Handmade Soap...(from a kit, that is)!!

Yay! I finally did it. I have wanted to make soap for many months now and I did last week for the first time. I bought a kit at Michael's (with my 40% off coupon)that contained two clear plastic pump bottles, liquid concentrate and thickener, dye, fragrance, glass marbles and silk flowers. There also was a pound of glycerine soap and molds for bars. I made the liquid soap first, which was so easy! All I had to do was add warm water to the concentrate, add thickener and fragrance. Then added some marbles and silk flowers to the bottle and filled it with soap. Viola! Instant soap! It smells lovely and makes a pretty addition to my bathroom. As you can see, I have used quite a bit of it already. The bars were a bit trickier to make, the glycerin cooled pretty fast after melting, so I had to reheat a couple of times. I also learned that a little dye goes a long way. The purple bar was the first one I made and it turned out way too dark. I also made a pink bar that I let my daughter use in the shower that also tuned out dark. The green bar turned out real nice, the color was perfect and the pink flowers set it off nicely.

As for the kit, the directions were simple enough to follow, but I think tips about using too much dye and how quickly the glycerin cools would have been nice. They also did not label ANY of the items in the kit. I assumed that the powdery stuff was the thickener and the bottle of stuff was liquid concentrate. I had to look closely to see what color the dyes were. Ah well, I bought the kit for practice anyways and too see if I would like making soap. So, I came to the conclusion that I did like making soap and I will be making more in the future. I want to make my own concentrate if possible and add moisturizers to it because the stuff in the kit seemed to dry my hands a bit. I love the silk flowers and marbles inside the bottles. It's so pretty. I also want to try cold-process soap with lye, but I need to purchase equipment first. I checked out a couple of soap making books from the library and saw a LOT of soap that I want to try. I just need to find a supplier and get busy. Michael's doesn't carry a whole lot of soap-making supplies and neither does JoAnn's. I don't know of any local suppliers, so I guess I will have to purchase online. Any Tucson folks know of any suppliers here in town? I know there is a candle making supplier, but that doesn't help much.