finished soap, though.)

After I made the main soap batch (with the fragrance and titanium dioxide mixed in), I split the batch into three equal amounts. Then I colored one bowl of soap deep blue, another light blue, and left the third bowl white.

Then the fun part - the pouring! My soap got a little thick on me, so my pours weren't as fluid as I would have liked.

I started out with three pools, alternating deep blue, white, and light blue ...

And after a few pours like that, I made some new pools somewhere else ...

And soon my mold was filled and I finished it off with a pretty little swirl on top.

It is tough to wait a day or two before unmolding sometimes, especially if I'm trying a new or intricate technique. During the wait, I sometimes find myself thinking, "Wow, that's gonna look awesome!" Or "Gee, I sure hoped that worked." Or "Well, we can still use it even if it's super ugly." I usually feel both giddy and nervous when it comes time to cut.

Freshly unmolded soap (left); cutting the soap (right)

By the way, I just love my wooden soap mold with the built-in cutter from Soap Making Resource. I am dreadful at cutting soap by hand. Actually, I'm quite fantastic at cutting wonky, uneven bars by hand. Gifted, really. But dreadful at making straight, uniform cuts on my own. So I really like having the guidance. I just wish my crinkle cutter would fit in the slot ... then my life would be perfect.

Here are a few of the cut bars! I like how each bar is unique. I wish that there was more of a contrast between the two blues, but overall I'm pleased. Next time, I will choose more distinctive colors and try to keep my trace lighter so the soap will flow more fluidly. My technique was more like a "plop pour." (It was probably a mistake to use the stick blender to mix in the colorants - I'll try a whisk next time.) I think I'd also pour in a more side-to-side motion rather than choosing random spots, or just make one pool in the center of the mold and pour one color on top of another without moving around. But this batch was fun to make, that's faux sure!

And I do have a funnel - one day I'm going to have to try the non-faux funnel pour (or, as it is more commonly called, the funnel pour).

Anybody else loving the funnel pour, faux or not?

What the Heck is Soap?

So, you've seen a few of my soaps here and you've probably seen folks selling soap at craft shows or farmer's markets. Did you ever wonder just how exactly one makes soap from scratch at home? What does one need in order to make soap? And just what the heck is soap anyway?

In a nutshell, soap is made when oils are combined with sodium hydroxide (lye). That's really about it.

Let's expand a bit on that, though. Here's where I lay some chemistry on you. I promise it won't hurt much. To make soap, a chemical reaction has to take place between an acid (the fats and oils in a soap recipe) and a base (a lye solution of sodium hydroxide and water). This chemical reaction, which is called saponification, produces soap and glycerin, a natural by-product of soapmaking.

The chemical structure of a typical soap

The mention of lye can make some people uncomfortable, conjuring images of harsh soaps and irritated skin. The truth is, you cannot make soap without lye. It's just not possible. The good news is that when soap is properly made, there is no lye present in the final product. Great-grandma may have made some lye-heavy batches in her day, and too much lye can certainly make for an unpleasant bar. But soapmaking has come a long way in the past couple of decades and today's soapmakers use things like gram scales and lye calculators to make sure that they are using exactly the right amount of lye to oils.

See, each molecule of sodium hydroxide combines with a molecule of oil. During saponification, triglycerides in the oils break down into fatty acids and glycerols. The fatty acids react with the sodium ions, creating sodium compounds that are better known as soap. (So soap is chemically a salt. Cool, huh?) And where does all of that skin-loving glycerin that I mentioned earlier come from? The newly liberated glycerols react with the hydroxide ions to create glycerin.

Of course, you can't just dump some sodium hydroxide into some oils and get soap. There is a process.

Dig my look?

What does that process look like? First and foremost is safety. Lye is caustic and it must be handled with respect. A speck of lye in your eye will really ruin your day.

Here are the basic safety rules: Suit up with goggles, gloves, long sleeves, long pants, and close-toed shoes. Take care to not breathe the lye fumes. Standing back and running the exhaust fan is usually enough, but wear a painter's or dust mask if you want to. If you get lye or raw soap on yourself, rinse thoroughly with water and then rinse with vinegar. (I always have a spritzer of vinegar handy.) Protect your countertops and appliances, too. I take a tip from Dexter and cover everything with plastic drop cloths. I also lay down paper bags so I have a place to rest my soapy utensils.

