Step 4 – Three Easy Soap Recipes

Begin your soap making journey with simple soap recipes.  Simple soap recipes that are easy to create and apply all natural ingredients. This is the fourth step of Natural Soap Making for Beginners.

In the first two parts, we introduce you to standard soap making ingredients. You have also learned about the equipment you will need to create soap and safety precautions. It’s time to get to the fun part- making your first batch.

In this article, we share 3 simple soap recipes such as a 3-oil soap (for those wanting to save a little money), a pure herbal soap, and a simple flower soap recipe.

Important Points To Remember

1. Start With Small Batches

These are fantastic recipes for beginner soap makers because small in size and they are inexpensive to make. Many soap recipes you’ll find on the internet or in soap recipe books will be for bigger batches but making six bars at a time is plenty. It gives you room to learn how to create soap without the world ending if you mess up. Best of all, making one pound of batches is great for trying a lot of recipes rather than one large one.

If you like any of these recipes and in the future want to make more, rest assured they may be doubled and tripled. You could make far more than that at a time. For now, keep it small scale and simple.

2. The Correct Sized Mold

There are various soap making equipment options available for 1-lb soap molds. First of all, the recycled route. The mold you’ll find in the Simple Flower Soap is a plastic takeaway container. It’s the corresponding to your rice or noodles comes in when you order take-out. Cover the interiors with baking paper, polished side up, and put your soap in, and it’ll fit well. The overlapping flaps of paper can help you to lever it out when it is time to un-mold.

You may utilize a standard size paper milk container. Rinse it out and open the top — no requirement to cut it open. Drain your soap in that first opening; allow it to harden into a block. After a few days, simply rip the paper carton off your soap to get it out. You can chop it into bars afterward.

Last, we will suggest this silicone mold. It will suit 1-lb batches excellently. The added advantage of silicone molds is that they serve a long time, and the bars they create look remarkably professional. Also, the bars come out without requiring the further step of cutting.

3. Use Existing and Tested Recipes

One thing we really would like to highlight is that beginners should utilize tested and tried recipes. Precisely like a beginner baker will use an existing cake recipe, so too if you use methods which have already been invented. Creating your own is a lot more complicated than merely throwing a whole lot of oils together and massaging in lye-water. There is a myriad of things to think about that you don’t have to think about yet.

Stick with recipes you know will work, and you are going to be smarter with experience. That way, you’ll be assured of success. If anything does happen, you will also know that it’s probably down to human error instead of the recipe. When attempting to troubleshoot, it gives you a starting place.

Three Easy Soap Recipes for Beginners

We have shared a few recipes that you start with below. The directions on how best to make these recipes are seen in the next part of the series.

All three of the recipes given below should be performed at approximately 110°F (43°C) and can be gelled by covering. Gelling the soap is voluntary though, and you will read about what it is and the way to do it in another part.

1. Easy 3-Oil Soap Recipe

This one is for those who want an easy, sensitive, and inexpensive soap recipe. There are no colors or fragrance to add and only three main oils. Additionally, it is very gentle on your skin and may be used by the whole family, including infants or individuals who have skin problems.

Although the other two soap recipes don’t add palm oil, we’ve introduced it for this one for three reasons. First of all, it produces an excellent hard bar with loads of lather. Furthermore, still, the most expensive palm is less costly than most other oils.

The last reason is that we feel that all we, including soap makers, should support the sustainable palm oil market. It is very controversial and confusing, but we have written a bit on why boycotting palm oil can threaten the environment even more than using it. Saying that always ensure palm oil you use is certified to RSPO. Dirty palm oil is destroying the rain forests, and no amount of soap can wash your hands cleansed of that.

Recipe

Several soap recipes will make you invest in quite a few various oils, both essential oils and soaping oils for scent. This method is for real and natural unscented soap that’s excellent for common use and even delicate enough for baby.

Tip: 1lb / 454g batch — 5% Superfat — 33% water discount.

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Curing Time 28 times

Total Time 1 hour

Servings 6 bars

Ingredients

Lye water

• 64 g Sodium hydroxide 2.27 ounce
• 128 g Distilled water 4.5 ounce

Solid Oils

• 113 gram Coconut oil (refined) 4 ounce
• 159 gram Sustainable Palm oil 5.6 ounce

Liquid Oils

• 181 gram Olive oil* 6.4 oz

Instructions

1. Utilize the soap making along with instructions in addition to with these additional instructions:
2. Please ensure your palm oil is certified by the RSPO as being sustainable.
3. You may use extra virgin (evoo) or pomace olive oil for the ‘Olive oil’ ingredient. Extra Virgin Olive Oil will form soap that is extra yellow in color.

