The cold process of soap making is fairly easy to do, even for beginners or advanced soap makers. Before starting the soap making process, be sure to have all of your ingredients ready. Aside from fats and lye solution, you will also need fragrance oils, dyes, soap cutters and mixers, soap making herbs and wooden molds as these are much easier to extract soap from. Once you have your ingredients ready, you can now start with the soap making process.

Never start making soaps without protective equipment. Lye is a very basic substance that will really damage your skin. It causes the skin to corrode and take off the top most layer of the skin. At the same time, inhaling the fumes of lye can harm your lungs. Make sure that you wear a face mask, gloves and goggles whenever you are dealing with lye.

Start soap making by adding lye to water with constant mixing. Never add water to lye since it can cause lye to spurt out of the container. The recommended ratio of lye to water is 1:3 and make sure that you follow this ratio. The lye and water mixture is expected to heat up so you need to make sure that you use a container that can withstand heat.

Oil is then added to the mixture to complete the process of saponification. This is the part when the mixture becomes soap. Always note the right ratio to use for the soap base. Too much oil will soften the soap so it will not cure and harden. Too little oil added will not react with all the lye so the soap will become too basic.

Once saponification has taken place, it is now time to add the other ingredients to your soap. Dyes, fragrance oils and soap making herbs can be added depending on what properties you want your soap to have. Mix all the ingredients until the mixture becomes homogenous.

The mixture can now be poured into wooden molds or other shapes of molds that you can think of. Be creative in thinking of ways to design your soap. Afterwards, you can still use your soap cutters to carve and create additional designs on your soap.

The molds should be kept insulated for 18-36 hours for the curing process to occur. This can be done by wrapping your molds with several layers of towel to ensure that no heat is able to escape. After the 36 hours, the soap should have solidified up to some extent and these will be ready for cutting and designing. The last step would involve airing the soaps for 3-8 weeks for them to fully harden and be usable in the bathroom.

The cold process of soap making is very easy to do. You can try and try different soap designs and ingredients to get the product which you actually like. Once you have perfect this, you can now start with more ideas for making soaps.