Making natural soap with Irina Banciu
Hi, my name is Irina.
I'm an IKEA co-worker and
also a natural soap enthusiast.
And today I'll be showing you
one of my favorite recipes,
a salt bar soap,
made with activated
charcoal and peppermint.
You can really customize this recipe to
make your own natural bar of soap.
And I'd really love the idea of
knowing what's in my cosmetics.
So hopefully today you'll learn something
new and make this recipe at home with me.
To make this natural bar,
you will need salt,
olive oil, coconut oil,
activated charcoal, castor oil,
peppermint essential oil, water and lye.
Now lye is the activating agent
which is used in also making processes.
You call make any soap without lye.
So please also use this.
Before we start, I'll just go
through a few safety measures.
This is a really fun process,
but it's really important that you do wear
some safety equipment whilst
making this at home.
First of all, you'll need some goggles.
This will protect your eyes
if anything gets yeah,
splashes out during the process.
I'd also recommend you wear some rubber gloves.
This is especially important when
you mix the lye with the water.
A long-sleeved shirt or top,
preferably something that you
wouldn't want to get ruined.
And then finally, a face mask as well.
So let's get started. To mix the lye.
You will need a heat proof glass,
a stick to stir it with,
and your lye measured out.
Always pour the lye on top of the water,
not the other way around as
that will cause an explosion.
So carefully mix the lye in.
And slowly but consistently
mix it in until the mixture
is a nice milky color.
Do this in a well ventilated room,
as there are some fumes that
will emit during this process.
Once the lye is well mixed,
just leave it to rest.
And you also want to insert
a thermometer to measure
the heat of the mixture.
We will leave this to rest until we reach
the desired temperature of
about a 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Next we will melt some coconut oil
until it's nice and runny.
And once it's all melted,
then just pour it back into the container,
the had it with initially.
So now we're going to start mixing.
First of all, we will start with the oils.
So here I have the coconut oil,
that's being cooled down.
Then we're going to mix in the olive oil.
And the caster oil.
You want this to have a really nice mix all together.
Next, I'm going to add in some
of the activated charcoal.
Now we will have the recipe on the website,
but you also don't want to put much more in
because it will really get
too dark and it'll start staining
your skin actually so,
you only want a few grams of this.
Activated charcoal is
a really nice ingredient to work with.
It's also really great for the skin.
It has a nice slight exfoliant to it.
And it'll be really nice and invigorating in
the shower along with the peppermint essential oil,
which I've just added in here as well.
So now we've got all the oils and
the charcoal and peppermint added it.
So now it's time to add in the lye.
And here we'll do this gradually.
You want to start
pointing and give it a really good mix.
Nothing will happen just yet,
but we have to work quickly now with
the blender to start really getting the
all the chemical reactions going.
And here. I'll start
pulsing it in a little bit
so it will start thickening up.
And you just want it in to
a very light kind of custard consistency.
It's slowly starting to thickening up now.
And now the last ingredient we'll
add in is the salt.
Salt is a really great
ingredient for the skin.
It's exfoliating, but it's
also actually really moisturising.
So it will really help to
keep that moisture in the shower,
it wont dry your skin out.
And it will really create a nice bar,
a nice, hard bar of soap.
So for now we want to continue
pulsing it and we
want it to get to a nice trace.
And trace means that
the saponification process
will really start working.
So you'll be able to see
a nice line on top, which I'll show you.
So you can see it's starting to thicken
up a bit when you drag the blender over the top.
It's starting to form some grooves.
But let's pulse it a little bit more.
Okay, so now I have a nice consistency.
You can see when I add the blender in.
It will start making
some shapes on the top.
And that's what you want.
You don't want it too thick
and you don't want it too thin.
If it starts becoming too thick,
then it will be really hard to pour
into your mold.
So now, we will pour it into our mold.
And the last step is you just
want to give it a little shake and tap.
Just to get the air bubbles out.
If you have an excess amount
like this at the top,
you can just use a spatula to
move it to the next block as well.
To also get a nice smooth top.
There we go.
And now this needs to rest for about two hours,
2.5 hours until it sets and
gets completely hard.
So after you've unmolded your newly made soap,
you want to let it cure for
about four to six weeks
in a well ventilated area.
And the result is a really lovely hard bar
of soap that you can use in the shower.
You can use to wash your hands and
it will keep a well over six months.
Just make sure to drain it
probably after each use.
Hope you enjoyed this video and I
look forward to seeing
what your soap looks like.