Soap?

hummm I havent ever made my own soap. lol I buy mine from Monika's store on etsy, but I know that sometime the lather has to do with your own personal water. I dont remember which but the difference between har and soft water has different effects on if it will lather or not.

You could ask monika about hers though. she makes great soap

Pammerz! <3


If your water is too hard, it won't lather properly. But, if it is too soft, you can have the same problem. Also, sometimes soap has a thin film around it that has to be broken by warm water before it will make a nice lather. Using cold water will affect the lather, as will using super hot water, so it may just depend on the temperature of water you're using the soap in.

But, if you're making basic melt-and-pour soap, you need to add a bit of oil and water or some other liquid to it to help it create more suds.

I've found that as far as melt-and-pour soaps go, they're pretty finicky with what you put in them and how you melt them. Shea butter and goat's milk bases seem to lather the best, but they're also typically more expensive than plain glycerin bases. When I work with melt-and-pour bases, I typically use 2 tablespoons of liquid (water, etc) and 1.5-2 tablespoons of pure extra virgin olive oil. That usually makes them produce a good lather. With glycerin base, use slightly less oil, as it doesn't mix as well with the glycerin and will sometimes separate from the soap if you use too much.

As for fragrances, the best fragrances come from essential oils, which can be pretty pricy, but they are highly concentrated and only take 20-30 drops to scent an entire pound of soap. Fragrances that are water or alcohol based are less potent as they can evaporate while your soap is still hot. Adding them in at a cooler temperature will increase their potency, as will simply adding more of the scent.

I also never make very big batches of soap because the bars you pour at the end of the batch usually turn out differently from the first few you pour. I typically only make 2 bars at a time whether each bar is 2oz or 4oz, that way the soap while it pours is at a similar temperature during each pour, which gives each of your soaps a more consistent texture the whole way through.

Thanks, that makes sense b/c i do have really hard water-lots of limestone. Can I re-melt the soap bars and then add the olive oil to it or does it have some kind of adverse effect on its composition when you heat/cool and re-heat more than once?

You can remelt it if you do it slowly so it won't burn. You may also want to get a bottle of purified water to add to the melted soap to make them sud up properly.

yey for teamwork! lol XD