Handmade Soap How to Make Natural Handmade Soap

Making soap at home can be a fun experience. I myself got into making soap about a year ago as a hobby and have now turned it into a part time job. I get asked a lot of questions all the time about my soap making and I would like to put some of the answers here online for others to view.

Handmade soap is great to me and seems to be better for my skin overall. I have heard from many others that purchase soap from me and they love it as well. The benefits of using handmade soap is better than store bought soaps for many reasons. The main reason being all of the chemicals and additives used in store bought soaps. Handmade soaps do not contain all of the harsh chemicals in them that other soaps do. My base recipe includes olive oil, but you can incorporate many different types of oils including coconut oil, or grapeseed oil, and more - just to name a few. I usually use a mix of oils to make my complete mixture for the soaps I make. Using a mixture of different oils along with some other items can give the best results.

People often ask me if you can make soap without lye. The short answer to this is yes, you can. You can make lye-free soap from a pre-mixture you can buy at your local hobby store or arts and crafts store that is called melt and pour. This simple method of soap making is easy for anyone to get into at home and can be fun for the whole family. This is the easiest way to get started making soap. If you want to make real homemade soaps then you will need to get the proper materials and equipment for doing so, and find good recipes from respectful resources online to get started.

Using Melt and Pour:

1. Purchase melt and pour at your local hobby store 
2. Using molds of almost any kind you can heat the melt and pour soap in the microwave and pour into the molds. 
3. Allow the soap to harden - using the freezer can speed this process up 
4. Remove your soap from the molds and enjoy your soap!

There are many variations you can do with melt and pour soap including scents and colors and shapes and sizes. Your imagination is the limit.

Making Handmade Soap From Lye:

1. Make sure you have all the proper equipment to make this type of soap 
2. Find some reputable places online with good recipes. 
3. Pick a recipe you want to use and make sure you have all the ingredients available 
4. Measure out all of your ingredients and follow the proper procedure making sure you wear protective gear since you are working with lye.

There are many resources online for making handmade soap, the equipment needed and so on. I started for about $150.00 with everything to make my first few batches of soap, and I grew from there. I know have hundreds of essential oils for scents, and many different types and sizes of soap molds that I can work with to make a lot of different types of soap.

Homemade soap can be a really good hobby - as I found out starting that all of my friends and family were interested and now purchase soap from me on a regular basis.

I hope you can use this simple guide to make your own soap at home. It is fun and I enjoy using this soap more than store bought soaps