Soap soap!

Herrrooo everyone! I finally got to make some of my own soap~ It's curing at the moment but I got some pics from my friend Makiko which I want to post up. I was looking for a fool-proof soap recipe that doesn't require palm oil (due to environmental and availability issues) but includes olive oil, coconut oil and castor oil. The first two are pretty important and are in most soaps. Castor oil is something I wanted to include because of the good things that it does for your skin! I found this link and quickly got to it.



The first thing I did was of course, mixed the lye INTO the water. For all strong bases and acids, you are supposed to add them INTO water ;D...something I learned in chemistry. I think it has to do with the reaction itself since it's exothermic. Anyways, after the NaOH has been added, the temperature goes up very quickly. It went up to 150F immediately. I wanted a nice ~130F before I introduced it to the oil. Although silicone is very heat-resistant, I don't think it was a good idea to keep it in there so this picture is a bad example of soap-making ;_;~ I kept it near the open window so the fumes won't keel us. It also helped cool the lye solution faster.







While the solution was cooling, I got started on heating the oils. I made sure I was using a non reactive pan (stainless steel) to make this soap. Actually, the reason why I decided to do this at Makiko's house was BECAUSE she had this stainless steel pot. I would go buy one myself but those things don't come cheap. However, as you will later see, this ordeal wasn't much of a big deal. The thermometer read 81F so I had to wait a bit longer until it reached about 120 ish.






So, the reason why the pot wasn't even NEEDED in the first place was because I realized I needed to blend this all in a narrow container. The Pyrex measuring cup proved to be useful and BLENDBLENDBLEND I did. The reason why I wanted a narrow container is so that I can blend easier with this stick blender I bought recently and also, I wanted little air as possible into this mix. I had to pull myself away from this delicious looking concoction which smelled of coconuts~ Mmmm, coconut pudding...I blended this shiz 'till it traced which is similar to peaking in egg white beating.










Just for kicks, here's a silly picture of me blendin' that thang. You can also tell that I practice safety by not donning appropriate attire (FASHION OVER FUNCTION FTW).

















Here is the end result! I lined a tea box with freezer paper and let it set. The cleanup was a bit messy considering it was covered with oil and lye which greased and burned my hand in that order.








A day later (more like 18 hrs later), I cut them into bars using my handy-dandy miter box and now they are left to cure under my bed. I covered them with pieces of brown paper towels and they are sleeping comfortably on stackable cooling trays. They still have a translucent center for some odd reason...probably due to my impatience and cutting them a bit prematurly. Nonetheless, they will sit there, and be turned regularly for even curing. Hopefully it'll disappear before I start handing them out to people.




I would add more pictures but it's already really late (or really early) and I should be hitting the sack. Hope you enjoyed my post thus far. I will update on my knitting/crocheting projects as well! Also, I'm probably going to save up money for a sewing machine in the future *heartheart* and create AWESOME SHITS. Stay tuned!

Signin' off D:<