Lavender is a classic scent and additive in soap. One of my first batches of soap was lavender. I used a pretty simple 4lbs recipe that had palm oil (wasnt a fan of it didnt reorder it) lard, olive oil and palm kernal oil. Once my soap traced I added in an ounce of bulgarian lavender essential oil and a small handful of lavender buds, I also sprinkled some lavender buds on top. It turned out lightly scented and very pretty and very scrubby. I recommend grinding your lavender buds if you wish to add it to the body of the soap so it wont be so sharp.
If you are a beginner wanting to give a batch of soap a shot you should be able to find almost everything you will need locally. The only thing you will need to order online is lye. There are many online suppliers, I personally have had great experiences ordering sodium hydroxide. Look for a supplier that knows there are hazmat restrictions on the amount of lye that can be shipped, and what it can be shipped with (for instance you cant ship citric acid and sodium hydroxide together) Once you have your lye reference my soapmaking supply list (found here) for the rest of the supplies youll need. There are tons of exotic oils out there that can be soaped but for your first batch you can keep it very simple. Simpley pick up some lard, olive oil and coconut oil. That will get you a decent bar of soap.
4 pound batch- not vegan
Coconut Oil- 14.4 oz
Lard-19.2
Olive Oil-14.4oz
Water-16 oz
Lye-6.9oz
Gentley melt your lard down,, and if your coconut oil is solid then you can add it into once the lard is melted and that will help cool your melted lard, then add in your olive oil.
Now get your safety gear on, gloves and goggles and gather your scale, metal bowl, spoon, lye and water (in your pitcher) measure out your 6.9oz of lye and very carefully add your lye into the water- NEVER put the water into the lye. That is very important. Always lye into water. Stir until its disolved and let it cool. When your oils and lye water are both cool you can begin to soap. But first you will want to ready your mold. If you have purchased body safe fragrance or essential oils or coloring now is the time to measure and have them ready. Once all of that is ready-and you are geared back up with gloves and goggles grab your stick blender and slowly pour your lye water into your oils and stir your mixture, you can give it a few bursts of the stick blender on low. Soon youll get the hang of using a stick blender, if you love to stir just use a spoon, but a stick blender makes soap trace much faster. When your soap begins to look like a thin custard you can put in your fragrance or coloring now and bring it to a full trace-it will look like thin pudding. If you pull your spoon out and let a drop fall itll hold that drop for a moment, at this point you are ready to pour. Pour into your mold and put it in a warm place, either in an oven with a pilot light or an over turned box with blankets insulating it. Leave it there for at least 12 hours, you can of course peak, after about 24 hours you should be safe to unmold, if you just cannot wait, check it after 12, if its still squishy put it back to bed. You can cut your soap as soon as its solid enough to handle. You should wait 3 weeks to use your soap. But personally I have never lasted that long. I always give a sliver of soap a go to see how the soap turned out right after Ive cut it. I dont recommend that, but its your call.
Enjoy your soap!
Olive oil soap is also sometimes called Castile Soap. Many soap makers add additional vegetable oils to their olive oil soaps to speed trace and increase the lather of the finished soap. A true 100% olive oil soap is extremely gentle but has a creamy, many times slimy lather. Usually coconut or palm oil is added to the olive oil to help give it some bubbles and bring it to trace. It can take hours and even days to get a 100% olive oil soap to trace.
Whether soap is 100% olive oil or 10% olive oil there is absolutely no doubt that the addition of olive oil into a soap recipe is beneficial. It is the one most important oil when it comes to soap making. Recently the price of olive oil has shot up so many soap makers are switching their suppliers to alternate oils. I have experimented with substituting higher percentages of other oils to make up for reducing the amount of olive oil in a recipe but the bar just doesn’t perform like my high olive oil content bars. Those batches usually go into my ‘hand mill rack’ and I hand mill them along with higher content olive oil soap.
Some soaps are naturally beautiful, some…are not. And some need to be polished to bring out that beauty. Polishing is something Ive only played with for the most part. There is only one soap that I have polished and sold. It really brought out the swirls. There are a few different ways to polish soap, they all take a bunch of time. First the easiest one cant be done on new soap, the soap has to be fairly hard. You simpley put it under running water and work out and imperfections, then put it on a fine rack to dry. If you do this with soap that is too soft youll get marks on the bottom of the soap where it sat drying. Some people do this in a large bowl instead of using running water they will add baking soda or salt to the water and polish under the salted water.
Another method is with a cotton ball and rubbing alcohal, simpley wet the cotton with the alcohal and rub it around, you can also use nylon in place of the cotton. This can be done on softer soap since it is never emerged in a liquid.
There is no ‘right’ method, its just a matter of preferance, all of the results are very similar.
I was reading about some experiments in soap and came across one that intrigued me. Apples in soap. Hmm…ew. But milk in soap is awesome (most commonly goatsmilk) and honey in soap is awesome….so why not something sweet like apples? I know that lye can make things go bad right quick but this one has piqued my interest. Im going to give it a shot, real apples pureed with just a touch of cannelli ricci for scent (sweet cinnamon) Im going to try to get that soaped on Monday! Yummy!