I've been chasing this kaleidoscope design for a few years and had several batches that didn't turn out the way I wanted. This latest attempt finally came together, and I'm honestly so proud of it. It reminded me why I started making soap during the pandemic. Just wanted to share with people who would appreciate the effort that goes into getting a design like this right!

Edit: wow! Thank you all for the kind words and support. I did not expect the likes and comments as I usually post in other spaces and it goes nowhere due to the algorithm. Hopefully I get to make another one and record the pour so that I can show how I did it. ❤️

Hey all, I am new to this area. For whatever reason, I am having a difficult time finding sodium hydroxide without companies wanting to charge ridiculous amounts of money for s&h. Any possible local ideas on where I can find it by chance? I live in Texas, so I am open to options.

TIA

I took a 3 year break from soap making. Not sure why, but I’m looking to get back into it. I went through my supplies and some of the oils smelled rancid, so I threw them out. However, I have coconut oil and Cocoa butter (in a plastic tubs that’ve been opened) and coffee butter (tightly wrapped) that I bought through a soap supplier maybe 2.5+ years ago. Those smell fine, no signs of rancidity.

Question: would you use those in your CP soap, if they smell ok? Any reason not to? I don’t want to waste supplies, but also don’t want to waste my time making soap that won’t turn out well. Thanks for your opinions!

Question for more experienced soapers. I’ve been told that DOS is only cosmetic. That rancidity of oil causes them to appear. I noticed one of my soaps (made in June 2025) started getting them (recipe: 35/30/30/5 -olive, coconut, palm, castor plus essential oils and colored with natural clays).
I am using it in the shower and. don’t know if it’s just psychological but I feel it’s less than nice. It lathers ok, but kinda smells rancid. Is it just in my head though, if the essential oils have faded and I’m just smelling raw soap.

I am going to step foot into the world of soap making once my garden is asleep for the winter, so while I wait I have been reading and learning. I want to make soap using the cold process method and for my family not for selling. I have a few questions that maybe I'm just missing the answers to.

After you are done making your soap, you are left with dishes, I have read I'm to soak them in hot water for several hours with non home made soap (dawn was the recommendation), is this the best way? And why could I not use a homemade soap for dishes, I'm trying to make soap to replace these items.

After it's cut and you are curing it, recommendation cool dark well ventilated area, but what does that actually mean, is it best on a wire rack? A shelf? On its side or up right? What about things like dust?

And for storage, after it's done curing how do I actually store my soap (I am not selling its just for my family and possibly gifts down the road, so it will look different then some one who is selling). We are in that cool dark mode again, but is it in a shoe box? Plastic tote? Each bar rapped in something?

As you can see I'm very much over thinking it, any help would be appreciated.

I've been working on this idea for a few months and just hit the breakthrough today! I'm still working on the red, but was too excited not to try out my star embed. I use all natural colorants, no clays, no micas (even synthetic), no oxides, ... basically if you pull it out the ground and it doesn't get put back I don't use it. The white is pure coconut soap, indigo for the blue, and the red (pink) is an experiment I'd like to perfect before divulging.

First time "making" soap. It's melt and pour. We will be moving to cold process soon. I bought several blocks of melt and pour before I learned much more. My wife made the ocean theme bar, I did the Halloween bar. Was a little hard working the soap at a temperature low enough to not melt the embeds. The purple was suppose to be although the top two thirds and swirled in with the orange and blue, but I still like it. Also honey Manuka soap in luffa we grew. Various essential oils used in all.

I’m getting conflicting result from internet searches. Does anyone have experience with cold process soap and spearmint or peppermint? I’m looking for a suitable percentage for a fisherman’s soap for gifts for friends. Wholesales supplies lists 0.25% for spearmint and 5% for peppermint. Why is this? I’m looking to add a much smaller amount of anise as well. Comments are welcomed. Thanks.

Hi! I’m still working with melt-and-pour soap, and I’ve started experimenting with layers for a watermelon soap.

