Soap making is not just for your grandmother anymore; it has become a popular hobby for many creative and artistic people. Homemade soap is a sought-after product these days. There are many soap making businesses that have become extremely lucrative. Homemade or handmade soap offers the consumer many things you can’t get from a retail store. If your soap is handmade it tends to be fresh and contain more natural elements. All soap or the “real stuff” is still made using lye or sodium hydroxide, which is consider a fairly harsh chemical, but the other chemicals and additives are usually omitted in “homemade” soap recipes. When you make the soap yourself or buy it from a specialty soap maker, then you usually get a higher quality of product and the ingredients tend to be natural rather then completely artificial. Making your own soap can be entertaining because you can use your imagination and create your own combinations and it can also be rewarding to know you made a personalized product.

Bar soap is a common type of soap that you can make at home. There are a few different processes to follow when making bar soap. Here are some examples and basic instructions for each process:

Cold process soap is one of the most popular soap making methods. This kind of soap is known for it long lasting quality and versatility. Cold process is a common way to create unique, decorative bars of soap that you can sell or use as gifts. Most cold process recipes contain a few basic ingredients such as distilled water, sodium hydroxide (lye) and fatty acids.

You can make cold process soap by combining fatty acids and sodium hydroxide (lye). The fatty acid can be anything from animal fat to olive oil or hemp oil.

Cold process soap making consists of a certain proportion of lye (sodium hydroxide) and water to fatty acids, which creates a chemical reaction called “saponifaction.” During saponification, the lye and oils mix and become soap – the process takes approximately six weeks to fully complete.