This is the second article in the DIY Soap Making Series.
DIY Make Your Own Bar Soap, Part 1

Customizing Your Homemade Soap

Oils/Fats

There are lots of different ways you can customize your soap. To make the best soap for your skin type, you may want to try different oils. Everyone has a certain type of soap they like.  That’s a good place to start-check out the ingredients in your favorite soap. There’s really no way around trial and error when it comes to any part of soap making.

Some commonly used oils include: olive oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter, jojoba butter, and Shea butter and even plain lard, yup Crisco.

The correct amount varies depending on which oil you use. The process of soap making revolves around the types and amounts of fat you use. Every fat and every type (solid,liquid) of fat is taken into consideration. In part one I stressed the importance of using the lye calculator to get your recipe. Enter the types and amounts of fats you want to find the amount of lye to use. For your fragrance customization you will want to use the fragrance calculator.

Fragrance

You may want to personalize your soap with wonderful scents.  I love scented soap, and scented everything for that matter. Essential oils have therapeutic properties and add fragrance. Using a dab of essential oils in your soap is a great way to make it your own.  You can choose citrus scents to awake and energize or lavender or camomile to relax.

A little fragrance goes a long way. The amount you use will depend on how much soap you’re making. Use this fragrance calculator to find the amount to use in comparison to your soap batch size. You may be amazed to find that you will be using the size of a pea in the batch size I made.  Adding more than needed will affect the soap making process.

Exfoliates

Oatmeal, cornmeal, crushed vanilla beans and other grains can be added as exfoliates. And skin-safe colorants may be used to produce a desired color.

There are a hundreds of websites offering the items you might want to use.  For me, I found everything for customization at home. My main reason for making my own soap is to save money. Maybe next time I will bring my mom and daughter in on it with me so we can share the cost of some goodies.

Surprisingly, for the size of the recipe we made, you will only need a teaspoon or 2 of crushed up oats as an exfoliate.

Instructions

Collect your ingredients, mix together and add to a cup of the soap mixture after trace, then stir back into the rest of the soap mixture (mixing well) immediately before pouring into the mold.

Tips

• Be sure and add the ingredients right before you pour into the molds to insure that they spread out evenly throughout the soap and won’t fall to the bottom.
• Use this fragrance calculator to get your fragrance amount.  Adding too much can mess up the soap making process and affect the outcome.
• Try using home items and getting together with family and friends to really expand your customization options.

Photo Credits

Frontier Freedom

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