Here Comes The Sun soap recipe

In this recipe, I used rich oils and butters that are available in craft shops online and in physical stores. We will also use dried calendula flower petals to create a soft exfoliant that will be used for a portion of the soap.

The recipe holds a 1.5 kg batch using a loaf mold.

OILS
700g Coconut oil
100g Olive oil
100g Cocoa butter
100g Shea butter

WATER
330g Distilled water

SODIUM HYDROXIDE
158g NaOH

ADDITIVES
20g Calendula petals
40g Coco Betaine (a surfactant)

Now if you have never made soaps before, I suggest you proceed to learning the basics of cold-process soap making before you attempt to make this.

BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE. Weigh everything. Prepare all your ingredients so you don't go back and forth on your weighing scale. Time is of the essence!

FIRST. Create your lye water. Mix the lye TO THE water and never the other way around. If you're an experienced soap maker you know what trouble awaits if you do the opposite. Always always lye to water or else you'll have a toxic volcanic fuming mess.

SECOND. Wait for the lye water to cool down to room temperature. This is a very important step as this will prevent cracking. Read it on a post I made about cracking.

THIRD. Melt your butters. I weighed my butters and olive oil in one container. After such, you can opt to melt them on a double boiler set up or simply, the microwave! As I am a lazy peach, I do the microwave. Just make sure not to overheat them as it may destroy the properties of your rich loving oils. (And quite price-y ones)

> Dissolve your colorants. Here I am using neon pink and neon yellow. In another batch, we do not put coloring and we just incorporate the calendula petals.

FOURTH. After all your butters have melted, mix them with your main oil - coconut oil. We, in the Philippines, are fortunate enough that coconut oil is practically everywhere. 

FIFTH. Now, mix your lye water to your oils. Make sure to mix them well with a stick blender or manually with a mix until you reach trace. Make sure they're well incorporated as this is as an important step as weighing your ingredients.

SIXTH. Now youre in trace, add your batter to the pink, yellow and calendula preparations. Mix them thoroughly making sure youre not getting too thick in the process. Then add your fragrance oil. This step requires you to panic and move fast as so much fragrance oils sold here are accelerators!

SEVENTH. Put them to your mold and swirl! Leave to harden for around 12 hours then cut.

2018 blog posts

I'm back! It took me quite ages to post again. As some of you know, I'm currently in post-graduate school, therefore, I barely had time to be in my craft. But now I have balanced the time to help my co-soapmakers in the Philippines. So, I treat you all with a new post!

Check them out under the 2018 tab. See you there!