The Process of Making Soap

I (for the most part) make soap using the cold process method. Today as I was making my soap I decided it would be a good time to take pictures, and show how I make my soap!
First things first -Take proper precautions when using lye, run your recipe through a soap calc, and get everything set out and ready.

• Measure your water and lye. Over time I have found what works best for me is to put my water in a ice water bath, under the vent on my stove. 

• Next its time to measure all of your oils. I do this all at the same time in a bowl, and then pop it into the microwave for a couple minutes to melt it. 

                              

• While the oils are in the microwave, I measured out my fragrance oil. I am using 'butt-naked' for this batch. If you are going to color your batch you can get that ready now too. 

• Now its time to pour the lye slowly into the oils. I then immediately rinse out the lye pitcher. 

• Then, I slowly start to stir the lye and oils together with the stick blender(with it off). Then pulse the blender a few times, and it will soon get to trace.                                       I liked this motion shot! :)

• Once the soap reached trace, I took a small portion out to color without fragrance. The rest I added the FO to and no color. The fragrance oil will naturally turn the soap brown. 

•  I poured the soap into the cupcake molds.

                                     

The brown cupcake is one I made a couple weeks ago with the same fragrance, testing what color it turned. You can see the soap will be doing a lot of changing over the next couple weeks. I also think a brown bottom cupcake will look great with all different colors of frosting(cant wait)!

Here is what I did with the rest of the soap that I made blue. 

These are my testers. I am planning on using them as cupcake toppers. You can customize the soap cupcakes any way you'd like. For their birthday you could have what age they're turning. Initials would work for any kind of party favor! These could also be put on to any other kind of soap!

And I am most excited about these ribbons! I am using these as favors for my family. We are going on a prostate cancer walk for fathers day. I plan on making a white bar of soap with blue ribbons throughout :) 

These are also customizable -any color, on any kind of soap.

Later this week(if studying permits) I will be frosting the cupcakes, and will post pictures of them when they are complete!

-Sarah