Last month I took a class at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. It was a class on making cold process soaps. It started off with a short lecture on the ingredients and process of making soap. Then a demo on mixing the lye solution and mixing a batch.
Then we all got to mix our own batch of soap. The ingredients were all measured out for a basic recipe and heated to the right temperatures. We just needed to pick our scent for the soap. This is what it looks liked shortly after I got home. 
It needs to sit for at least 24 hours, wrapped up to keep the heat in, while the chemical reactions take place. I peeked to see what was happening. This is the gel stage.
And after a little more than 24 hours (because I forgot), I released the soap from the mold. The mold is wrapped in plastic to keep it from sticking. There were some small holes in my plastic where the soap leaked out and stuck to the mold. 
After it is cut into bars, the soap needs to be cured for about three weeks. If you look closely you can see that the bars are a bit shiny and not completely dry. These bars are scented with the Love Spell scent from the Soap Box (who conducted the class) and do not have any coloring added... that's for the next class...Making soap in class was simple, everything was prepared in advance for us. I just used the first bar of soap and it is lovely... next class - adding color and additives...
No comments:
Post a Comment