To make loofah soap, set a half-inch to one-inch slice of dried loofah in each mold cavity, spritz it with 99 percent isopropyl alcohol so the soap will
Christmas soap making means festive scents like peppermint and gingerbread, red-white-and-green swirls, and wintry shapes like trees and snowflakes.
For reliable color in soap, reach for mica or mineral pigment, disperse it in a little oil first, and start at about 1 teaspoon of mica or half a teaspoon
A soap making tray is simply your mold, usually a silicone or wooden loaf or slab you pour soap into, or a cavity tray that gives finished shaped bars
Canola oil makes good soap, and you can use it up to about 40 percent of your oils as a cheap stand-in for olive oil. Expect a softer bar, a slower trace
Whipped soap making means beating air into your soap so it turns light and fluffy like whipped cream, then globbing or piping the airy batter into molds.
A kit sold as “professional” or “complete” is only complete if it contains a digital scale that reads to 0.1 gram and proper eye
For my first year I collected soap formulas the way some people collect recipes, pasting them into a binder without really reading the percentages.
Pioneers made soap from two things their farms produced: lye leached from hardwood ashes, and rendered animal fat like tallow and lard. They dripped water
My first attempt at a clay soap was a shaving bar, and I dumped two tablespoons of dry bentonite straight into the batter hoping for a slick, cushiony lather.