 

2. Simple Flower Soap Recipe

Many people taking soap making lessons wind up, creating a variation of the recipe. It is palm oil-free and uses oils which will produce an excellent hard bar with loads of bubbles and moisture.

The recipe can be customized to add the floral essential oil of your choice. The 14g of essential oil depends on essential oils which have a 3% use rate in soap. If you want to use a unique, essential oil with this recipe, then please check it against these vital oils for soap making chard.

Although optional, cosmetic clay can give an adorable color to your bars. The kind we used is rose clay, but you can get clays in several different colors.

Practice this recipe to customize your own homemade flower soap using rose-geranium, lavender,  ylang-ylang, or a different flower essential oil. You may attach flower petals to enhance your soap!

Tip: 1lb / 454g batch — 5% superfat — 33% water discount.

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Fixing time 28 days

Total Time 1 hour

Servings 6 bars

Ingredients

Lye water

• 64-gram Sodium hydroxide 2.27 ounce
• 128 g Distilled water 4.52 oz

Solid oils

• 145-gram Coconut oil (refined) 5.11 oz
• 49 gram Shea butter 1.73 oz

Liquid oils

• 120 g Sunflower oil 4.23 oz
• 120 g Olive oil 23 oz
• 20 g Castor oil 0.71 oz
• 1/4 tablespoon Colored clay* (combined with 1 Tbsp distilled water) (optional)

Add after Trace

• 14 g Essential oil**

To decorate

• Dried flower petals***

Instructions

1. Use the soap making instructions for this recipe along with these additional steps specific to this recipe.
2. Before you start making soap, mix up the water and clay. Add it to the dissolved oils by pouring over a sieve/strainer. Artificial clays come in a variety of colors such as pink, green, blue, and brown. Here are various soap making colorants to provide you with inspiration.
3. You can use a maximum of 3 tsp of essential oil total on your soap picking from these scents: palmarosa (Cymbopogon martini), chamomile (Anthemis nobilis), neroli, rose geranium (Pelargonium graveolens), lavender (Lavandula augustifolia), or ylang ylang (Cananga odorata).
4. Dried flowers are a beautiful way to decorate handmade soap, but sadly they could turn brown on touch. Calendula petals will remain yellow, though, for others, there are two alternatives. You can gently spray them on when the soap has hardened up slightly. The pieces that don’t come into touch with the soap and will remain colored at least for a short time.

The other solution is to wait until your soap is fully cured. Following the 28-day waiting period, spray the areas you want flowers on your own soap with which denatured alcohol or witch hazel. Sprinkle the dried flowers and wait for the alcohol to dry. The flowers will be stuck to the soap when it dry. Neat huh?

Decorate your soap with rose petals, calendula, lavender buds, dried chamomile, petals, and skin-safe dried blossoms and leaves.

3. Simple Herbal Soap Recipe

If you grow your own herbs, this might be the recipe for you. You can use your personal mint, lemon balm, or herbs in combining with a zesty mixture of herbal essential oils. This procedure also only applies four main soaping oils, so it will be less costly to produce than the floral soap.

Although you could potentially customize this’ mix too, we’d advise caution. Many herbal oils are safe to use in creating handmade soap such as lavender, rosemary, peppermint, and marjoram. Some are not safe though so either stick with the quantities and types in certified soap or do your study.

Make soap using a blend of lemon balm, rosemary, and lavender essential oils. For additional effect, you can also put a small spoon of finely chopped herbs. These will supplement dark speckles throughout the bars.

Tip: 1lb / 454g batch — 5% superfat — 33% water discount.

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Curing time 28 days

Total Time 1 hour

Servings 6 bars

Ingredients

Lye water

• 62 gram Sodium hydroxide 2.19 ounce
• 124 g Distilled water 4.37 oz

Solid oils

• 136 gram Coconut oil (refined) 4.8 oz
• 23 gram Shea butter 0.8 ounce

Liquid oils

• 204 gram Olive oil 7.2 oz
• 91 gram Sunflower oil 3.2 oz

Add after Trace

• 1 tsp finely chopped veggies olive oil, thyme, lemon balm, peppermint
• 5 grams Rosemary essential oil 5.59tsp / ~ 1 teaspoon
• 5 grams Lavender essential oil 5.5ml / ~ 1 tsp
• 4 grams Peppermint essential oil 4.5ml / ~ 1+1/4 tsp

Instructions

1. Use the soap making instructions for this recipe along with these steps specific to this recipe.
2. To your finely chopped we would recommend using half teaspoon dried or one teaspoon fresh. The herbs add speckles within the soap but no remarkable scent.

We hope you enjoy experimenting with the above recipes and keep coming back for more.  We will continue sharing our favorite soap making recipes.