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.

Posted by Shelley in Soap Making on April 19th, 2007 |