r/soapmaking

Making my first batch of cold process soap with no fragrance or color! This recipe is for a 4 pound loaf. Opinions on the recipe?

I think these look pretty cool

It's been a while since I last made soap so I bought a bunch of essential oils and decided to make a batch of lavender soap first.

I had read online that boiling red onion skins and using that water for lye would give a purple bar, but sadly it didn't work out that way.

The loaf came out with this brownish colour, but I'm not *too* mad about it. Lavender buds turn brown in soap as well, so I guess it sort of suits the lavender scent. At least it's an earthy, natural colour. I'm personally not a fan of very bright and colourful soaps.

By the look of it, it's not gone entirely through gel phase. I let both the lye and the fats cool too much because I was drinking coffee. 😅

On the brighter side, making the lye was fun. It changed colour 4 times. The second I threw in the NaOH, it turned yellow, then orange, then red, I think it even turned green at some point. Eventually it settled in a red-ish brown, which already had me sceptical about it turning purple.

Next up is a sweet orange, pine and star anise soap with 3 different earthy tones, all from natural colorants. I hope it turns out well, but I fear the worst. 😄 Will post when it's done!

Edit: I also should have added more lavender buds. I threw in a tablespoon, but they're hardly visible.

One thing I’m learning in soap making is how small changes in the process can change everything. Same recipe, same oils, same ingredients — but a different way of mixing oils and handling the batter gave a completely different look and texture.

Cold process soap always surprises me. Every batch teaches something new. That’s the beauty (and challenge 😄) of handmade soap.

I only had a few hours to make soap today and I was in a rush (first mistake).

I was making a batch today with a recipe I have used about a dozen times. I added the lye and BAM! The whole batch traced immediately and became hard as a rock. Even when I purposely do a thick trace for layering it’s still workable but this was something else.

I scraped it out of the pot and it looked like little rocks, I think they look great so I was feeling better but I needed to know where I went wrong.

I looked at my notes and my heart sank. I flipped the water and the lye in the recipe… SO STUPID

This soap was made with a 67% lye concentration…

I figure now the whole thing is probably ruined right? It’s mixed together very well but I don’t think theres enough oil to balance out all the lye even with a 5% superfat. There are little white specks on the soap rocks and I’m almost certain it’s unreacted lye because I’ve never had that on any of my soaps before.

Has anyone been through this before? Any advice?
If there is any way to keep them like this without rebatching I’d be greatful - I really like the look of the rocks!

TL;DR
I made soap with a 67% Lye concentration and I don’t want to scrap it. Please give me good news!

I love these new silicone molds, soap came out very clean and easy

I have wanted to do some variation on the funnel pour and work on my feather swirl techniques. I got a little confused when cutting both of them (they were larger batches than I am used to) so there is quite the variation in the bars. On the pink and green one I had it on a lazy susan and spun it around quickly then stopped it. I really liked how that came out. The pink and green scent is Eucalyptus and Spearmint the other is Energy from Brambleberry

The recipe for pink and green here

The recipe for the other is here

I opened a bag of shea butter that had been stored away for a few months since I haven't made soap in a while. When I opened it, I noticed there was a lot of powder throughout it.

Does anyone know what this could be?

It doesn't smell rancid or off, so I'm not sure if it's still okay to use.

I had seen some ants a long time ago but never noticed them taking residence in the shea butter or anything.

I think if it were ants it would be humid and stinky.

Hey,

I started making soap in march and am using them by now every day.

But my hands got dry after using them (different recipes) so i am looking to make something with less coconutoil and with beeftallow.

I want to use it is to 10 times a day without drying out. Is that even possible?

Here my 2 recipe ideas. What can expect from them? Are they even usefull for my goal of a lot of washes and not drying out?

I would love to get some input from you.

Greetings :)

Clockwise from top left: Sicilian sea breeze salt bar, wildflower blossom, coconut cream with coconut milk powder, scent-free oatmeal with both colloidal oatmeal and finely ground whole oats.

I still consider myself a novice soaper, but I'm pretty proud of how these turned out! I hope my guests will actually want them, haha

I have not made this soap in a long time. I love this full moon effect. It’s made with a 2 inch PVC pipe, then used as an embed.

Hey!

I've not made any soap for quite a while now, and I figured I'd start making new ones again because I'm almost all out of the soaps I made like 2 years ago lol

Do you guys have any thoughts on this new recipe? It's the first of the four that I have planned.

If you have any advice or critique, I'm all ears.

Thanks! Happy soapmaking 😄

EDIT: I just noticed that I forgot to note the orange zest I'll be throwing in as well.

I get a lot of my soap advice from using Claude, but I'm starting to realize that it's a lot more helpful for my other hobby (coding) compared to soap making. It gets things wrong all the time so I think I'll look to other resources for now.

Anyway, it told me that it would be unwise to gel phase with shea butter in my bars because it would ruin the aesthetics via something called glycerin rivers.

My first two batches used just olive oil, coconut oil, and a bit of castor oil. First batch didn't gel, the second one I forced gel and I GREATLY prefer the results of the second batch. But I also don't want to ruin an otherwise potentially pretty bar of soap. Advice? Recipe from SoapCalc attached, thank you in advance.

Looking to get a new soap cutting board, tried wire cutters but they dont seem to work well for me, soap seems to need to be at the perfect softness or it'll break. Want to just use a 2x4 cut to 2ish foot with 'wings' to guide the cleaver I am planning on using. Let me know what you guys use, this works a treat but the bars get stuck against the end and slightly mark the bars. Multi bar cutters look nice, but are both expensive and need replacement wires. My knives never needed replacing, just getting a cleaver since its more solid.