Making Soap

[Cellophane]

or should i make solid soaps and then grind it up... and how do people grind their soap? i don't really feel like hand grating 10 bars of carefully molded soap for the laundry.... :p

I'll try to find the recipe, but somewhere I have one for laundry soap involving ground up bars of Ivory soap. Toss them in the blender or food prcesser. Doing it by hand WOULD be a pain!!

[icebear]

cool if a blender works, i imagined it would melt the soap by friction and be a waxy mass at the bottom of the blender, i bet it would be best to do this on a very dry day :heh

[Seemomgonuts]

http://www.teachsoap.com/ I have been frequenting her site for some time now. Her blog is great, and so is the site with the recipes and whatnot. I order quite a lot from her store. :nod

[icebear]

i ran across that site and wondered how the store part of it was, if you give it a :thumb i'll give it a try :D

i find it so hard to get lye around here, there is one HFS that sells it, but they only get it in so often and there's a FCFS list... i have been on it, but for some reason when they call to tell me mine is in, i can never get there for it- so i have to pass it down to the next person. it took me about 6 months to get the lye once i started really trying, and another 10 to actually use it. :aha

[Seemomgonuts]

i ran across that site and wondered how the store part of it was, if you give it a :thumb i'll give it a try :D



A good place to start is rebatch (I can give you recipes if you wind up doing that). She has soap loaves just for that purpose, and her luxury base is awesome. I have made some really yummy rebatch soaps with oats, almond oil, and honey. My friends love them. :nod Of note- using handmade or rebatched lye soaps keeps your skin clearer because they are not loaded up with chemicals. :thumb

[christianmom]

www.soapsandsundries.com

She is out of Pennsylvania and has some awesome goats milk soap that you can rebatch.

[elac]

i find it so hard to get lye around here,
Try a hardware store for your lye. Lowe's sells Roebic Crystal Drain Opener which is pure lye. It's $7.66 for 2 lbs. Other hardware stores might sell it, also. I get mine at Lowe's since dh practically lives there anyway.

[icebear]

i was able to get to the local health food store on thursday and though they were out of lye. they did order me 4# and its ready for pickup today, so hubby is going to get it for me when he runs errands.

i am all excited. i didn't have enough after my last batch to make another, so now i should have enough to play with for the next time.

i want to make Christmas presents this year. i did bath salts and bubble bath gel one year and it was a hit, i think natural soaps will be nice too. but i want to practice before i make the gifts, get all the potential problems worked out so i can give away a high quality stuff.