Room temperature method of making soap ~ Simple Living Toowoomba

After a break since November, our Simple Living Toowoomba workshops will be starting up again on Saturday, 20th February with a soap making demonstration using the room temperature method.

 

 This is a method that I have only used once and you can read about that one and only attempt in the posts Learning a New Method of Soapmaking and Results of experiment with using quick method of making cold pressed soap. 

The white soap in the above photo was made by Racheal from our Simple Living Toowoomba group and it looks very white compared with my newly made nettle soap which has since faded to a brown colour like most natural colours do unfortunately.  Still it is a nice soap to use I must say and makes my skin feel great. It was worth harvesting all those nettles a while back.

I wasn't terribly thrilled with the look of my soap when it had dried but I have seen some lovely looking soaps made using this method so am keen to give it a few more tries in order to perfect it as it is a much quicker way of making soap which I would think would be preferable for young mums with little children. As there is no heating up of the oils it doesn't take as long to make and when Racheal gave a demonstration at her home last year she had it made and sitting up on top of a cupboard or somewhere out of the way, in no time. She does have a large family of young children so I was impressed that she was able to make up a batch in such a short time and didn't need to have lye cooling down somewhere like it needs to when using the oil heating method. 

 So if you live in SE Queensland and would like to come along just click on the link to Simple Living Toowoomba and fill out the Contact and Booking Form. It is probably fairly early to be booking in as most of us never know what we are doing in 5 weeks time but it does help if you remember to book in ahead of time if you plan to come.

For those of you who don't live nearby and would like to learn more about this method we would love you to join us on the Down to Earth Simple Living Forums as we have been discussing this a lot lately. You can also read more about it on Soap Making Essentials and Skin + Soul for starters. Also there are a number of YouTube videos on the method so just do a search there and also watch Gavin from The Greening of Gavin make his soap using this method. Of course there are links on this Pinterest page as well.

 

Let me know how you go if you do give it a try. My next batch will be made this way as I want to get better at it as I mentioned before. I still feel comfortable with the 'old' method of heating the oils and cooling down the lye, but it doesn't hurt to know different ways of making soap. Some people are too scared to make their first batch after reading the warnings about being careful when handling the lye but if they just treat it as they would when working with something like bleach then they would be fine. Once they have made their first batch they usually catch the bug. ;-) At least when you make your own soap you know what is in it!