The first batch of soap

I was searching for some simple soap recipes online, and found some at Soapnuts. I've seen the same recipe on multiple sites, so I decided to use it for my first try at soap.

Ingredients called for:
24 oz. Olive oil
24 oz. Coconut oil
38 oz. Vegetable shortening (Like Crisco)
12 oz. Sodium hydroxide
32 oz. Water
8 oz. Powdered oatmeal

Also added:
1 oz. Eucalyptus oil

I won't go into the necessary equipment, there's a great overview of the process of making cold process soap here. Always remember, NEVER add water to lye, always add the lye slowly to the water and to wear the proper safety gear. I felt lost when it came to the mysterious point in the process called trace. It didn't make sense until I saw it myself, so the obsessively over-planning people like me just need to have faith that it will make sense when the time comes.

I added some green food coloring to the mix, and it ended up a nice greenish brown. The recipe turned out a pretty yellow creamy color, and food coloring gives a muted tint to the soap. At first, the smell of the eucalyptus oil was much stronger than I anticipated. The cut bars made the whole basement smell! After a few more days passed, the smell is much more subtle. I was really perplexed how the fragrance calculator I saw at BrambleBerry suggested ~1 oz. for "light fragrance" when it smelled so strong initially. I have a hunch they've been doing this a lot longer than I have.

I had used some loaf pans lined with freezer paper, and the sides were decidedly angled. I did a terrible job at folding the paper lining, so I cut a lot of irregular shapes off to get some regular bars. I don't feel the results are pretty enough to give as wedding gifts, so I'm going to turn the eucalyptus soap into chunks and incorporate those into another batch I'll make this upcoming weekend. I have better molds coming in the mail so I should get prettier bar results, and with re-batching the soap it will be nicely two-toned.

Up next are the menthol shower tabs I made with my brother!

The adventure begins...

I started doing research in January 2013 about distilling my own essential oils. This makes sense for me since I'm a horticulturist and (theoretically) should have an awesome garden to draw from for materials. I have no plans to sell any, but as I'm finishing graduate school and getting a real job, I figured a hobby other than studying would do me some good. I found a deal or two on amazon for some lab equipment and got a nice little setup going. I liberated a bunch of rosemary from someone's yard and tried to get it going. Sadly, my first attempt wasn't a success since I didn't have a Bunsen burner. I tried to double boil the flask to get steam and all in all it just didn't work.

Around the same time, I was trying to figure out what a poor student like me could do. My brother is marrying one of my good friends in the fall, and I thought someone with a chemistry minor should be able to make some homemade soaps with the oils that I would later be distilling. I thought it would be a nice gesture with a lot of meaning for not a lot of money, as well as serving the dual purpose of giving me another hobby.  So I got the necessary protective gear, bought some oils for a test run, and had a go at it this weekend. Aside from the cold process soap, I also made some fizzy bath bombs, and menthol shower tablets for my brother. It was a lot of fun!

I'll be posting the recipes that I use here and progress both for anyone who's interested and as a journal for myself to refer back to. Later this week I'll talk about my first stab at these three smelly things. The house smelled like a hippie died, but I think I like it!