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All my soaps are made using the cold process method from start to finish. But I have adopted a modern day twist to my technique. This method still produces the same high high quality soap, but it's a lot safer to make for several reasons.

I start the process out by gathering and weighing each ingredient out. I don't begin making soap until this step is done. All the oils are weighed in one container and the lye is carefully weighed as so are my choice of liquids. If I am adding any fragrance or other ingredients those are weighed out as well on a digital scale.





And all my oils are weighed out and ready to begin the process.



I have several recipes that I use. I never use soap recipes that I find on the internet because I have found most of them to be off balance in the amount of oils used. Some are even unsafe with to much lye used! Or others not enough lye is used to complete the chemical reaction needed to make soap.

I spent a lot of time learning about soap making. I'm not talking about the process of soap making but instead on how to formulate good soap recipes. Some soap makers do not realize that the oils are not created equally and that they can't all be interchanged. But you need to have the right balance of the oils to get specific qualities. And you can tweak the amounts and oils to get different results. Which is why I have several recipes that I use, each used for a different purpose.

Once I have all my ingredients weighed and ready I begin mixing and blending.

In the photo below you see that the mixture is now blended and in this case essential oil has been added and it's ready to be poured into the mold. The soap looks orange in color because the liquid used in this particular batch is tomato juice.





Then the soap is poured into the mold. Covered with plastic and ready to be put to sleep wrapped up in a quilt. Ready to go into the next phase.



The next phase is the one that is responsible for making soap. Soap making is all chemistry. Lye is dissolved into a liquid so it can be used to be mixed together with the oils. That is when the magic happens and the chemical reaction takes place to turn the mixed ingredients into soap. I unwrapped this soap to peek and to take this picture of the gelling phase. When the process is complete you have soap and there is no lye left in the finished product. (Unless the soaper wasn't careful in their recipe or in their weighing and the soap is lye heavy, meaning to much lye was used.)



And later once the process is complete the soap can be cut into bars and left to cure.





Most soaps need 3-6 weeks to cure. However if the batch has a large amount of olive oil used then it will need a longer time to cure to get hard.

One thing that is misunderstood about soap is about the cure time. The process saponification process is actually complete in about 24-48 hours, and you have soap. However it will be softer than what it would be if you wanted till the end of the cure time. But still very usable. The benefit to waiting for the cure time to complete is that the soap has had time for the extra liquids to evaporate and produce a harder bar of soap. Which in turn will last longer when it's being used. 

I call *most* of my soaps 99% natural because I do use a fragrance oil that is man made. However some do use essential oils and others are left unscented.

Soap made using the cold process method has the naturally occurring glycerin in it. What most call soap and is mass produced commercially has had any glycerin removed for resale or to be used in other products by the company. Those “soaps” are also made of many synthetic products. Some which do come from nature but that doesn't make them natural ingredients like many believe they are. They also depend on detergents and chemicals to do the cleaning instead of a natural process. Thus they save money on an inferior product.

If you have not used a soap that is made from scratch you don't know what you are missing. The thing that surprise most people is that they are shocked to find how clean they really feel. They find their skin feeling soft and not dry like it had been using a store bought product that strips away the skins natural oils.

So it doesn't matter if your looking for a product that is better for your skin or if you want to get away from the chemicals and detergents used in commercial soap products or if you are wanting to "go green". Because a soap that is made from scratch is better for the environment as well. Give it a try your skin will thank you.

One thing that I have noticed is the number of sellers who are using the term “handmade”. So before you purchase any soap, it's best to make sure the seller has used the term cold processed or even hot processed (just a slightly different technique) in their write up as the description of the process used to make their soap. Many sellers use a melt and pour base to make their soaps and call them handmade. Because after all they did melt down the product, add a scent or maybe a few extra ingredients and pour it into a mold, so they justify using the term handmade.

So do your homework before buying handmade soap. Many melt and pour soap makers are now using the loaf style molds that cold process soap makers have been using for a long time so it's hard to tell the difference. And the only way is by reading the write up, asking questions or even looking at the list of ingredients if the sellers give that information. But even then the list of ingredients can fool you if the seller doesn't include all the ingredients.

I hope you have found this information informative and if you have any questions please do ask.