I had seen lots of people making their own liquid hand soap from just 3 ingredients, grated bar soap, glycerin, and water, and I usually get annoyed at having to buy liquid hand soap so often. I mean, really! Why is the stuff so expensive??? I know it's mostly water, but until the magic that is pinterest, I had no idea I could make it myself!
I had also heard that if you microwave Ivory soap, it does fun things.
Put the two together, and BAM! Some good, clean fun!
I don't have any kids to do this with, but I do have a fiancee who is open to any type of fun, so I began with this. We put it in the microwave for 1 minute increments, each time watching in amazement as it grew bigger and bigger!!
It looks delicious!! Looks can be deceiving though, believe me!! haha!
Anyways...once the fluffy soap cooled off (that cake is full of steam on the inside, be careful!) it gets kinda brittle and crumbly. I figured, hey, I can just break it up into little pieces instead of having to grate it, right?
So into the pot with one gallon of water and 1 tablespoon of the glycerin.
I let it 'cook' on low heat until it looked like all the soap had dissolved. It just looked like soapy water, which really, is what is was. Then I turned off the heat and just let it sit there until it got cold. Enter the reason it took me so long to actually complete this project.
The first time it came out a little too thick.
See? I remembered reading that you can just add water and mix it in with a mixer to make it not so thick. So I tried.
I just guessed at how much water to put in. When I was done, I had enough soap to fill a gallon jug + an old liquid soap container that I had.
It took another two weeks to use up the soap we already had in the dispensers, and when it did I got very excited. I get to try my homemade soap now!!!! That didn't last very long, because when I pulled out my gallon jug that had been full of soap, this is what I saw:
What happened??? How could my beautiful liquid soap have turned into this thick, clumpy mess??
I'm still not sure if it's because the soap didn't actually melt all the way or if it's because the soap was cold when I tried to mix in more water. Whichever it was, I went back to square 1...or square 2 really, and heated it back up on the stove. I added a tsp more glycerin and some more water too, just to be safe.
After letting it get cool again (and having to transfer half into another container because of all the water I added) This time it turned out too thin!!! Ahhhh! I just can't get it right!
Frustrated, I let it sit for another week, mulling over how I can fix this soap disaster.
I decide to grate 1/2 a bar of Ivory soap, cook it with a small amount of water (just enough so it makes a liquid) and then add this 'thickener' to the too thin soap a little at a time, waiting in between to make sure I don't make it too thick.
So far so good, but I've still got my fingers crossed!! The soap seems to be perfect, or as near as I'm willing to get it, consistency. In the pan it looked kind of like snot, but then in the containers it seems just right.
So for those of you who need more precise measurements than my 'a little of this a little of that' description..here goes:
Ingredients:
1 bar Ivory soap
1.5 gallons water
1 Tbsp glycerin
Grate Ivory soap. Or have some fun watching it get huge in the microwave, just be SURE you crumble it into tiny tiny pieces. And be careful of the steam.
Mix all the ingredients in a pot and heat on low heat, stirring occasionally, until all the soap is dissolved.
Turn off heat, let cool. This takes a few hours, so find something else to do while you wait!
Check the consistency, it should be snot-like and gooey. If it is too thick, reheat and add a small amount of water. If it's too thin, reheat and add some more grated soap. This part is a little trial and error until you get it right.
Once your consistency is where you like it, get a lot of empty containers to put your new soap in and enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment