Do you ever get tired of the boring soaps that you have at home - the usual bar-shaped ones that you use when you shower or wash your hands? Then soap making is a hobby that you should try considering.
Soap need not be an instrument that you use for cleaning only.
It can also serve as a decoration to beautify your bathroom.
Some carefully crafted soaps are so nice that you won't even want to use them in the shower.
Before you get started, the main ingredients that you should have are fats and lye.
Other additional ingredients may include dyes for color and fragrance oils for smell.
Fat is the main ingredient of soaps and it is responsible for the essential characteristics of soap, whether it is hard or soft, produces a good lather or mild for the skin.
Lye is responsible for hydrolyzing the fat and turning it into soap while the other ingredients are for adding artistic properties of the soap.
The conversion of fats to soap can be done through a cold or hot method.
The cold method involves adding of the fat into a previously prepared lye water mixture.
This is mixed and poured into melts that have been dipped into cold water.
The hot method is almost the same but the fat will be heated before mixing it with the lye water.
The mixture is then further heated for two hours before it is ready for use.
The cold method is known to produce longer lasting soap.
When your soap mixture is ready, you can now add the other ingredients to make it more aesthetically pleasing.
When used properly, dyes together with molds, will be able to produce designs such as food, animals or even electronic equipment.
It will just need some practice before you get the hang of how to use both of these properly.
Fragrance oils will further add to your soap's appeal as it will not only look good, but smell good too.
When preparing the soap mixture, bear in mind that lye is a hazardous material.
You should be careful not to touch it with your bare hands as it can cause serious injuries due to its corrosive property.
When mixed with water, lye also gives off fumes that may also be dangerous when inhaled.
Soap making may seem easy but due to the harmful properties of lye, some precautions must be observed before starting a project.
Soap making is a fun hobby to do.
Don't worry if you are having a hard time in getting the hang of it at first, through practice and trail and error, you will certainly be making beautifully crafted soaps in no time.