Several soap manufacturers use lard or tallow. Our recipes for making natural handcrafted soap contain no animal products, no artificial colors, and no synthetic fragrances.
A good handcrafted soap are naturally made with olive oil, palm oil, canola oil, soybean oil, shea butter, lye and pure natural essential oils and herbs. Lye is used because without lye it isn’t soap. Lye combines with the oils in the saponification process to produce soap and glycerin. As a result, natural soap cleans your skin while the glycerin keeps your skin soft and moisturized.
Read Carefully Basic Soap Making Instructions:
- 1. Assemble your equipment and the ingredients from the recipe chosen.
- 2. Carefully pour the required amount of lye into the pitcher containing the required amount of distilled water. You must avoid splashing! It is very dangerous! Never add the water to the lye.
- 3. Stir solution gently with a wooden spoon until dissolved.
- 4. While the lye is cooling, melt the fats. The temperature of both must eventually be brought to 100 degrees simultaneously. If the lye solution cools too much, put the pitcher in a pot of hot water. After that, while stirring the fats, pour the lye solution into the soap pot in a thin stream. Start stirring continuously to ensure the lye mixes into the fat. Avoid splashing!
- 5. Soon the mixture should start thickening. This could take 40 – 50 minutes. Using a hand blender really speeds up this process. Then pour this liquid soap into your large plastic container mold. Put the lid on and wrap with the rag.
- 6. Put the wrapped mold in a warm place and allow to set for 48 hours. After 48 hours, unwrap the mold and remove the lid. The soap must still be warm. If the surface is still very soft leave lid off for a day.
- 7. When it is firm, it is ready to be removed from the mold. Remove soap from mold and cut it into bars.
Handmade soap recipes from natural ingredients:
Avocado Soap
Ingredients:
– 3 pounds distilled water
– 3 pounds avocado oil
– 1 pound palm oil
– 1 pound olive oil
– 15 ounces lye
Carefully add the lye to the distilled water, while stirring. While that mixture is cooling, start mixing the oils. Measure out and put avocado and olive oil in soap pan. Then add the palm oil. Place pan over low heat until melted. When temperature of lye mixture and oil mixture reach 85 degrees F (32 degrees C), you are ready to mix the two.
Slowly pour the lye into the oils, stirring constantly. When a small amount of soap can be drizzled across the surface leaving a tracebefore dissolving, it is ready to pour into molds. Pour mixture evenly into mold. Wrap in towel and put aside for one to seven days. Check daily. If you push on it with your finger and it is firm, it is ready to slice into bars.
Olive Oil Soap
Ingredients:
– 50 ounces olive oil
– 20 ounces cold distilled water
– 7 ounces lye
Follow our basic soap instructions above. Because this recipe has only liquid oils, the wrapped mold must be checked twice a day. Simply unwrap the mold and remove the lid. If there is a layer of oil on top, carefully stir it back into the soap with a wooden spoon. Replace the lid and rewrap the soap. Check the soap every twelve hours until the oil is absorbed, then proceed as usual.
