Cutting logs of Soap

I used the book Pure Soapmaking by Anne-Marie Faiola to inspire this batch of soap. 

Each log is about 50 oz. of soap. I'm terrible at cutting, so my bars usually have 4.5-5.5 oz. soap each. 

After removing the bar from the mold, I lay it on its best side (where drag marks won't matter as much) and cut using a non-serrated knife. I use a pampered chef knife and cutting board with notches to help guide.

 I'm still learning how to make layers. You can see my first-poured layer was a nice light color, but the second was too dark. The third and fourth are hardly distinguishable. 

Putting a few blackberry seeds on top made a cute scrubby addition. These will likely come off the first couple of washes, but that's okay. 

And you can see I got 10 bars from this loaf, all are at least 4.5 oz. 

Homemade is BESTmade

I began making homemade soap (cold process mostly) in June, and I feel like I'm getting better almost every single bath. (Yeah, I'll admit there have been a few fails!)

 Here is a charcoal face soap fresh in the mold.

Here is a batch of eucalyptus soap made with goat milk

I love the layers in this raspberry jam scented soap

Here is an unscented scrubby soap made with blackberry seeds. I'm in love with these layers!

Soap-Making and Bath Bombs

Back at Christmas I got into Bath-Bomb making, and since then I've delved into the world of Cold Process Soap Making. (Yes, the kind where you start out with lye.) (Yes, Mom, I'm being very careful with lye.) I've made a few batches so far with varied results, but I do believe I'm getting better! It takes 4-6 weeks for each bar to cure (the water evaporates to make the bar harder and last longer) so I sill have a couple more weeks before I find out for sure if I did my first few batches correctly. I think I did pretty good, though! 

I started with a Handmade Soap Kit from Brambleberry, and then tried again with a Basic Quick Mix of oils. I read a lot online and watched a ton of Youtube tutorials. I also purchased the book Pure Soapmaking by Anne-Marie Faiola. Then I started mixing my own using recipes I found online (mostly soapqueen.com) I've made 5 batches so far. It's pretty fun! The best part might be that it makes the whole house smell good, too. My goal is to create natural, as-organic-as-possible soap. (Soap can't actually be organic, but I want something made up of natural, good-for-you ingredients that aren't harmful to the earth.) 

Also, on my last order from Brambleberry I got a free sample of Blueberry fragrance oil. Today I used it to make a batch of bath bombs. The last set I made about a month ago didn't go well at all, so I was pleasantly surprised when these (mostly) turned out well. A few crumbled while drying but since more than 1 actually stayed in a spherical shape this time I'm not complaining! And they smell WONDERFUL! I added some blue gel dye to keep the blueberry theme going. 

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Homemade Laundry Detergent

For the month of April, I gave up using the internet for superfluous purposes. I thought this might mean I can go to the Y to continue running, but the ankle dr. said I need to stay off it for 6 weeks so that's not happening :-/). Anyway, that obviously meant I needed to find reasons to go on My Pinterest Account. I ran out of laundry detergent yesterday so I thought this would be a perfect time (!!!) to go online and investigate creating my own. I've heard it's better for the environment and it's a lot cheaper, so I decided to give it a try. 

There are basically two ways to make it- liquid or powder- and they use the same ingredients. I picked up 3 bars of soap so I made both. I don't think I'll be purchasing detergent for quite some time. 

For both versions, you'll need to start out with borax ($3.38), washing soda ($3.24 [NOT baking soda])  and a bar of soap. Many sites recommended Fels-Naptha ($0.97) in the cleaning aisle so that's what I used. 

In the powdered version, I chopped up 1 bar of soap, which made about 2 cups. (I used my blender, which works fine until it gets heated... I think grating with a cheese grater will work just as well) and added 3 c. borax and 3 c. washing soda. I mixed all ingredients together in a bowl. You can see the yellow soap in the white mixture.

After this, just find a container to store it in! I used a large Ball jar, but pretty much anything would work. It made about 8 cups of detergent. Using 1/2 to 1 tablespoon in each load, this should last several months.

Super cheap and easy! 

The liquid detergent is a bit messier, if you're someone like me, but it was really neat to make. I usually prefer liquid detergent over powdered, because I feel like it cleans better. I'm sure it doesn't, though. lol

Anyway, grate 1 bar of soap (which once again makes about 2 cups) and put in about 8 cups of boiling water on the stove to melt. Quickly turn down the heat if your soap starts to bubble so it won't make a mess. After my soap melted, I turned the heat down to medium.

After it's melted add your cup of borax and cup of washing soda. Stir until it appears to be completely liquid (didn't take long!) Then pour into a five-gallon bucket (or whatever you choose, I guess) and add about 3 more gallons of hot water, and let it sit overnight.

The next morning it should be gel like, and after a quick stir it's ready to go. Of course in ValerieWorld it  wasn't quite that simple, however. I only added 2 gallons of water yesterday, and there was no gel consistency... it was very much like thick pudding. So after trying to add another gallon and mix it in (didn't really work) I scooped out bits at a time and used the "whip" feature on my blender for about 5 seconds. That worked fabulously, and now I definitely have more laundry detergent than I could ever possibly want! haha I recycled an old detergent container to keep some in the laundry room, filled up a recycled orange juice container with some, and still have a little more than 2 1/2 gallons in a five-gallon bucket. I'm not sure how I'm going to store it quite yet. Perhaps I'll try to rummage up some more old containers today.

Big Question: Does it work? Yes. I used the powdered form to wash two loads of clothes last night (whites and a comforter) and they both came out of the dryer looking and smelling fantastic! I just finished up a load using my liquid, and it's just as great as the powdered. I hung up a tally chart next to the washer so I can keep track of how many loads I get from each batch. I'm expecting about 150 loads from the powdered, and at least 100 from the liquid (unless I give some away, of course). That will be 250 loads of laundry for $8.56 (and that doesn't even take into consideration that I have more than 1/2 box of borax and almost 1/2 box of washing soda leftover).

That's about 3 cents per load of laundry.