Create Cream & Liquid Soaps: Welcome Everyone!

In this lesson we will learn how to make our own hot process liquid soap. Commercial dish and hand soaps are rarely soap, rather they are combinations of detergents usually derived from petrochemicals, which are quicker and cheaper to manufacture compared to those made with natural oils.

When my aunt owned a restaurant, I would make liquid soap for her, similar to the one in the video, because it cleaned greasy surfaces much better than detergents. My sink is always shiny after making a batch. For stains on clothes, I pretreat them with handmade soap, before putting them in the wash.

Often babies and children need a soap that is more gentle than commercial detergents. This formula works well.

If you wrote everything down, then identifying mistakes becomes much easier.

The most common mistakes are not stirring enough, low or inconsistent temperature and improper measurements.

Cloudiness is often an esthetic problem with liquid soap that can have many different causes such as hard water, insoluble waxes such as jojoba or lanolin, over addition of neutralizers such as citric or boric acid. Insufficient stirring, undercooking and mismeasurement may result in excess fatty acids that cloud the soap.

Using a mixer or a stick blender ensures the ingredients are properly combined. Mixing by hand rarely results in good soap outcomes. Fatty acids are big, bulky molecules that clump together preventing the lye from reacting with it.

To determine if the soap has too much hydroxide, use an indicator such as phenolphthalein or litmus paper. Cooking the soap more might correct the problem or adding more boric or citric acid.

These classes were inspired by Catherine Failor's books. In this section, I have a slideshow about some of my favorite things about Making Natural Liquid Soaps and things I would have done differently. It would be great to see a second edition either printed on in an e-book format. The color photos were great and part of the reason I kept my copy. I found quite a few at the second hand bookstore.

Making Natural Liquid Soaps is available everywhere in stores, online and in the library.

We will make a hot process, cream soap that works well as a premium shaving cream, especially for people who have sensitive skin and those who enjoy a close shave. Castor oil gives the shave cream its rich, emollient properties that so many people enjoy. For people who want to live a more plant-based lifestyle, stearic acid and glycerin can be derived from plant sources. When I used to sell my creations, this was a best seller.

While I was filming, one of filmmakers asked about a facial scrub, so there's a little extra product at the end.

These recipes are hard to find, because Catherine Failor's book Making Cream Soap is out of print. Luckily, I found my copy, otherwise the 40 page booklet is about $200 US second hand.

Not everything always goes as planned when making soap. Because cream soap uses both sodium and potassium hydroxide, it has certain quirks and challenges, so it's important to write everything down in a lab book. Then you can look over your notes to determine where the problem might have been.

This short video goes through some of the common problems people have, which include low or inconsistent cooking temperature, insufficient mixing and inaccurate measurement. If temperature and mixing were ok, then measurements are the problem. To increase accuracy always use weight, not volume measurements.

I grew up using the metric system, so it's easy for me to say "For better accuracy use grams instead of ounces." Most scales can measure both.

Unlike Making Natural Liquid Soaps, the booklet, Making Cream Soap, is tough to find. Given the loveliness of cream soaps for shaving and facial products, I hoped that more copies would have been printed. If you have a copy hang on to it!

Because my partner at the time needed a special shaving cream, I tried three of the five recipes. At one point I sold jars of the cream soap that I included in the video. If I had to choose between the two soap books, Cream Soap had a much better layout and design, even though it was significantly shorter. It's hard to know how much influence the publisher/editor had versus just the author, but the booklet gave you everything you needed to get started in 40 pages.

Chemistry is fun! Says the person with a chemistry degree. The information presented here is introductory acid base chemistry many people will recognize from high school. Soap is the product of acid/base chemistry. The video goes over definitions for acids and bases. Then I added some examples of chemical reactions that might seem overwhelming. If you pause the video and go slowly, you will recognize some of the products.

My first year of science fair judging, I had two soap projects and encouraged the students to think about how the theories they learned in class applied to their projects.