Last week, TL acquainted you with the perils of remilling homemade soap. In that article, she mentions that ‘tallow’ soap is easier to rebatch. Well guess what’s the first ingredient in Ivory Soap? Sodium Tallowate. Which mean saponified (soapified, tee-hee) TALLOW!
So, this is for all ya’ll who thought my soap wrapping post betrayed a secret knowledge of store-bought rebatching.
Ivory soap
Water
Additives (~1 tsp oil/8 oz soap)
Microwave
1. Grate soap into a microwave safe bowl. Dampen soap with water. Microwave for three minutes, or until it starts to foam up.
2. Scrape bowl and press it back down to the bottom of the bowl. (Stirring induces more bubbling over. Scoop and smoosh is MUCH better.) Dampen again. And nuke for another minute, or until it starts to foam.
3. Repeat step two until it goes ‘clear gel’ on you and looks a lot like that vaseline intensive lip stuff that came in the squishy tubes from the drug store. Thinner than vaseline, but nothing anyone would accuse of being an actual ‘liquid.’ (BTW, you can’t really over cook this. I did step 2 for about 20 minutes, trying to get it to go liquidy for me.)
4. Stir in your additives and “pour” (read: SPOON in clear stringy blobs) into your mold. I used the bottom and top thirds of a quart soy milk container. Bang and squish it a bunch to get out the air bubbles.
5. Unmold, slice, and let it dry out for a few WEEKS. Early it has that ‘gummy eraser’ spring to it that hot process has. But after a while, it should harden up.
BTW, that’s lavender bits on the right.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome! Im totally going to try this out!
Tell me how it goes!
I think I’ll have a go at this as well as your liquid soap and stick deoderant! Sometimes Ivory soap is available at a very low price for several bars packaged together. This method sounds great because you can vary the additives for custom made soap without the long process of making soap from scratch.
Arg. I just spent over 20 minutes trying to get my soap to go liquidy. It looked nothing like vaseline, it was still stiff. Our microwave is usually stronger than the average too, cooks things really quick. And no matter what I did it kept foaming, so I was popping the microwave open every 45 seconds. Ah well, I spooned it into a pringles can and I’ll see how it turns out.
Maybe more water?
I think that may be it. I did a second batch, and it melted much better, although it still has some chunks. And since I added cocoa powder, it makes it look a bit like head cheese. Smells good though. Thanks for the ideas!
i’ve been making several of your soap recipes for christmas gifts. my mom said she would like some, but is allergic to lye soaps (she gets really bad contact dermatits, and wears rubber dishwashing gloves in the shower when she washes her hair). dove soap is just about the only thing she can use, so i grated up 6 bars of the unscented kind to try this recipe. then i couldn’t find a bowl big enough to hold all the shavings, so i plopped them in a pot and stuck it on the stove. it never foamed – whether that was from the style of cooking or the type of soap, i don’t know – and it didn’t turn clear. this i’m almost positive is from the added moisturizers in the bars. anyway, i added 1/2 oz lavender essential oil, and 3 1/2 tsp dried lavender flowers. i did call mom first and make sure she wasn’t allergic to lavender! anyway, it’s been curing for awhile now, but isn’t quite done. seems to be doing fine, though. thanks for the idea!!!