My First M&P Soap

This is the first Melt & Pour soap I made in the soap making workshop. It is called "The Summer Bliss". It symbolized the moment I turned my sight from the computer to outside of the window, I suddenly realized that for a long time, I have't noticed how beautiful the nature is, the clear blue sky, the green tree, and smell of the fresh flower in the air....I think most of us are like that, we struggle for everyday's life. We almost forgot why are we here. I wish to make a lots of playful soaps that can remind people of their happy memories.

Even though I had began to make my own cosmetic products for a few years already, I still haven't tried to make soap until recently. For some reason I had tried to stayed away from making soaps. I guessed might be because my aesthetic teacher had told me never use soap to cleanse the skin. But now I know that there are differences between the industry made soap and the hand made soap. The beauty of the hand made soap is that it is so soft and gentle. You could add so many different kinds of ingredients in it to make it unique just for yourself and for your love ones. Even though there are still so many debates on hand making cosmetics products, to me it is a fun and creative hobbit that gets me so addicted to.

There are different types of hand made soap:

1. Melt and Pour (MP): It is the easiest and safest method. You can also have kids to join you for this fun soap making method. The advantages are the process time and waiting time is short, also you can use the finish product right away. So what we need to do is use the soap base that you purchased from your soap supplier (if you not sure where to get them, you could find it from Bulk Barn, but I've never purchased from there. I wasn't sure ingredients in their soap base). So after it is melted into liquid form, you can add your favorite sense, color, and try to make some decoration and design with it.

2. Cold Process (CP): It is the most popular method in hand made soap business. I heard that you need a license to make CP soap in Canada. But I tried to research on that, couldn't get any information that says about soap making license. Anyway, this process is done by combining Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH or Lye) with oils. Then a chemical reaction called "saponification" occurred. It takes about 4-6 weeks for the soap ready to be used. Advantage of such method is that the whole process is done under low temperature. Therefore the micro-nutrients in the oil will be best kept. 

3. Hot Process (HP): I havn't tried this method yet. It has similar steps as cold process. The soap needs to be heated until reach a stage called the gel phase. The cure time is shorter then  cold process. Normally takes about 2 weeks.