How to make your own soap

You might want to make your own soap because you’re allergic to some of the common ingredients in store-bought soap, or because it saves money, or just for the fun of mixing your own scents and decorative shapes. Making soap from scratch isn’t a simple process, and you will need to be careful with the lye. Alternately, you can “rebatch” your own soap without using lye if you use another soap (like Ivory, which already has the lye) as a base.

You can make a smallish batch of soap right in your blender, following the instructions here or here. You can also make liquid soap in a blender.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. You can get very creative with the ingredients. Anything you want to use for scent is fine, but you can also put in ingredients like milk and honey or coffee grinds (great for exfoliation). You’ll find lots of free recipes online for things like shea butter soap, cucumber soap, chunk soaps, vegan lavender soap, soap from homemade fat drippings, chocolate soap, and mango moisturizer.

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Posted in Do It Yourself, Featured Articles, Health and Beauty on August 5, 2010