A few words about equipment: I use either heavy-duty plastic (polypropylene is my plastic of choice - the kind with the recycling code with the "5" and "PP" on the bottom) or stainless steel for making soap. Never use aluminum, tin, copper, teflon, or any other metals, as they will react badly with lye. I also do not use glass - over time, lye can etch tiny cracks into the glass and one day it may decide to just shatter.

Kitchen prepped for soapmaking

Every soapmaker's process varies, but here's how I do things. I am a mise en place kind of soaper and I like everything out and measured before I get started. First I measure out my oils and butters for my batch size, which is usually two pounds of oils. (I measure everything in grams for greater accuracy.) My basic recipe typically includes olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil (from a sustainable source), shea butter, and/or avocado oil. I like to measure out my oils in separate bowls so I can put some back if I over-measure. Plus, I'm OCD and feel reassured to see four bowls of oils if I'm using four oils in my soap. I gently heat the oils in the microwave to melt them and to get them a bit warmer. When all of my oils are warm and melted, I combine them into one big bowl.

I also like to measure out my fragrance or essential oils and get any colorants ready. I usually use powdered oxides and micas and mix them with a bit of liquid glycerin to work out any clumps.

Next, I get my lye solution ready. As discussed, soap is made through a chemical reaction with oils and sodium hydroxide. You need some sort of liquid, though, to dissolve the sodium hydroxide and to act as a carrier, ensuring that all of the lye gets to the oils. Water (preferably distilled water) is usually used, but beer, wine, fruit juices, milks (goat's milk being a particular favorite), etc. can also be used in place of the water. I keep my liquids in the fridge so that the lye solution doesn't get too hot. To make the lye solution, I measure out my lye flakes into a cup, and then slowly sprinkle my lye flakes into my cold liquid, stirring as I go. NEVER ADD WATER TO LYE - ALWAYS ADD LYE TO WATER. The lye solution usually heats up to about 165 degrees F when I start with cold liquids, and I like the temperature to be more like 100-110 degrees before I combine it with the oils. So, I always make sure I have an ice bath waiting in the sink so I can rest my lye container in the frigid water, thus cooling it down faster. After about 10-15 minutes of stirring my lye solution in the ice bath, it's cool enough to add to my oils.

Adding lye flakes to water (inside a dishpan in case of any spills); stirring lye solution in ice bath

Some soapmakers wait until "trace" (something I'll explain in a moment) before adding fragrance or essential oils, but I usually go ahead and add my fragrance to the oils once they've cooled down to about 110 degrees or so. I do this for a couple of reasons. First, this way I won't forget to add it. Second, if my fragrance is finicky, the oils will give me a bit of a buffer against seizing, ricing, or acceleration.

Adding lye solution to oils; emulsifying lye and oils with stick blender

When both my oils and my lye solution are somewhere around 100-110 degrees, I slowly add the lye solution to the oils, stirring as I go. To help speed things along, I use a stick blender to mix and emulsify the soap batter.

Look closely. See the trails of soap on the surface? That's trace.

How do you know when to pour?

Soapmakers look for something called "trace." Trace occurs when the soap batter is completely emulsified and will not separate into a watery, oily mess. How do you test for trace? Dip a spoon or spatula into the soap and dribble a bit on top. If the dribbles leave a trail of soap that stays on the surface for a couple of moments before sinking back into the batter, that's trace. Trace can be light or heavy, depending on how long you mix it and what consistency you want. Lighter trace is good for swirling, heavier trace is good for layering.

Once I've reach my desired level of trace, I pour my soap into my mold. Some molds (like silicone, plastic or acrylic) don't need to be lined, but others (like wooden molds) do. To line a mold, I use freezer paper with the shiny side facing in.

Freshly poured soap in the mold

Once the soap is in the mold, I pop a lid on it and insulate it with a couple of towels. I like for my soaps to go through gel phase, which is a part of the saponification process in which the soap heats up and becomes rather gelatinous. After 24 hours, gel phase is complete and the soap can be cut. Soap doesn't have to go through gel phase to become soap. Some soapers purposely avoid gelling by popping the soap into the fridge or freezer because they like the color or texture of ungelled soaps better. Ungelled soap still saponifies, it just takes a few days longer.

