Ever Try Wading Through A Sea of Posts to Find One?

Okay, so I was perusing the Etsy forums yesterday and a particular post came up that made me mad, and then made me think.  The post was about people buying ready made soap in bulk(or not in bulk), slapping their own stickers on it and calling it handmade by them.  Selling bath and body products is hard enough without people doing this little bit of trickery...so I realized the only way you can tell if a person has indeed made the soap in question, is to ask that seller some questions.  As a soaper I am crazy nuts about my work.  I started out as a hobbyist with this and it grew into a business.  If anyone asks me questions, I go on and on about it....and I make sure the person who has asked the questions is walking away with my products for a new appreciation for truly handmade products.

Anyway, I am starting to ramble.  Back to my title question.  So I thought, on all my listings I will just direct my customers to a blog post I did over a year ago about making soap, it has some great pictures about the process...but do you think I can find that post now?  Noooooooo...so, I re post all the pictures here...for you to enjoy once again, and so that new and old customers can see what goes into what I do...and why the thought of people just cutting off soap from a slab that was made by someone else and then calling it their own to sell makes me sick to my stomach.

Cold Process Soap:

Oils in a pot...from my recipe cooling and getting ready to add the lye.  I take these pictures myself so forgive me if I don't take a picture of the lye and water mixture being poured into the pot of oils..that would be dangerous!

After the lye and water mixture has been added to the oils, a chemical reaction occurs, which is speeded up with the use of a stick blender.  This is the start of saponification:  where the oils are broken down and get thick, and turn milky.  In this picture I have just used the stick blender and am getting ready to add my color and fragrance.(again, I would have a picture of me using the stick blender, but that would be dangerous..as I take the pictures myself)

Home sweet home!  Once I have completed my batch, it is time to put the batch into a mold.  I use 5 pound molds and make one batch at a time.  This way, I can ensure the job is done right.  Each loaf is a labor of love.  Now, I let the loaf sit covered and insulated for 24-48 hours.  During this time the loaf will heat up because the lye mixture and oils are still going through a chemical reaction called the gel phase.  Once the loaf is unmolded and the bars are cut, the soap needs to sit for 4-6 weeks for the saponification process to complete, and for the bars to harden.  Once the bars are ready for sale, the lye is completely out of the bar, and all that is left behind is the wonderfully saponified oils that are now soap, and glycerin!

My curing rack.  This is an old picture but I think you get the point.  Cold and Hot process bars sit here and get rotated for 4-6 weeks.  Hot process soap does not really need to sit that long, but I like to let it sit and breathe before packaging.

And that is not really all there is to it, but that is the pictures I have.  Right now I am trying to put together a rather lengthy blog post about the terms that us soapers use and what they mean, plus some more pictures.  Be looking for that clean friends!