Handmade Lavender Eucalyptus Crockpot Soap

With the holidays approaching I've been making homemade soaps to put in my gift baskets.

Today's soap is a Lavender Eucalyptus Tea Tree Oil scented formula I dreamed up for my daughter, she loves the smell of Tea Tree Oil and I like the combination of all three fragrances together.
This soap recipe is simple but makes a nice hard bar of soap and has great moisturizing qualities plus wonderful lather.

I have a picture tutorial today of how to make this soap in the Crock Pot, also known as hot process soap.  The above picture is mostly gathering my supplies.

A close up picture of the oils that need to melt in the Crock Pot turned on to low temperature.  When everything melts but the Beeswax I turned it on to high for 20 minutes to melt the Beeswax.  

The oils and beeswax have melted.

Beeswax melts at a much higher temperature than most of the oils used in soap making so I turned off the crock pot and let the oil mixture cool to about 110 degrees.

Since I need to wait for my oils to cool I've waited to mix my lye/water solution till now. 

I have a pitcher with white vinegar and soapy water ready to neutralize any lye that I made to clean up.

Supplies for the lye and water solution.

Yes, I do wear the gloves and protective goggles and they look funny but that's okay.

I'd also like to note I use distilled water when I make soap, our water here is hard and full of minerals that don't make nice soap.

Carefully measure the lye.  The bowls and utensils I use for soap making and lye are only used for soap making.  In the next step of mixing the lye and water together it's very important to add the lye to the water and stir carefully not the other way around.  If you do it the other way around you could have an eruption and get burned by the lye.

The lye solution will cool in the sink while I wait for my oils in the Crock Pot to cool to about 110 degrees.

When the oil mixture reaches approximately 110 degrees I carefully pour the lye solution into the crock pot with the oils.  Stir gently using my stick blender then turn it on to stir until I have the consistency of pudding.

This is where we're making soap!  The mixture will reach what's called trace.  Trace is where when you lift your stick blender out of the soap the soap drips back into the crock pot leaves a trace on top.

Next we put the top back on the crock pot, turn it on low and let it cook and go through the gel stage.  Pictured above is after one hour on low.  Can you see the white spot in the middle?  It's not quite there yet so I set the timer for another 15  minutes to cook and I'll check again.

After cooking 15 minutes longer on low in the crock pot all the soap has gelled.  Now it's time to add the fragrances.  Turn the crock pot off and remove the crock from the heating pot if you can.

These are my essential oils I wanted to add for a nice smell.  

Mixing in the essential oils.

Glop your soap into your mold.  This is a 5 pound soap mold that I've modified a little so I can make and mold smaller batches of soap.   

Next I smooth out the top and pack it down a little using a piece of parchment paper.

This picture shows the back of my foil covered cardboard insert being held by an acrylic stamping block to make my soap mold a little smaller.

My last picture is the finished soap.  I took it out of the mold several hours later and cut it into nine one inch bars.  It will take about two weeks for the soap to dry out into nice hard bars, it is ready for use right away though if you just can't wait to try out your new soap like my family! 

I have the soap recipe for you in case you like to try it:

Lavender Eucalyptus Tea Tree Oil Beeswax Soap

Beeswax	0.50oz	01.6%
Castor Oil	3.50oz	10.9%
Lard	28.00oz	87.5%
5% Lye (Sodium Hydroxide) Amount	4.152oz
Ounces of liquid recommended	10.56oz
Yields	46.71oz

Current Batch (total oil weight): 32.00oz

Oil Weight gramsounces

My Notes:
Use the recipe above and substitute: 120 drops Lavender Essential Oil
120 drops Eucalyptus Essential Oil
60 drops Tea Tree Essential Oil
For the Orange Essential Oil & honey

This recipe will make a nice disinfecting soap, good for blemish prone skin and it smells good too.

Changing the fragrance of this soap is as easy as changing the essential oils or adding fragrance oils to the mixture right before it goes into the soap mold.   I'd use 5 -  10 % fragrance to the weight of the oils in the soap recipe.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my soap making process!

Thanks for visiting my blog today -

Linky Parties:

Clever Chicks

 Project Inspire

Gingerly Made