Dad’s Crazy Thai coconut/lemongrass Soap 5 oz. $5.00
Chocoholic Swirl Soap 5 oz. $5.00
Don’t touch that Dial Channel 22 (Chanel 22 type) soap 5 oz. $5.00
Honey Oat and Milk Soap 5 oz. $5.00
Winter Spice Soap 5 oz. $5.00
Applejack small soap 3 oz. $3.00
Angel Band (Angel type) small soap 3 oz. $3.00

I got started making soap several years ago. I was interested in making my own beauty products and I started by making soaps in small batches for myself. Then I sort of went crazy and started making soap for sale, and here we are.

I use the cold process of soapmaking, which means I mix my soap up cold. There is also a hot process which involves long hours stirring a pot of soap over heat.

Soap consists of lye dissolved in water, mixed with fats and oils. When you mix these in the correct proportions, the end result is soap which does not contain any more lye, since it's all used up and turned to part of the soap; but might contain a little extra fat. See, the fat and the lye join up and turn into a third thing which is neither of them. Sort of like salt is made of sodium and chloride, but you don't find it smelling of chlorine. So if you ask me if my soap is made with lye, I will say yes, but it doesn't CONTAIN any lye. What makes different soaps different is which fats you use, how much extra fat there is, and whatever additives such as coloring, fragrance, or natural stuff like oatmeal or milk for example you put in. Different fats have different properties, some suds up more than others, some make for a harder soap, some make the soap yellow, etc. Some people like to be vegetarian and buy only all-vegetable soap; I don't have that philosophy. In my opinion, lard makes a nice soap, and it's economical, so why not use it. My soap is half lard and half vegetable oils. Unless I say otherwise on a particular batch of soap.

I use a stick blender which makes the process pretty quick. I make my soap 10 pounds at a time and pour it into a big mold, then the next day I cut it up with a box saw. The soap takes 3 weeks to cure. During the overnight that the soap stays in the mold, it gets really hot. I encourage this by insulating the soap with a towel as it "cooks" overnight. This is called the gel stage by soapmakers. It is a chemical reaction where the lye and the fats sit there all mixed up and finish turning into soap. They also make glycerine as a by-product; this is left in as part of the finished product.

Other soapmakers make a big deal about there being a lot of glycerine in their soap, that their soap is more moisturizing than commercial soap. The deal with handmade soap is, it has glycerine in it just as a matter of course. The commercial soap makers take some of this glycerine out and make other stuff with it. While it is possible for the handmade soap maker to do this, it's not practical for the most part, so we leave it in, and the bragging about more glycerine is mostly marketing. The process to get the glycerine out of soap involves using alcohol, like Everclear, to precipitate it out and then skimming the clear part from the opaque part. This process can also be used to get clear soap. As for moisturizing, glycerine does attract water to the skin; but soap is soap. You're going to rinse it off anyway, so it doesn't make that much difference. Like I said it's mostly marketing.

One of the things cold process can't do is use just any fragrance. For example, most essential oils will mess up a cold process soap. It just seizes up as you are trying to pour it into the mold. So I have to use only fragrances that are compatible with cold process. Fortunately, I have a great supplier who tests their fragrances on cold process soaps.

You may have heard of "French milled soap". All this means is the soap was ground up and re-pressed into a bar form, or "milled". Milled is the same as "french milled". You will see some commercial soapmakers bragging that their soaps are milled seven times or something like that; all this means is they got ground up and re-pressed seven times. This process may make for a very uniform looking soap; it allows the soap maker to use more kinds of fragrances; also it requires less amount of fragrance to be used, since it is reacting with cured soap instead of raw soap. But it is labor intensive unless you have a soap milling machine, and it certainly isn't necessary to making a nice bar of soap. More marketing, but from the other side!

I hope I have answered most of your curiosity about soapmaking; however the best way to experience handmade soap is to use it, so go ahead and buy some! Cheers! - Emily