While you may think making handmade soap would be fun, let me share with you some of the things the fun includes. The soapmaker carefully plans the soap she/he is going to make, choosing the recipe colors, fragrance, oils, and additives. She/he prepares the molds he/she plan to use and lines them if necessary. He/She places them on a handy flat surface where they can stay for 24 hours. He gathers all of the ingredients and makes sure he has the amount needed of each ingredient. She suddenly realizes she is running low on avocado oil or borage oil. That means stopping the process to run the Soapmaker program on the computer to make sure she has something with the same SAP value as the oil she ran short of. Things are looking up as he has a great substitute oil and plenty of it. She has mixed the sodium hydroxide and water and it is heating up in the room with the fan running and sitting in an ice bath to cool. He has measured the solid oils and has them melting slowly on the stove. It's time to measure out the liquid oils and set them aside. He next measures out the fragrance, essential oils, goat milk, herbs, or whatever else he plan to add at trace. Color choice is added into the measuring cup and set aside. The solid oils are now melted and cooling on the counter. She adds the liquid oils to help cool the mixture. Time to write down the recipe and all additions in "The Soap Book" carefully adding the amounts and the vendors from which you purchased the products. Don't forget to add the Batch number and date.
Ok, the oil and water mixtures have cooled enough to add together. Oops forgot to plug in the stick mixer. Run the stick mixer for just a minute or two. Don't forget you bought a new mixer that works MUCH faster than the old one. Once it is mixed slightly, add some of the mixture into the bowl with the additives and some to the measuring cup with the color. Mix each using the stick mixer. Make sure to do the one without color first then rinse it off and do the one with color. Not too much or it will get too thick.
Back to the main mixture and stick blend just enough to bring it to trace, overdo it and you will have thick pudding with lumps when you pour it. Now add the bowl with the additives and mix with stick blender just a few times. Add the color mixture. Oops, not enough color. Add more color to the bowl and a little more of the almost traced soap. Got to hurry or pudding is in the making. The color is better now. Over to the mold! He is eager, but WAIT... he forgot to add the fragrance. Back to the counter and the stick blender. Add the fragrance/essential oil and lightly blend with whisk as the stick blender will be too much. Not enough blending and it will separate. Ok, it looks mixed. Over to the molds again and pour it in. Level it out and then add the dividers if needed. Cover with Saran Wrap and cover with towels or whatever you use to insulate it.
The soapmaker is dying to know how the soap is doing, so you get up at 2 AM and sneak a peek under the towels. Gel is happening. Yeah! The color is morphing however to a color you hadn't planned on. Back to bed to sleep a few more hours. DH gets up at 5 AM so he sneaks his peek at the soap. It looks ok to him, but what does he know.
The soapmaker gets up at 7 AM and takes another look only to find the gel has finished and the color is lighter than ever. She makes notes in the book to add more color next time. The scent is perfect and she notes this in her book too. The dividers are pulled from the mold at 9 AM and the soap is left uncovered. At 4 PM the soap is removed from the mold and taken to the drying rack. Overall the batch smells 9/10 and the color is 5/10, but overall the bars turned out pretty well and should do well at the Farmer's Market.
Every few days the soapmaker goes to the soap drying rack to check on the baby bars to see if they are doing ok. They are fine, but due to the humidity they are slower at drying than normal. The soapmaker adds a bowl of moisture absorber to the room to help take the moisture away from the soap.
A month has past and the time has come. The soapmaker takes the bar of the beautiful soap she so lovingly made to the shower. The shea butter has made it so creamy and full of moisture, the castor oil gave it wonderful fluffy suds. The scent makes it a "Calgon Take Me Away" moment. Soapmaking is worth the time and effort.
