If you had asked me two months ago to rate my interest in the craft of soap making on a scale of 1 to 10 I would have said zero. But then I listened, somewhat reluctantly, to the Craftsanity podcast with Dee Bellini and got totally excited about making soap.
I made several trips to several stores and got all the supplies for the free recipe provided* (note-this link will download a pdf file) and then I roped in my friend who is always up for this sort of silliness (and who already owned a stick blender). Lo and behold our soap came out great (despite the lavender buds looking weird and the lavender scent smelling really off).
I thought our bars of soap were so lovely I decided to go all craft bloggy and try to pose a gorgeous product shot (a la Posie or Heather) with sprigs of fresh lavender. It looked really good in my mind.
My first mistake was having a day job and a toddler preventing me from capturing the elusive natural light so praised by the craft blogging community. By 7:30 the sun was well behind the trees but I found a reasonably well lit patch of my front walkway and laid out my vignette.
At which point my new neighbor came over to tell me about how his cat has been in our yard and he hopes that's okay. I tried to be nonchalant about the fact that I was hunkered down in my front yard photographing a shoebox full of soap on one of my bathroom towels. In the crafty blogoshere it seems so perfectly normal to pose vignettes of soap (and why does hers look so damn good?). In my neighborhood, not so much.
New neighbor either didn't notice (or didn't comment) on my strange little project and went home. And I moved to the driveway on the other side of the house. When the family walking their dog started down the street just after a bunch of kids on bikes I threw in the towel (literally!) and decided ya'll would just have to live with my poorly lit, fuzzy photos of my slightly weird smelling but oh so moisturizing soap.
With real lavender sprigs!!
* if you try this recipe, two things. The oils are apparently by weight (not volume) so use your scale. It took us just over 20 minutes to be certain we'd reached "trace" with our stick blender--lots longer than we expected.
Welcome to the addictive world of soaping!
Another brilliant resource is http://www.soapdishforum.com/
There is just so much information on there, it would take you months to read it all!
That's a pretty good tutorial. One thing I would add, is that if you substitute an oil in a recipe, you MUST recalculate the lye, as different oils require different amounts of lye to saponify.
Happy Soaping!
Posted by: Jools | August 15, 2007 at 03:23 AM
When I was a kid my mom made soap. It did not look quite as nice. But it was very strong. Does yours contain fresh fat from a hog and lye to help clean things. My mom used it to wash clothes, my Dad and I used it to wash our hands after chores on the farm.
Posted by: halfoz | August 15, 2007 at 08:13 AM
Well, hello there.
Every so often I do a google search of my name, and lo, and behold, I found me listed on your site!!!
I'm so glad that you tried making soap. It really isn't that hard, and can be really fun. The best part is using natural soap and how it makes your skin feel.
Drop me a line if you ever have any questions.
Posted by: Dee Bellini | October 15, 2007 at 12:32 PM