Articles about lye in soap on the Soap Making Advice blog
The latest in our series of soap making inspiration:
Have you ever wondered why commercial soaps can leave your skin feeling DRY, IRRITATED and ITCHY?
Are you concerned about the ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT of commercial soap making processes and products?
Making your own soap at home can ensure control over the quality of the ingredients and is a more environmentally friendly option for you and your family.
Learn more and get started on our free blog at https://soapmakingadvice.com/
The latest in our series of soap making inspiration:
Do you want to be able to create cost effective and meaningful gifts for your friends and family?
Do you want to express your creativity while making a product that is practical and useful?
Have fun creating healthy, environmentally friendly soaps and save money at the same time – after your first batch of soap you will be making savings!
Learn more and get started on our free blog at https://soapmakingadvice.com/
Practice makes perfect when it comes to your liquid soap. Photo courtesy of flickr user arenamontanus.
This post covers off on just one of the many soap making methods available to you as a soap maker. Please click here to read our full, comprehensive post on the various options, with benefits and drawbacks, breakdowns of the process and much more covered for all the most popular soap making methods.
Many soap making hobbyists start out by making bars of solid soap, because it is a fairly simple and straightforward process. Making liquid soap can be a bit trickier and takes some practice, but it is just as much fun and your final product is just as useful.
Knowing the basic soap making method for solid bar soap first is certainly a bonus. This is especially so as one of the more popular methods of making liquid soap involves making it from bars of solid soap, and the other is very similar to the hot process soap making method. Continue reading “Liquid Soap Making Method”
After many months in the planning, we are excited to announce (finally) that all 3 of our Ebooks:
Soap Making Made Easy;
Soap Recipes; and
Soap Making Made Easy: A Quick Guide;
are now available for Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks and all other major Ereader devices!
You can now take full advantage of all the great features of Ereader devices, such as:
– Optimised for reading on portable devices;
– Easily add to your Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Nook, or other Ereader;
– Adjust the font style;
– Adjust the font size;
– Hyperlinked Table of Contents and chapter headings, to navigate quickly;
– Bookmark favorite sections or recipes to easily access later;
– In-built search for the entire book; and
– Many more features.
We have tried to make the Ebooks available through multiple Ebook platforms, so you can decide which is the best option for you.
There are a few options for purchasing the Ebooks, broken down below:
This is our preferred sales channel and so we offer the best deal exclusively through our website – you can download ALL the different Ebook formats through our sales page for the price of 1.
That means you will get the newly designed PDF books, the .mobi format for Amazon Kindle AND the .epub format for iBooks, etc – all for the price of a single book!
By purchasing through our website you get the following bonuses:
1. An exclusive discount package for all 3 Ebooks, not offered anywhere else; and
2. All 3 versions of the Ebooks for the price of 1, an offer only available through our website.
Click here to purchase through our website.
If you would prefer to purchase through the Amazon Kindle store, all 3 of the Ebooks are available through our Amazon profile here – or search by author ‘Michelle Gaboya’ on your Kindle.
The Ebooks are also available for purchase through the iBooks Store – just search for the title of the book, or search by author ‘Michelle Gaboya’ on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. You can still buy the Ebooks through our website here and easily add them to your library via iTunes.
If you need help with this, contact us and we can help get set up.
All 3 Ebooks are available in many other formats for a wide variety of Ereaders through our Smashwords publishing platform here.
We have worked to ensure all 3 Ebooks are available for all major Ereader devices. Through our publisher, our Ebooks should be available for purchase through Sony, Barnes & Noble, Nook and all other major Ebook stores – just search by author ‘Michelle Gaboya’ to find them.
If for any reason you can’t find our Ebooks, please contact us and we will help solve the problem, or purchase through our website here to download the appropriate Ebook format.
There are various methods which can be used to make soap at home. Photo courtesy of flickr user trenttsd.
In our last post, we explained some of the basic foundations for soap making, including ingredients, equipment and method. We have previously gone into detail on soap making ingredients and soap making equipment, so now it is time to expand on the soap making process.