After about 4-6 weeks of curing time, the soaps are ready to use!

And that's pretty much it! Now you know the basics of soapmaking. I hope it was interesting!

Until next time ...

Orange Patchouli Soap

I love patchouli. It smells musky, earthy, and dirty, like rich soil. Not everyone loves it. Some folks hate it. I remember burning patchouli incense when I was in high school and my mom complaining that I was "making the house smell like dead things."

Lovely, sweet, amazing-smelling dead things.

One day, when the price of patchouli essential oil comes down a bit (and by a bit I mean a lot), I will make a batch of soap scented with patchouli straight-up. Fortunately, a little patchouli goes a long way, and it's great in blends. And I have found that people who hate patchouli - like my mom, for example - like it in a blend.

I bought a bar of Orange Patchouli soap at a farmer's market a couple of years ago and loved it. A couple of weeks ago, I was browsing through my fragrance cabinet and squealed with delight when I found that I had full bottles of both orange and patchouli essential oils. So I made a batch of Orange Patchouli cold-process soap.

For this batch, I used Bramble Berry's 10x Orange and Patchouli essential oils at a 3:1 ratio. I love the 10-fold Orange essential oil because it sticks well in cold-process soap. Citrus essential oils are notoriously fleeting and often fade to almost nothing in soap. The 10-fold Orange is a concentrated essential oil, so it tends to be stronger and better survives the saponification process. This batch of soap smells mostly of orange with a bit of musky earthiness in the background.

Patchouli blends so well with so many other scents. I've tried lavender and patchouli together, too, and that is a wonderful combination. There are so many combos that I think would be fantastic - patchouli and lemongrass, grapefruit, geranium, peppermint, rosemary, sandalwood, or cedarwood ... the list goes on. Experimentation is a huge part of the fun in soapmaking!

How do you feel about patchouli? Love it, hate it? Do you like it by itself, or prefer it in a blend? What are some of your favorite patchouli blends?

Until next time ...

Castile Soap

A couple of weeks ago, I made a Castile soap.

So, what the heck is Castile soap?

Traditionally, the oil used to make Castile soap consists entirely of olive oil. Oftentimes, soaps are made with a blend of oils. I tend to use a high percentage of olive oil in my soaps, but I also typically use coconut oil, palm oil, avocado oil, and/or shea butter in every batch, too.

My Castile soap

Castile soap in its purest form is simply olive oil, sodium hydroxide (lye), and water. That's it. No other oils, no fragrance, no colorants. This simple formulation creates a creamy, white bar with many reported benefits - it is gentle on the skin, naturally moisturizes, and supposedly helps combat acne, dry skin, eczema, and psoriasis.

So where did this "Queen of Soaps" come from? Castile soap enjoys a long, rich history. It was first made sometime around the 13th century in Castilla, a medieval kingdom in modern-day Spain named after the large number of castles in the region. Most soaps at the time were made with animal lard or tallow, but because Castilla had such a vast abundance of olive groves, they used olive oil instead. This luxurious soap quickly became a favorite among royalty and the wealthy in Europe. In fact, Louis XIV of France was so enamored of Castile soap that he demanded in 1688 that all Marseille soapmakers exclusively use olive oil in their soaps.

I've never used pure Castile soap before, and my interest was piqued after reading some discussions about it on a couple of soapmaking forums I belong to. I decided to take a stab at making my own. I did veer a bit from tradition, though - I am a total fragrance junkie and I just couldn't stand to leave it unscented. I kept things natural by using lavender and tea tree essential oils to lightly scent the soap. Honestly, I don't like tea tree on its own (I think it kinda smells like motor oil) but it is wonderful when used sparingly with other essential oils. Lavender and tea tree is one of my new favorites.

Sadly, this soap is nowhere near ready to use, so I must exercise patience. I normally let my soaps cure for about six weeks before I use them. (During the curing time, the water in the soap evaporates, creating a harder, longer-lasting bar. The soap also becomes milder as it cures.) Castile soap can be used after 4-6 weeks, but it benefits greatly from a much longer cure time. Ideally, Castile soap should be cured for at least four months, and it is even better after a year.

