The Beginning of a Soap Maker: Soap Saturdays

The following article will be one of a series of posts about soap making and soap related topics. It is our desire to post an article on this topic every Saturday so you could follow along and learn about all the different aspects of making soap and the satisfaction it brings.

As I've mentioned in our About Us section, I began making soap when I was still living at home with my parents, and my older sister had a few milking goats, so I had the bright idea one day to make a batch of soap. I'm the type of person that likes to try new things, partly just to know that I can do it, and with making soap I thought it would be a good way to use more of the abundance of milk you get from a good milking goat. My sister's goats were Saanen and Alpine cross goats. They had the body confirmation of a Saanen, but they had the sweet attitude and coloring of an Alpine. Best of all, they produced a fair amount of fresh milk.

I began my soap making adventure by spending 4 months researching the topic of soap before I made my first batch. Every 3 weeks or so I'd order more books through our local library system and read them whenever I had a spare moment. I also read many Internet articles about soap making. Those months of learning were so helpful! There was a lot to learn about soap making, from the different processes to produce it, the myriad choices of ingredients, the different uses of soap, ways to package and market soap for selling, and in general how to simply have a lot of fun along the way.

I also had to learn about skin care. This was a totally new subject for me. I never realized that I naturally had fairly good skin, and so it had never occurred to me to use moisturizers or do any regime for keeping my skin clear and beautiful. Don't hate me for it. I married into a family that struggles to have good skin, and I now have a son that gets patches of eczema, so I have experienced and seen firsthand how many people are not as fortunate as I was. In soap making, you need to have an idea of what kind of a result you want, so you know what type of soap to produce.

In order to start making soap, I would suggest you first figure out what type of soap you want to create. Do you want something easy, like a glycerine based soap where you simply melt down the glycerine and add your own flare? Or do you want to jump into the process of starting from scratch with raw materials?

What is your soap going to be for? For skin care? For laundry soap? For cleaning purposes? What type of skin do you have (oily, dry, combination skin)? Do you want fragrances from chemicals or from plant based sources? And where can you get your hands on a good recipe? What about selling your soap? Packaging? Marketing? These are all questions that have varied answers, and which we will be covering on our Soap Saturdays.

I will help to guide you along the path that I have taken, in going from simply wanting to try making a batch of soap and deciding what I wanted, to the soap making turning into a business that I never expected or foresaw, but which I thoroughly enjoy. I look forward to our Saturdays together, and hope that you have as much fun as I have had in learning about the art of making soap, and the satisfaction it brings.

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