Soapmaking

I’ve been thinking a lot about marketing and branding lately, about the power words hold over our purchases, about how we make decisions to buy things.

Of course I have an ulterior motive when I think about marketing; I want you to buy my soaps.

“Natural” is a word I see bandied around a lot when you’re looking at soap to buy.

Natural fragrances, natural colours, natural oils, natural everything.

It’s a big thing to claim your product is natural. Natural sells.

But I’m not using natural fragrances, so I can’t claim my soaps are “all natural”.

I’m okay with this, for a number of reasons.

On one hand, using fragrance loses me the natural label.

On the other hand, fragrance oils are rigorously tested, easy to blend, cheaper than essential oils, offer a wide variety of smells, are (mostly) easy to work with, and have more staying power than essential oils.

It’s good to note here, essential oils can be just as sensitising as fragrance oils. Cinnamon oil can cause skin irritation. Wintergreen also causes irritation. Sage oil is unsafe for pregnant women. Tarragon oil is suspected to be carcinogenic.

My point is, even natural things can be dangerous at high quantities.

I love some essential oils. Rose geranium smells gorgeous and sticks in soap. Peppermint is uplifting and gorgeous. Lavender smells great.

But I’m not averse to using synthetic fragrance in my soap to get the smells I love.

Especially as soap isn’t technically “natural”.

Soap is, in and of itself, a chemical.

To sell soap I have to register with NICNAS as a chemical manufacturer. If I buy soap making ingredients outside of Australia – including fragrances, essential oils, colourings – these need to be noted in my NICNAS registration under “chemical importation”.

There are laws and regulations that as a soap maker I have to follow.

Even more than this, it’s so important to follow the regulations so no one gets hurt.

Ingredient labelling laws are there for a reason. I’ve already had people approach me and ask what my ingredients are.

You know what I did? I told them.

It’s not a giant secret the things I put into my soap and I am required BY LAW, to have the details of my ingredients available at every point of sale. This means on my website when I finally begin selling, and in person at markets.

This doesn’t mean some wavey hands in the air declaration that nothing is chemical and everything will be fine.

No. It means every single ingredient, listed by volume.

It means being open and honest about ingredients, additives and colourings.

But it’s just soap you say.

And of course it is. But the process of making soap utilises a chemical reaction to turn one thing (oils) into soap using a catalyst (sodium hydroxide). It’s a chemical process through and through, so I’m not quite sure how any soap can be called natural.

The great thing about soap making is the chemical process. It’s so much fun to play at being a chemist in my kitchen. I combine some ingredients and BAM, exothermic reaction, saponification, SOAP.

It’s fantastic.

Even better though is knowing that while I use caustic soda to make soap, none remains in the final product. Soap isn’t a caustic product, otherwise no one would use it, except as a bizarre form of shower torture.

Side note: Did you know Dove bars aren’t soap?

Instead they’re something called syndet, which is a synthetic detergent. They have a lower ph than handmade soap.

Colloquially we call it soap. It’s a white bar, we take it into the shower, it gives bubbles and we get clean. It’s soap, right?

No.

Next time you’re in the supermarket, read the ingredients on a bar of Dove soap. Tell me how natural they sound.

A good syndet bar can feel amazing and be amazing on your skin, but it’s a completely different product to the one I’m selling.

So what’s the problem?

There isn’t one, really.

A good bar of handmade soap is a joy to use. Superfatting (the process of adding more oil than is needed, so some is left behind as free oil in the soap bar) can provide a good deal of moisturising properties. I find home-made soap slicks over my skin better, feels nicer and doesn’t leave me dry and itchy.

Provided you don’t have any sensitivities to fragrances, the small percentage of fragrance oil I use to give the beautiful smells shouldn’t cause any problems on your skin. And if you are sensitive (and many people are), I will have a range of unscented soaps to go along with the pretty smells.

Of course, we’re not in business yet and won’t be for a while – NICNAS registration is required in September of every year and I’m loathe to register three months before I need to pay my dues again – so a lot of this is a moot point.

But I promised when I began this journey that I would be open and honest about my processes and my ingredients, and so I am.

Soap making is a chemical process and I have a duty to be honest about that. I have a duty to my friends, family and fans to be completely honest about all my ingredients and about everything I am doing.

Soap making isn’t some great secret and I’m not going to lose out by being honest about the process.

It is a lot of fun though, and gratifying to see my hard work turning into a plethora of products to sell eventually.

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Easter, wow. It’s not my favourite holiday, despite the plethora of chocolate around. I wasn’t organised, mentally at least, for the chaos it was going to cause. Plus, two ASD children adjusting to the first school holidays of the season have made it interesting.

I think things are starting to smooth out now. No one has deliberately made Evelyn scream today – except for me when I forced her to have her face washed.

But onwards and upwards.

I registered a business name last night, and in the coming months we’ll be getting our business off the ground. No details yet – I can’t do anything until I register with NICNAS as a soap maker selling soap, and I refuse to pay them a registration fee now when I’ll have to pay again in September no matter what. Complex process, but it gives me a chance to get stock levels high, cure everything for at least two months and get ahead of the game.

In theory, anyway.