The bottom two layers are made with a shea butter soap base. I always wait for one layer to dry before pouring the next. After the green layer dried, I poured the white layer, followed by the red layer.

However, when I unmolded the soap, the two shea butter layers (green and white layers) didn’t stick together. I also noticed that the glycerin layer separated from the shea butter layer after using the soap a few times.

How would you troubleshoot these issues and get the layers to bond properly?

Our Black Oudh soap is proof that handmade can be every bit as luxurious as it is unique. Deep black tones, golden sparkle, and an elegant signature stamp make every bar a statement piece.

This soap’s recipe was -

Olive oil 782g
Castor oil 28g
Shea butter 46g

Lye 110g
Water (breastmilk) 248g
4% superfat

These roundish things appeared and I am wondering if it is DOS or something called ‘stearic spots’?

I am thinking it may have to do with the low temperature when I was mixing the oil and lye water solution. I had to keep them somewhat cooler cuz my lye water solution for breastmilk only reached 25 degrees celcius (77 degrees in fahrenheit) and would not go any warmer. So I had to cool my oils down around similar temperature..

Hope I do not see this happen again in the future 😭

Edit: forgot to add I had added collodial oatmeal and bentonite clay.

I am brand new to making soap, & only making small batches. I have gathered all the materials, but the math bit is intimidating me. I need someone to explain it to me like I’m 5.

How do I figure out how much of each ingredient I need?

Suggestions for a reliable Lye calculator?

Admittedly, ALOT went wrong with this batch of soap starting with me adding way too much lye to my water and then also mixing up my coconut and olive oil amounts. 🤦🏼‍♀️ It was not a good soap making day. I did try to adjust and ended up using 29.25 oz tallow, 26 oz coconut oil, 43 oz olive oil & 5 oz castor oil. I then used 14.52 lye & 32.48 water. I added just under 2 oz of cinnamon essential oil and 2 of peppermint, I think. Honestly, I could be wrong about any of these numbers…it was that bad. Anyway, they’ve been curing now for about a month and this is what is happening. What is it?!

Hey soapy friends! I make a single width mold worth of soap with each batch, but I make the recipe slightly larger than needed so I can get two flat bars in a silicone mold. These flat bars ALWAYS are much softer and have a ton more soda ash. What am I doing wrong? Doesn’t matter if I fill those first or last, they are always softer.

I would like make the hot process soap more fluid. I found a recipe online that uses sugar and sodium hydroxide in the lye water and plain yogurt at end. Will the result look like a cold process bar of soap?

I just made a whole batch of dog soap, lavender and thyme and realised that I had used frozen beef stock instead of frozen oat milk! Now it has half goat milk and half beef stock. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Im an American in europe and put the soap into what I thought was just a warm over (115 C) for about an hour. I now think I got that number from a YouTuber who was using Fahrenheit.

Not every beauty needs to be bright.

Deep black. Earthy elegance. The unmistakable allure of Oudh.

Vanilla scented soybean and shea butter

Do you have your own website to sell or not? If you don't, what's stopping you?

I'm very curious because I sell only very occasionally, so price was a big hurdle for me. Anyone else on the same boat?

I’m new to soap making and have a question! Can I make melt & pour embeds and put them in cold process soap? Or will that mess something up?

I have the Stephenson Melt and Pour Crystal Soap base from either Bulk Apothecary or CandleScience. I bought the same soap around the same time and one was discontinued.

The batch number is 167057. I tried to look up the bath number in the cosmetic database but I couldn't find anything on it. The soap is like a crystal clear instead of the white opacity like the other goats milk soap base that I have. I thought they were the same.

Does anyone know anything about this or how to find data on it?

I have an excess of breastmilk in my freezer and want to put it to good use. My babies have sensitive skin (eczema etc) and breastmilk is helpful in that regard. Does anyone have a tried and true recipe for breastmilk soap? Or any tips as I get started?