It seems like people either love Castile soap or hate it. I've heard some folks say that they don't care for it because it can feel slimy. I am told not to expect a fluffy, bubbly lather - Castile's bubbles are small, creamy, and slippery. Other folks love this about Castile, praising how it leaves their skin feeling soft and nourished. I hear more positives than negatives about Castile, so I have high hopes and I am excited to try it. I guess I'll just have to wait a few months to see if this soap lives up to my expectations!

Until next time ...

Greetings and Salutations!

Hello, everyone, and welcome to my new blog! Thanks for stopping by and hanging out.

Not-so-brief introduction: My name is Jenny and I have been a soap enthusiast for about three years now. I started making melt-and-pour soaps in January 2009 after a friend of mine reminded me of a bar of glycerin soap he had bought me for Christmas years earlier. We got to talking about it, and he told me that it was possible to make soap like that at home. I was intrigued and went to the bookstore a few days later to see what they had on the topic. I was lucky enough to find Marie Browning's "300 Handcrafted Soaps: Great Melt and Pour Projects" on the shelf. The book was so inspiring and the soaps so beautiful that I was immediately hooked.

Once I started soaping, I was quickly addicted. Anyone who loves to make soap knows what I mean. I read every book, website, and blog about melt-and-pour soaping that I could find, and watched every online video that was out there. I would see an interesting color pattern and wonder if I could make a soap that looked like it. Everything began to look like a potential mold - most people see silicone baking pans as something to, you know, bake with, but I saw them as soaping molds. I'd sniff candles at the mall until I felt self-conscious, making mental notes about what scents I liked so I could find a similar soap fragrance. I even began dreaming about soap.

Here are a few of my melt-and-pour soaps ...

Later that year, I started selling my melt-and-pour soaps at craft shows and online. I met lots of wonderful friends through the process and  learned tons. After about 18 months, though, I found that running a business was sucking a lot of the joy out of soapmaking. Even the smallest business requires a huge amount of maintenance - Excel spreadsheets, Schedule C forms, sales and use tax returns, permits and paperwork, revenue and expenses, inventory, marketing, etc., etc., etc. ... All of that along with a deficit (I was spending about twice what I was earning) and a potential geographical move factored into my decision to close up shop in January 2011. But I learned so much from the experience and wouldn't trade it for the world.

At about the time I closed shop, I was officially bitten by the cold-process-soaping bug. I had read about cold process soapmaking during my melt-and-pour days, and wanted to try it but was afraid of the lye monster. But since I was no longer selling my soaps and running a business, I suddenly had more time to create and explore. So I decided to dedicate myself to learning the cold process method and to take the plunge and try it already. On a day in early 2011, I stood in my kitchen wearing my makeshift hazmat suit (goggles, plastic gloves, apron, long sleeves, long pants, closed-toed shoes) and warily eyed my container of sodium hydroxide (lye). I was pleasantly surprised that the house didn't explode when I added the lye to my distilled water. I added my lye solution to my melted oils, stick blended it to trace and then poured it into my mold. Afterward, as I was giving myself and the kitchen the Silkwood scrub down, I thought, "That was what I was so afraid of?" Don't get me wrong ... lye demands respect and you must be careful with it, but it's nothing to fear.

Twenty-four hours later, I'll be darned if I didn't have a block of soap in my mold. With my confidence buoyed, I began plotting the next batch. And then the next batch. And then the next ...

... And a few of my cold-process soaps.

I thought about starting this blog many times in the past few months. After closing my business, I took some time to just reboot and find my passion again. And I soon started thinking about sharing my experiences via a blog. But time has a funny way of inserting its own plans. Last summer, we got word we were moving from Florida to Louisiana and gearing up for that was a bit of a whirlwind. By the time we got settled into our new home, the holidays were approaching. And now that the holidays are over and we are on firmer ground, I can finally get around to starting this silly blog.

I hope this will be a fun way to connect with other soap enthusiasts like myself and to share knowledge and stories with each other. Thanks so much for reading!