Home And Family

The process of making cold process soap is very simple. First you will need safety equipment including goggles and rubber gloves. Next you will need a scale to measure out your ingredients and additives, a large stainless steel pot, measuring cups, a stirring spoon to use only for the lye, a stirring spoon to use only with the essential oils, two kitchen thermometers that can measure over 100 degrees, wax paper to line the molds with, cardboard to act as a lid to the mold, and a soap mold. For the soap itself you will need a combination of fatty acids like cocoa butter, olive oil, sesame oil, shea butter, and coconut oil. Finally you will need the additives for our soap including fragrance oils and colorants.

After you have gathered your equipment and ingredients together your next step in the how to make cold process soap tutorial is to mix together your water and lye, which is also referred to as sodium hydroxide or caustic soda. Stir slowly to combine the water and lye together. Bring this mixture up to 100 degrees. While your lye solution is slowly heating up, you will want to melt your shortening, remove it from the heat and then add in the rest of your fats. Bring the fats back up to 100 degrees. Then combine the lye solution with the fats.

At this point in the how to make cold process soap tutorial you will need to refer to your soap recipes to determine what fragrances and colorants to use. Make sure that you follow the soap making recipe when it comes to amounts. Use your scale to weigh out ingredients.

After all of your ingredients have been mixed together you can then pour, or spoon your soap into molds. Let the soap mixture stand in the molds for about twelve hours. Then you can unmold the soap. Finally allow your soap to cure for several weeks to a month before you use it. This curing process will allow your soap to mellow out.