Simple Soap Making - How to Make Soap at Home

I've always loved crafty people.  The kind that could take a pile of rags and make the prettiest quilt you ever laid eyes on or could make candles in their kitchen that could pass for art.  These people always amazed me.  So when I was able to make something that had other people commenting on how neat my creation was, I was thrilled.  True, my creation is one that is in most every home but not all are made by hand.  My craft that I perfected was soap making. 

Soap making, once learned, is not a hard thing to do and it leaves you with something that the whole family can benefit from.  One of my favorite soaps to make is goat's milk soap but there are endless variations that you can try.  Many people like to try soap making using glycerin as it is easier to find and can make some really pretty bars.  If you get really creative you can add colors and fragrances to create soap as pretty as you would find in any sore.  But you don't have to stop at just colors and fragrances.  There are many additives you can add to your soap to be for function or beauty such as oatmeal, herbs or flowers.  The list is endless.  If you want to start soap making to make soaps for kids, you can make glycerin soaps with a toy hidden inside for the kids to find.  Thinking outside the box is something that can also pertain to soap making.

One of the main things that you need to remember with soap making is safety.  Many of the soaps that people make have an ingredient in them called Lye.  Lye is something that has been around for centuries and is one of the oldest types of soaps known.  This ingredient can be made by filling a hopper full of ashes and then pouring water through it and catching the water that comes out.  Of course there are many types of Lye available online or in hardware stores making it easier than ever to make Lye soap.  But do remember, even though Lye doesn't look all that scary, when you mix it with another ingredient it becomes extremely hot.  When this reaction takes place you can become burned and if it splashes up in your eyes, it could cause blindness.  So safety is something that doesn't take all that much time or money but can really pay off in the end. 

Once you have mixed your ingredients and placed your liquid soap into the molds, patience will have to kick in.  This soap will need to be allowed to dry for approximately three weeks before it is ready for daily use.  Allowing the soap to “cure” is necessary to add time to the life of your bar.  If you were to use the soap right away it would turn to mush in a short amount of time.  I guess you could say that one of the necessary ingredients for soap making is patience as well.  You need your lye or your glycerin, but it'll never happen without the patience.