Above are three soaps I made on Easter Sunday. One gardenia, one lavender, one unscented. The swirls were a happy surprise from the heat of saponification.

Below are today’s soaps, still in their moulds and just finished gelling. They’re a honey brown colour, which wasn’t what I was aiming for, but turns out yellow ochre gets all temperamental when added to lye.

Scented with a honey and citrus blend, it’s a lovely warm smell. Not the sharp smell of my favourite lemon soaps (I’m still searching for a to-die-for lemon scent), but warm and inviting and I really like it.

I have been so busy, Internet. Between the soaps, the kids and obsessive reading of books to ignore everything going on around me, I haven’t been online much. Except of course when I spend hours researching soap boxes, only to discover that shipping is horrible and everything is ruined forever.

I gave up on boxes in favour of muslin bags. If I was super talented, I’d even screen print them, and while I probably could (I like screen printing) I doubt I have the time or energy.

Clearly I need more minions. Or unpaid interns.

Positions vacant. Apply within.

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Soap, man. SOAP.

I’ve decided soap is going to do what soap is going to do.

So there’s a process after you pour the soap called gelling. It’s an exothermic chemical reaction whereupon the soap batter hardens, heats up, turns into a gel like consistency and then cools down. It helps to harden your soap and it changes the texture, colours and smell a bit.

You can prevent gel by sticking freshly poured soap in the fridge or freezer for 24 hours. Or you can alternately promote gel by insulating your soap with towels to keep it warm.

Science, yo.

I mostly gel my soaps. It makes them harder, brightens the colours and makes them easier to unmould.

But I wanted to experiment with some ungelled soap. Mostly to compare textures, but also to compare longevity, bubbles and fragrance hold.

I made a gelled castile (1oo% olive oil), which went hard, plasticky feeling and cut easily after a day in the mould. I made the identical soap, refridgerated it to prevent gel, and then waited to cut.

The cutting window was so small, I’m pretty sure it came and went overnight. Probably around 2am.

I went to bed with soap too soft to cut, and woke up to a brick. A crumbling brick. Thankful for a big knife, I forced the cuts, watching my soap crumble around the edges.

Ungelled soaps 1. Veronica 0.

Ruling it a castile problem, I moved on to my regular recipe, but avoiding gel.

The second soap was gorgeous once I got it out of the mould. Until I tried to cut it. Everything crumbled. The soap itself was nearing too hard to cut and I was worried about it ending up like my castile.

Part of the problem was the round mould. A round soap is tricker to cut because there’s less surface area at the base to diffuse the pressure.

I should have left it alone for another day. Hindsight is a beautiful thing. After two hours of fiddling, I ended up with a bowl full of beautifully smelling soap crumbles I was forced to melt down in a rebatch.

Ungelled soaps 2. Veronica 0.

The next batch was an orange cream soap. I carefully poured and put it in the fridge. After 24 hours it was hard enough to unmould, but not hard enough to cut. The first slice crumbled briefly and I set it aside in the soap curing cupboard to wait a few days.

I am perpetually impatient. This causes problems for me.

It was a sunny day and the room was warm. Soapmakers will see where this was going. My ungelled soap warmed up a little bit, got all excited and tried to gel itself belatedly.

I hadn’t left it in the fridge long enough, clearly. See above, re impatience.

I realised it was going all liquidy in the middle before anything horrible happened, like the entire soap melting over my cupboard. Shoved it into my mould, and carefully popped it into the oven for three hours at 60C, forcing gel phase upon it.

You want gel? I’ll give you gel! ALL THE HEAT.

It turned into a lovely soap (I cut it this morning) with a beautiful orange fragrance. But it nearly didn’t work.

Ungelled soaps 3. Veronica 0.

So I decided, no more avoiding gel. I’m too impatient, I don’t have enough moulds and I like the ease of gelling. It’s only a personal preference thing after all, and I quite like the idea of my soaps being a little harder thanks to gel phase.

This morning, I made soap. “Reindeer Poo” scented. The website describes it as “Reindeer Poo begins with top notes of apples and pears; followed by middle notes of eucalyptus, pine, and geranium; and well-balanced with base notes of vanilla, cedarwood, and patchouli.

I found it strongly pine scented, and carefully I wrapped my soap with towels to keep it warm for gel phase. I tucked it in. I practically sung it a lullaby, hoping that gel phase would soften the pine scent.

You know what’s going to happen here don’t you?

The bastard thing didn’t gel.

All that insulation. All the care. All the careful primping and hoping and wishing and NADA.

Soaps 4. Veronica 0.

It’s Murphy’s law really. I want a gel, and it doesn’t happen. I try to avoid it, and everything goes to hell.

I’m hoping this week has been the last week of chaos in the soap making kitchen. I did get some good batches out of it. The crumbly castile feels lovely, and will make a great soap for me. The orange soap has a wonderful smell which may have been different if I’d successfully kept it opaque and soft. The champagne pomegranate rebatch has a lovely marbled pattern which I’m a big fan of.

And the Reindeer Poo soap?

Well I’m not sure. I’m leaving it alone overnight, in case it changes its mind and heats up.

I’m not holding out too much hope.

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