Our Homemade Soap Making Process
We’ve been making soap for over a decade for ourselves and also for beautifully unique gifts, and now we want to share our homemade soap making process with you.
My best friend is the pro in our household, and he’s put together a video showing what we do and how. There are so many possibilities when it comes to homemade soap with all the beautiful colors, smells, and luxuriousness, but we mostly keep our bars fairly simple, clean, and with beautifully aromatic scents.
Our Journey To Homemade Soap
Initially I loved buying and using homemade soap, because it was a nice little luxury for a busy mama that needed a little down time. But they were usually expensive. At the same time, early in our health journey, I was also discovering the cumulative impact of what we were putting on my body, breathing in, or taking into our body.
Then one weekend, we caught a soap making demonstration. My husband did some calculating, and set us up to make our own soap, figuring we would make up the cost difference, compared to what I had been paying for bars, easily within the year.
Check out the video below where he explains the process we usually follow:
Supplies
You can pick up a lot of the tools for making soap at your local hardware and grocery stores or through helpful, online soap and essential oil resources. Here’s what we use: 
- Book
- Lye
- Measuring cups (1 Cup and 4 Cup)
- Tablespoon
- Small glass container for essential oil mixture
- Stainless steel spoon
- Big stainless steel mixing bowl (6 quart)
- Distilled water
- Tablecloth
- Scale
- Painting sticks (2)
- Thermometers (2)
- Safety glasses
- Cooking pot
- Coconut oil
- Palm Oil
- Olive pomace oil
- Essential Oils
- Molds (2)
- Carpentry mitre box (we use one exactly like this)
- Sheetrock knife (we use one like this)
- Immersion blender
- Natural colors (optional)
- Tray or box to store curing bars
- Container to store completed soap bars
Don’t Forget Safety
While making soap is definitely fun and budget-friendly in the long run, DON’T take shortcuts on safety. We highly recommend you wear safety glasses, and you might want to also consider gloves, long-sleeved shirt, and/or an apron when working with the lye. Lye can eat through fabric, so also choose clothing and a tablecloth that you don’t mind damaging, but a careful pour is always a great way to avoid a problem.
Ventilation is also very important when you’re mixing the lye solution, as well as when you’re mixing up the essential oil blend through to their being added to the soap solution. We choose to do most of our soap making process on a well-ventilated outdoor, screened porch and no curious visitors.
Also, we use a sheetrock knife to cut the blocks into 12-15 soap bars each. Using the sheetrock knife, in combination with the mitre box, helps to cut a straight edge safely and can help you evenly measure for consistent bar thickness. 
Additional Sources
Check out these sources for your soap making supplies:
- Soapers Choice is a great resource for soap makers and more
- Ace Hardware has a lot of the supplies you’ll need and might be near you
- Bulk Apothecary is another soap supply source that you might like
- Fiesta Mart is a great store in our area to get olive pomace oil for a good price. This international grocery store, as well as other local stores in your area, might be great resources for supplies
- Hobby Lobby can have quite a few items
As for essential oils, you can choose to use a low coast brand like NOW brand (at many local grocery stores) but definitely check out my favorite source, Hopewell Essential Oils. This family-owned business has a great selection of single and blended oils at very reasonable prices that we use as our primary soap scent source. Whether you choose essential oils that are soothing or will wake you up, Hopewell definitely has a great selection.
We’ve bought several soap-related books over the years but prefer The Soapmaker’s Companion over them all so far. While there are many other books with great information, this one book has a thorough explanation of what to do, nice selection of recipes, and even essential oil combination suggestions.
There’s really so much you can do when making soaps, whether its through colors or textures, molds, and even recipe variations for different soap uses. Have fun finding your favorites.
I generally prefer supporting local businesses as much as possible, as well as small or smaller businesses for a much appreciated expertise…especially when trying something new.
It can be so rewarding to have more control over the products you choose to use, and making your own soap is definitely an easy way to reduce your exposure to ingredients that can mess up your skin health, hormone balance, and more.
Be sure to check out these helpful posts too!
