My very first handmade from scratch soap. A friend told me to just dive into the craft and make it. So here it goes.
My mother in law used to make soaps as well and gave me her apparatus, lye and others. Since I have been watching, reading and learning soap making from Anne Marie of Bramble Berry, I decided to buy most of my ingredients from her company. This recipe came with the kit I bought from Bramble Berry.
For my very first soap my ingredients are:
Coconut Oil (A friend gave me a jar of extra virgin coconut oil from the Philippines) = 6 oz.
Palm Oil = 6 oz.
Olive Oil = 9 oz.
Castor Oil = 1 oz.
Water = 7 oz.
Lye = 3.0
and an ounce of Cranberry Chutney fragrance, a dash of red/blue mica and blue colorant and a sprinkling of dried lavender.
The left container contains all the measured oils and the right is the lye/water mixture.
I am not sure if this is the right trace soapmakers described, but once I get this consistency I poured the soap into two bottles with the colors.
The left is the blue and right a red and the middle just the uncolored soap. I might need to add more colors to my next batch. We shall see.
Here is my very first swirled cold process soap. This is chopstick swirling. I can cut them into bars within 24 to 48 hours but I have to wait up to 4 to 6 weeks to completely cure the soap for using. Waiting is something I am not good at. We shall soon see.