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I’ve only been making soap for a few months now but it is hard. Especially at the beginning when everything is new and overwhelming and you just have no idea where to start. That was me when I started, but lucky for me I liked to researched topics I’m interested in and I quickly became obsessed.
I first started with melt and pour soap to see if I wanted to invest all of that money into soap making. And I fell in love with it. I felt like I needed more customization than melt and pour could give me so i started my journey here.
At first, I thought I needed all these fancy oils and expensive butters and scents and equipment, but in reality you don’t.
I know, that sounds crazy, and its not cheap but its more accessible than you’d think. You need some basic equipment like a thermometer, kitchen scale, silicone, rubber, rubber, or stainless steel utensils like spoons, forks, and spatulas, and an immersion blender. It is very important that if you use silverware or bowls that you sue stainless steel as other metals can have a weird and possibly dangerous reaction with the lye. Also a side note, if you use lye then you need vinegar to wipe things down after you measure your lye water, because it neutralizes the lye.
Next you need colorant and essential oils, if you so choose. And I did. All you need is to make sure that the oils and colorants are skin safe and won’t stain. I personally sue P&J Trading company essential oils because they are skin safe, perfect for soap crafts, smell wonderful, and in my opinion, reasonably priced compared to other brands. They also have such a wide variety with the scents and they have sets that can make it easy to pair scents together.
Now, I had no idea about this issue before, but you need to be careful where you choose to get your colorants, mainly if you choose to use mica powders. This is because of some controversy with micas, and that it is unethically sourced using child labor, which we do not support. However, you can still support brands that source it ethically like Mad Micas, who are super nice and do not use child labor to get their product.
Here is the most shocking (for me, anyways) part. You can get all the oils and lye you need at the grocery store. Royalty soaps is a soap youtuber I highly recommend you watch because she is so fun and has a great personality, but also has very good information and was the person I learned almost all of my knowledge from. Her and The Soap Queen herself from BrambleBerry.
All you need to start making soap is a good amount of pure olive oil (I don’t use extra virgin olive oil because I read somewhere that it can turn the soap green and I’m not about that) and pure coconut oil. You also need sodium hydroxide which sounds scary until you realize that it’s just lye (which may or may not sound even scarier) and that you can get it in drain cleaner! (I’m pretty sure this is the part that scares you the most.) Yes, you can use drain cleaner to make soap, BUT only if the drain cleaner is 100% lye crystals or flakes. That means no liquid drain cleaners, and no drain cleaners that do not say that they are 100% lye. I got a lot of my containers and spatulas from the dollar store and Amazon. You can find a lot of great stuff on a budget!
Now that you have all your stuff, you’re ready to make soap!
Hopefully I didn’t miss anything, but check out BrambleBerry/ The Soap Queen and RoyaltySoaps for information and basics!
SpiritScentsSoaps 