Hello everyone! For the past couple of months, I've had the idea to start making soap. Sadly, I haven't had the chance to actually start yet, due to work, school and being your typical, broke college kid. However, I plan on starting over my winter break, where I'll be able to have more time to actually start doing it. I've found some useful guides online and have found some amazing looking soap recipes that I am dying to try. So, I was just curious if anyone here makes soap, or is interested in making soap! If you make soap, do you have ay personal tips for me?

With enough soap you can blow up just about anything.

I haven't made soap before but I'm really interested in doing it! The reason I haven't done it before is I live in a really cramped apartment, and for safe soapmaking you really need an entirely separate set of dishes for just the soap. I barely have enough room to store my cooking dishes! But I can pass on a few tips I've heard from experienced soapmakers! One thing I know is that melt and pour is a lot easier than cold process, since you won't be working with lye. But it does mean you have to buy soap base, and if you're into the cool chemistry like I am you might prefer cold process. You can buy soap base and some basic soapmaking equipment at stores like Michael's, although if you really want to get your soap on I've heard Bramble Berry is a good online shop. Rose Mountain Herbs has some oils and stuff too if you're interested in organic soapmaking with natural ingredients. Another thing I've heard is that there are some dyes and scents that will mess up a cold process soapmaking, and basically the soap will 'freeze' or not set correctly. So I think if you want to make cold process soap but you're not sure if the dyes and scents you're using are cold process safe, you could make a plain, unscented batch, then once it's done you could use it as a melt and pour base for your other ingredients.

I haven't actually made soap before, but I used to lurk a soap making forum for several years. Yeah, don't ask. :x I did pick up a thing or two though.

The first thing you need to decide is whether you want to dip your toes in the water and do melt and pour, or if you want to dive into it and do cold or hot process. The biggest difference between the two is that you will need a lot of storage if you do cold or hot process because you would have to store the lye and oils, which you do not have to have with melt and pour.

Speaking of lye, this is something you have to be careful about. You need to store this in a secure location where pets and children do not have access to it, if you have them. You also need to purchase lye either online (with various hazmat and shipping charges, of course) or from a local chemical supplier, if you have one in your area. This will most likely be in bulk, although I've heard there are suppliers that can sell you small amounts at a time. Apparently, from what I read, you used to be able to buy lye from hardware stores, but not anymore due to people making drugs with it.

For oils, to start, you can purchase them in small amounts in grocery store, or larger amounts at somewhere like Costco. There are places where you can buy bulk oils, but you'll either have to transport them yourself or pay expensive shipping fees. You don't have to worry about this if you're just doing this as a hobby though.

I hope this helps and good luck with your soap making endeavors. :)