Hey bubblefairy, What kind of soap did you make with parsley? What is chickweed? I haven't made soap in awhile and now is probably not the time to get back to it. Our house is up for sale - a showing every couple of days it seems, sigh. I will be so happy when it's sold. I used a book, The Soapmakers Companion, wonderful recipes, everything turned out great. Well, the milk and honey soap was a bit soft. Maybe I should have let it cure longer but it was so nice and smelt good enough to eat. I made one with calendula petals from my garden so I understand where you're coming from - totally addictive, fun and everybody who received a bar of soap as a present acted as if I was a genius.

I haven't made any soap. I'm looking for soap base recipes. I have 1 soap base recipe, the person that supplied that took pics and inclued them in the recipe. That soap base turns a red-ish clear color (from the pics). I have no ingredents because I have no recipes minus the one I mentioned. I am looking for Saop Base recipes that come out a white-ish to clear color. It doesn't have to be a perfect "clear" it can be cloudy. I just want to be able to add my own color to it and it be that color. Thank You

depends on if you are doing melt & pour glycerin soap or if you are making cold proccess soap. If it's melt & pour, (M&P) it's easier to buy it already made into goatsmilk base....or you can ge plain & add your own goatsmilk powder to it. Then either fragrance/essential oil. This you can use immediately. If it's cold process you want to do, look on the web for recipies....it would involve palm, coconut, olive or vegetable oils (or a combination), lye, goatsmilk or goatsmilk poweder & fragrance/essential oil. THis has to age 4-6 weeks before using it. If you want to do cold process (CP) soap, it might be easier to start with a plain recpe first, then move to the more complicated ones. Good luck....both are fun to do. I'm just to impatient for the CP, so I went to the M&P. Plus the colors are brighter, & the scents can be made stronger in M&P...it's much more forgiving than CP. Hazel

"I want to make a lot of soap this spring and summer. I've been thinking about doing this since I moved onto farm land " Go slow at first when making soap, they're many mistakes that can be made and some experimentation should be done first. After the first recipe has been made it will be at least 1 month until you get a good idea of what you have accomplished. I know you'll feel like an expecting parent soon after you make your first batch. "I have some nice ingrediants growing on my property,..." Each ingredient should and take some investigation to do it right; methods, amounts etc.. "I understand that different ingrediants call for different amounts of lye, but is there a general ratio known of how much lye is used for how much final bar soap product? If I were to order an excess, are sealing pale containers capable of storing a bulk of lye for a long time? Is airtight good enough to store it well?" The ingredients that you mention that you might grow on your farm do not require any lye, only fats and oils "How would I go about getting essences of things into bars of soap. Such as pine scent, or the patchuli or chamomile and other flowers... Would a chamomile-scented soap be acheived by incorporating a chamomile-tincture into the soap recipe somehow?" Tinctures, I believe are alcohol based and wont play nice with your soap making. I have added chamomile into soap by steeping the chamomile in warmed olive oil for 4 hours, then using the olive oil (straing out the leaves), in the recipe. This will give you the benefits ofcamomile as well as the colour(yep, I'm Canadian):) What is the simplest soap I can make for my first trial? ... ie can I use just lye, water, and corn oil for my first run at it? I would use olive oil, the Pomice kind, it's cheap and you don't have to use the high quality stuff. And, it makes a pretty good simple soap; you may even come back to this soap recipe years down the road and some people like it even non-scented Good luck!