Your first soap

[0115d8cf]

Whether it was 10 years, 10 months, or even 10 minutes ago, everyone has to start somewhere, right? Share!

Me:
I bought some supplies off Amazon and set out to make a lavender soap scented with lavender EO. Pretty standard. It turned out fine -- except I had partial gel, which wasn't a big deal, but I was determined to make it perfectly the first time.

So, I rebatched... in the microwave, after cutting it into cubes, like m&p. I used every one of those sad, lumpy, slightly burnt bars out of spite.

 

[Cellador]

My first soap was a bastille bar- mostly olive oil, with a little coconut and jojoba oils added. No scent or color. I also got a partial gel, which is barely visible now.

I miscalculated the size of the mold and ended up with a really odd-sized loaf. I ended up cutting them into small squares, perfect for hand-soap.

Although it took a long time to cure, I still think it was a good recipe for a first timer. No major surprises and just enough oils to get me used to measuring all the components.

 

[toxikon]

Let's see... I started with Brambleberry. The earliest order confirmation I can find from them was in 2011! And I ordered:

Shea Butter (1 lb)
Coconut Oil (7 lbs)
Palm Oil (7 lbs)
Applejack Peel Fragrance Oil
Butter Cream And Snickerdoodle Fragrance Oil

I assume I followed a beginner Soap Queen recipe, something like Palm 30%/CO 30%/OO 30%/10% Shea. I just followed the ounce measurements on their website, never heard of a "lye calculator"!

I think I was just looking for ideas for Christmas gifts. I did that for a long time - just doing one batch every year in November then forgetting about soapmaking. The real addiction came last year when I found this forum and got sucked in. Now I'm totally addicted and make my own recipes! (And buy all my oils at the grocery store, hehe.)

 

[lionprincess00]

My first batch, I had a cast on from wrist surgery lol. It was a fo tester into 5 small rounds in a silicone mold. I had a tiny batch for this. It was co 68g (30%), and olive oil 159g (70%).
Bb fos were omh, almond, sandalwood cybilla, omh blended with something I labeled SH (uh, totally at a loss as to that one), and said SH in one puck.

Second soap was
Co 25%, castor 5%, olive 25%, rice bran 10%, shea 10%, sweet almond 20%, cocoa butter 5%, goats milk and flax seed added with a cocoa pdr pencil line, 6% sf.

Thankfully my recipes have mellowed from THAT one lol.
Now I use lard, castor, co, and almond OR avocado oil. Sf has reduced to appx 2%

 

[BrewerGeorge]

My first batch was perhaps overly ambitious, but turned out okay. 1/3 each of olive, coconut, and lard, "full" water, scented with BB's Wasabi (which I still use today) and colored with French green clay. It made pretty good soap. This was about 3 years ago and I used the last of it this spring.

 

[Kittish]

My first batch was an attempt at a citrus soap. I came up with my own recipe, which included stearic acid (I wanted to be sure I came out with nice, hard bars). Most of the recipes/tutorials I'd seen said to melt and add stearic separately in recipes that used it but they never said why. I didn't. Melted it with the rest of my oils. Added my lye. Added my ground dried orange peel, and my 10x orange EO (not nearly enough of it, either). Stuck my stick blender in and and turned that puppy on... Damn near instant thick trace. Globbed it into a mold and stuck it in the oven, with the oven on at 200*F. Turned the oven off after 15 minutes or so, successfully resisted the temptation open the door and take a look. Decided for some reason that I needed to turn the oven back on long enough to bring it back up to temp an hour or so later. The finished soap has no scent, is kind of rubbery, is riddled with stearic globs, and is a little on the scratchy side from the orange peel. It also makes lather like nobody's business, with practically no effort at all. Oh, and I hadn't yet found this site when I made this soap, so my information on how to zap test was... a bit out of date. Yes. I Licked My Soap. But only one bar, and only from that one batch (it didn't zap, but it also didn't taste very nice).

 

[Rusti]

Mine was a Soap Queen recipe too. 30/30/30 Palm, Olive and coconut I think. There might still be a scrap of a bar around the house someplace. I didn't like it much after I started making my own recipes. I'm one of those for whom too much CO can be an issue. I didn't color it, but I did use their tobacco and bay scent!

 

[Viore]

My first soap used oils from the grocery store, a recipe that included 35% coconut oil, and fragrance oil from Michaels (yes, the kind meant for M&P soap). I had read a lot on this forum so I recognized the ricing, which I tried to stick blend into submission. Got a nice green swirl on it (I don't remember where the coloring came from, probably Michaels also) and let it sit up in the mold overnight. The next day when I cut it, it had lye pockets so I rebatched it on the stove. Pretty green swirl turned into pea green mashed potatoes. The Sweet Pea fragrance stayed though, and after a 4 week cure I was able to use the bars in the shower.