There are various methods which can be used to make soap at home. The basic process for making bars of solid soap is similar for each technique, but there are variations depending on the method used by the soap-maker. Continue reading “How To Make Soap At Home: Learning The Soap Making Methods”
Lye is one of the fundamental ingredients of soap making, so it’s important to understand how to use it properly. Photo courtesy of flickr user maoquai.
Soap making is not only a hobby, it can also be an addiction.
You will no doubt be hooked once you start making that first batch of soap (here’s our free suggested recipe).
Whether you choose to make soap for personal use or for holiday gifts, it is always better to be knowledgeable of the general process.
This post outlines the basics of the most popular soap making methods, but please click here to read our full, comprehensive post on the soap making methods available to you, or click here for our comprehensive post on soap making equipment.
There are several ways to make soap. The method used depends on the products and materials available and the type of desired soap. Whatever it is, one thing is basic:
Soap is made from oil and lye no matter the method used. Once the basic soap is made, it can then be perfumed, colored, filled, shaped and packaged. Continue reading “Soap Making Basics – How to Make Homemade Soap”
Lye is one of the fundamental ingredients of soap making, so it’s important to understand how to use it properly (photo courtesy of flick user maoquai).
If you enjoy this article and want to learn more about making soap at home, get instant access to our free soap making guide which covers all the basic elements of soap making, or get 10 years of soap making experience in our comprehensive Soap Making Bible with exclusive web bonuses for less than the cost of your first batch of soap.
Lye is one of the three key ingredients in the soap making process.
Lye is a caustic alkaline chemical that dissolves substances like fat, and has a high degree of reactivity with other materials.
It is also known as Sodium Hydroxide.
If you know about soap or have been learning about making soap, you might know that almost all handmade soaps are made of Sodium hydroxide except for a few liquid soaps that are made of Potassium hydroxide. Potassium hydroxide, unknown to many, is also a type of lye used to make liquid soap.
It is important to note though that potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide are not interchangeable in soap recipes. So to put it simply, basically all soaps are made from lye.
Lye is a very important ingredient in making soap as the hydroxide in lye binds with the fats to form soap. Lye is extremely caustic and can burn the skin.
When lye is mixed with water and oils, in a chemical process called saponification, the lye turns the fats and oils into soap.
Lye used to be made by soaking wood ashes in water, but now it is readily available at most hardware and grocery stores.
There are certain precautions which must be taken when working with lye for soap making; it is a corrosive chemical, which can cause severe damage to skin, eyes, and the respiratory system. Continue reading “Soap Making With Lye, And A Free Soap Recipe”
Before you try to experiment with your homemade soap it’s important to understand the basic soap ingredients – photo courtesy of flickr user mommyknows.
There are a variety of reasons that people decide to make their own soap.
Some do it for a greater degree of customization; some because commercial soaps are too harsh for their skin; still others because it’s a fun and rewarding hobby.
To get started making your own soap, you will need to consider three things:
* Your ingredients;
* Using the right equipment; and
* Your soap making method.
The ingredients are, arguably, the most important component of the soap making process. Continue reading “Soap Making Basics: Soap Ingredients”
There are many variants for soap colorants – Photo courtesy of Flickr user necrocake.
Soap Making Colorants—which one to choose?
There are several different soap colorant options that are available for soap makers.
Natural soap colorants are more favored by expert soap makers as it is much safer to use. You can get amazing results with natural dyes and you don’t need to go the synthetic route to get soap that people buy. The best soap making advice I can give you is to try the natural dyes and see how things turn out. Of course you’ll need some practice but this is part of the learning process when you make your own soap.
For example, saffron can give your soap a yellowish glow, indigo root can be used to give your soap a deep blue color and Moroccan red clay can be used to give your soap a brick red color.
Continue reading “Which Soap Making Colorants Do You Choose?”
The Soap Making History dates and stretches far back!
The origin of cleanliness dates back to prehistoric times.
The earliest people then know that water has cleansing properties. They didn’t know just yet about soap.