Recently fashionable hobby - soap making - is a very pleasant process that will give not only a lot of emotions, but also, as a result, incredibly beautiful, fragrant, useful and exclusive soap.
DIY soap making methods
There are many different ways to make soap at home, but the difference between them is in the use of a variety of dyes and additives.
The first method is cooking from ready-made soap made by an industrial method. As a basis, you need to take a bar of soap without aromatic additives; baby is best suited for this purpose.
The second is cooking from a soap base. There are 2 types of such bases on sale: glycerin and palm or coconut oil bases. The first is transparent, the second is matte.
The third method is the most laborious, since it is an independent production of a soap base. To make soap, fats from plants and animals are required; caustic soda is added to them in a certain proportion. This process is quite unpleasant, so it is recommended that the home soapmaker still cook the soap using the first 2 methods.
The stages of cooking from ready-made soap and from a soap base are approximately the same. First you need to grind the base. To do this, it is cut into pieces or tinder on a coarse grater. Then the soap base or baby soap must be melted in a water bath. Pour water into a saucepan. Place the crushed soap in a deep bowl and place it in a pot of water. Heat the mass, stirring constantly clockwise, until the soap melts and turns into a liquid mass. It is important not to bring the soapy liquid to a boil, otherwise the product will dry out.
Instead of a water bath, you can also melt the soap base in the microwave.
How to dye your soap the color you want
Soap dyeing is a very important stage, because it is the appearance of the product that immediately attracts attention. For this, you can use both artificial and natural dyes.
Use special soap essences, honey, vanilla, cinnamon, coffee, a variety of essential oils, or your favorite perfume as flavoring agents. Please note that some essences can stain the soap base.
However, keep in mind that many artificial colors can color your skin when you wash, and they are often allergens. Therefore, it is much more useful to use natural soaps for coloring.
Natural dyes
You can dye the soap pink with beet juice. Grate the beets on a fine grater and squeeze the juice through cheesecloth. Add a few drops to the prepared mass and stir, if you pour more juice, then the color will turn out more saturated, but do not overdo it, as beets can also stain the skin.
The pink clay will give the soap a reddish brown hue. Purple or lilac color is added by karkade tea.
Green soap is obtained by adding grated cucumber or spinach puree to the base, and the shade in the first case will be bright and juicy, and in the second light green. The henna powder gives the soap an olive shade, and if you use a large proportion, you can get a rich gray-green and even brown color.
In addition to henna, you can use cinnamon, cocoa powder or coffee grounds to get a brown color, or grind the rosehip in a coffee grinder and add it to the melted base. The dried and crushed berries will give your soap a nice light brown hue.
Oddly enough it may seem at first glance, but chamomile essential oil can color the soap blue, if you increase its concentration, you can achieve a blue tint. You can get a beige soap if you add a couple of tablespoons of ordinary milk.