 

[bumbleklutz]

My first ever soap was about 12 years ago. It was a "blender soap" recipe that I found online using Crisco, distilled water, and Red Devil Lye. (Anyone else remember Red Devil? It was a much simpler time when you could buy lye in the grocery store. ) Everything was weighed with a spring type diet scale from the grocery store that was maybe accurate to the 1/2 ounce. It was scented with ylang ylang eo; just because that was the one that smelled good at the health food store...LOL.

I don't recommend that anyone try this method. Quite frankly, I am amazed that it worked at all, but it did; at least to an extent. I'm even more amazed that I didn't end up with a huge mess or a trip to the ER.

Here is the procedure; just to show how little I knew about soap making at the time, and why it's important to learn proper techniques and use good information.

AKA how to (NOT) make soap in 25 easy steps.

1. Weigh water using bouncy inaccurate scale, dump into blender.
2. Weigh lye, again with the bouncy scale; dump into blender.
3. Weigh Crisco. Why won't the pointer on this scale stop bouncing?!! dump into blender.
4. Dump eo in blender, don't bother to weigh.
5. Place lid on blender.
6. Throw kitchen towel over lid.
7. Turn blender on to lowest setting while holding down lid with towel.
8. Hold on for dear life.
9. Blend until its the consistency of pudding.
10. Dump/scrape mixture into a mold. I used an old Rubbermaid food storage container.
11. Hide in a cabinet to cure.
12. Wait four weeks.
13. Chisel soap out of Rubbermaid container.
14. Wash hands with shards of chiseled soap.
15. Rinse hands for several minutes to get rid of burning slippery sensation.
16. Apply large amount of lotion to hands.
17. Take several ibupfrofen tablets for headache brought on by overuse of ylang ylang eo.
18. Wait four more weeks because it needs "more cure time" to be mild.
19. Repeat steps 11 through 17.
20. Repeat steps 11 through 18.
21. Learn about undissolved lye and what a soap being "lye heavy" means.
22. Wait four more weeks, and hope it mellows.
23. Learn about DOS.
25. Chuck the whole mess in the trash and learn about soap making, lye safety, proper measuring scales, and lye calculators. Chuck blender in the trash because the blades and gasket have been destroyed by lye. Open adult beverage of choice and repeat as necessary.

 

[mommycarlson]

bumbleklutz, literally had tears in my eyes while reading your post!

I read 6 soaping books and researched for 6 months before making my first batch. I was nervous but I figured, I have covered all my bases what could possibly go wrong? HA! How little I actually knew! My first batch was a disaster. Way too complicated of a recipe and it totally seized up on me when I added the EO's (cheap junk from Amazon) I was shaking, crying and sweating while making that first batch.
I turned to this forum for help, many wonderful people responded and I rebatched the soap the next day. It turned out to be a lovely soap. Thankfully I have not had that situation happen again, I've had soap thicken and misbehave but thanks to everyone here who has helped me in the last few years, I have been much more equipped to handle it.

You know better, you do better right?

 

[maxine289]

I had good luck with my first batch. In Dec. 2016, I bought a kit from Bulk Apothecary and it had everything I needed in it. I made it almost exactly according to directions except that I used too much charcoal so instead being white with black accents, the entire batch was gray, but the soap was great. I was HOOKED and now I think about soap all day, every day and make it several times a week since then. I've learned so much in the last 10 months and look forward to refining my craft with the help of this forum. The forum has really been great. Thanks to everyone who participates and shares their knowledge.

 

[Obsidian]

My first batch was a goat milk soap made with more crisco then I should have used, along with coconut and OO. It was unscented/uncolored but the red silicone mold I used turned the outside of the loaf orange, looked like cheddar cheese.

After it was a few months old, I rebatched, added some peppermint EO and ground peppermint leaves. Looked ok but didn't use enough EO, never was a good soap, got moved to the back of the closest and forgot about. Eventually went in the garbage, I didn't even keep the pictures lol.

 

[Rusti]

My first ever soap was about 12 years ago. It was a "blender soap" recipe that I found online using Crisco, distilled water, and Red Devil Lye. (Anyone else remember Red Devil? It was a much simpler time when you could buy lye in the grocery store. ) Everything was weighed with a spring type diet scale from the grocery store that was maybe accurate to the 1/2 ounce. It was scented with ylang ylang eo; just because that was the one that smelled good at the health food store...LOL.

I don't recommend that anyone try this method. Quite frankly, I am amazed that it worked at all, but it did; at least to an extent. I'm even more amazed that I didn't end up with a huge mess or a trip to the ER.

