My First Hobby – Soap Making

 As I mentioned in my previous post, one of my retirement goals was to learn how to make soap from scratch.  If you have an interest in making soap, I would suggest going to YouTube and search “beginner soap making.”  Even if you don’t care to try it, you might enjoy just watching some of the videos.  I’m not really sure why, but I find it relaxing to watch the process of making the soap and then all the different techniques soap makers use with color and other additives.  (As a side note, I also enjoy watching tie-dye videos and I find them very relaxing).

I am only a beginner, and I certainly cannot speak to this subject as an expert.  I do hope to become an expert as I continue to learn and try new techniques.

So far, since I retired in January, I have made five different batches of soap. The recipe I used for the first batch turned out to be more than my soap mold would hold, but thankfully I had another mold and a small mold to use for the excess.  I waited 24-48 hours before unmolding my new soap and I realized it was way too soft.  It seemed something had gone wrong because on the videos I had watched, the soap should be hard enough to unmold and cut after 48 hours.  I still don’t know for sure what I did wrong, but I think that maybe I measured some of the ingredients incorrectly.  However, I was eventually able to get the soap out of the mold and cut it into bars and now, I love using this soap as a facial bar.  It has a lot of olive oil in it, and it makes my skin feel great.

On my next attempt, I adjusted the percentages of oils to make sure the next batch didn’t end up being too soft.  I also added some nice essential oil scents.  It turned out wonderful and my husband and I are using this Lavender-Orange scented soap now.

Experimenting with color was my next challenge.  In an effort to keep the soap as natural as possible, I researched natural colorants for soap and found some items I already had in my kitchen. For my third batch, I infused some olive oil with paprika and then used the infused oil in the soap.  It turned out a nice coral-orange color. I strayed from the “all-natural” by using some Sandalwood fragrance oil I already had on hand.  I have a bar of this one next to my kitchen sink and I like a lot.

On my fourth batch, I experimented with another natural colorant (cocoa powder) to do some swirls and it turned out pretty good.  This batch is still curing so I have not been tested it yet.  And my fifth batch was a complete failure.  I was trying to use almond milk, but I think I was too ambitious and tried some other additives too.  My best guess on what I did wrong is that maybe I didn’t mix the oils and lye water enough before pouring it into the mold.  But that’s okay.  Right now, everything is a learning experience, and the best lessons are learned from our failures.  My next experiment will be goat milk soap!

Swirled soap and Sandalwood/Paprika soap

I am truly enjoying this season of life and learning some new hobbies.  

With spring nearly here, I’m getting ready for my next learning experience……. gardening.    

Homemade Soap

 

For anyone who remembers the good ole Beverly Hillbillies television show, I’m sure you will remember Granny Clampett making her lye soap and stirring it in a big barrel out by the “cement pond.”  Well, that show never inspired me to want to make or use homemade lye soap.

However, several years ago, after trying out some beautiful soaps from crafters who made it themselves, I was hooked.  I wanted to use homemade soap all the time.  But they were so expensive.  That’s when the idea to make soap myself was born.  I began watching videos, reading blogs and I even bought a book on how to make all-natural soap.  But with many other things going on in my life, I was never able to find the time to gather all the equipment and supplies and make the soap.  So, I settled for making melt and pour soap.  That was okay for a while, but I determined in my mind and heart that when I retired, I would make soap from scratch.

And that’s exactly what I have started doing as the first hobby in my retirement.  I now understand why crafters have to charge $6 or more for one bar of homemade soap!  It is not a cheap hobby.  But I really enjoy making the soap and so far, everything is just experimental for me.  I have watched every soap making video I can find, and I have learned to use a soap calculator which is free and can be found online.   I have learned a lot, too. 

Here is brief summary of a few things I have learned about soap making:  soap cannot be made without lye; lye can be very dangerous, so the first step is to learn about lye safety; soap is created through a chemical reaction from mixing lye water and oils; different oils used in the process can give soap different qualities such as hardness, cleansing, conditioning, bubbly or creamy; in soap making if you are low on one of the oils in your recipe, you can’t just replace it with a different oil – you need to run everything through the soap calculator in order to get all the measurements exactly correct (soapcalc.net).

I plan to explain more about soap making next time. 

I thought it would be fun to share what t-shirt and tennis shoes I’m wearing today since the name of my blog is T-shirts & Tennis Shoes. Today I am wearing my favorite, well-worn shirt, Standing on the Corner in Winslow Arizona. I got it when we stopped in Arizona on our cross-country trip to California a few years ago.  I’m wearing my always comfortable Sketchers Go Walk slip-on navy blue shoes.