Here is the procedure; just to show how little I knew about soap making at the time, and why it's important to learn proper techniques and use good information.

AKA how to (NOT) make soap in 25 easy steps.

1. Weigh water using bouncy inaccurate scale, dump into blender.
2. Weigh lye, again with the bouncy scale; dump into blender.
3. Weigh Crisco. Why won't the pointer on this scale stop bouncing?!! dump into blender.
4. Dump eo in blender, don't bother to weigh.
5. Place lid on blender.
6. Throw kitchen towel over lid.
7. Turn blender on to lowest setting while holding down lid with towel.
8. Hold on for dear life.
9. Blend until its the consistency of pudding.
10. Dump/scrape mixture into a mold. I used an old Rubbermaid food storage container.
11. Hide in a cabinet to cure.
12. Wait four weeks.
13. Chisel soap out of Rubbermaid container.
14. Wash hands with shards of chiseled soap.
15. Rinse hands for several minutes to get rid of burning slippery sensation.
16. Apply large amount of lotion to hands.
17. Take several ibupfrofen tablets for headache brought on by overuse of ylang ylang eo.
18. Wait four more weeks because it needs "more cure time" to be mild.
19. Repeat steps 11 through 17.
20. Repeat steps 11 through 18.
21. Learn about undissolved lye and what a soap being "lye heavy" means.
22. Wait four more weeks, and hope it mellows.
23. Learn about DOS.
25. Chuck the whole mess in the trash and learn about soap making, lye safety, proper measuring scales, and lye calculators. Chuck blender in the trash because the blades and gasket have been destroyed by lye. Open adult beverage of choice and repeat as necessary.

Geez, if my first batch had gone like that I probably would have never tried again! It's a great (funny) story to look back on, but wow!

 

[Dahila]

My first was uncolored unscented, 30 palm 20 CO, 5 Castor, 30 lard and the rest OO. It came out ok and we used every piece of that

 

[jcandleattic]

When I first started making soaps on a regular basis, there was no such thing as forums such as these. There were yahoo groups, but even that concept was so new that not a lot of people were using it.
I made candles, and soaps just seemed like the natural progression.
I had made a few M&P soaps here and there for a couple years before deciding to give CP a try.

And the rest, as they say, is history. That was almost 15 years ago. (20 for candles) And I've loved every minute of it.

 

[dixiedragon]

My first soap recipe was from a book "Better Basics for the Home". I made it over Christmas break when I was in college....so this was 2001 or 2002 or so. I've still got the book. Not sure what was in it...I want to say canola and olive? I decided to divide the batch, scent half with lavender EO and half with mint EO (colored green). I also decided to add camellia buds to it, because reasons? Because nature? No idea. I used Gladware for molds.

It turned out great! Except the buds were brown.

 

[RockinRodeoChick]

Haha! These stories are great.
I researched for months and months and bought what I needed a little at a time. I used mp coloring from mucheals and a 3 in pvc pipe for a mold. Didn't come out half bad. I think i might still have a bar around somewhere. Although, they eventually developed dos. This was almost 10 years ago. Definitely improved since then.

 

[IrishLass]

My first batch (made in 2005) ended up lye heavy...all 3 pounds of it. Yep- in for a penny, in for 3 pounds! lol I used a 'holy trinity' recipe that I had found online. Thankfully, it was not scented or colored, so no losses there. The cause of the lye heaviness was due to a superfatting miscalculation/misunderstanding on my part.

I made such a big batch because I had a plan. My plan was to make a big enough batch to supply me with enough unscented/uncolored soap gratings/noodles to last me through several months of making, scenting, coloring individual, re-batched bars of soap whenever the whim hit me, without me having to break out the lye each time. I was such a nervous Nelly about working with lye back then that I figured the fewer times I had to work with it, the better. Little did I know how quickly my attitude was soon about to change.

Unfortunately, I did not know at the time how to save my lye-heavy batch (although I do now), so I ended up tossing it, and then proceeded to kick myself over all those wasted oils and wasted lye before going back to the proverbial drawing board.


IrishLass

 

[psfred]

I was lucky, had this lovely forum plus the internet, so I made shaving soap. Used it today, in fact (and will be for the next year at this rate, I think) -- unscented, it's soft enough to knead in FOs in parts.

Later versions are better, but it's still great shaving soap.

 

[artemis]

When he was 9, Gaius decided to make peanut soap for his George Washington Carver project. After hunting online, I finally found a simple recipe involving 33% OO, 33% CO and 33% of whatever else we wanted-- peanut, obviously. The instructions were straightforward, so I jumped right in. He was so proud to give some to his teacher and tell his friends we made it ourselves. I still have a couple pieces left and they are only just now getting a couple orange spots.