Fiona McBryde

I’ll start by measuring out all the oils that I’m going to be using. I’ll weigh out my hard oils first. These are the hard oils I’m going to use for my soaps, so coconut oil, cocoa butter, shea butter. They’re all beautiful oils to work with, and it’s really weird but it’s like each one is like my friend, so I kind of associate each ingredient with a personality depending on if they’re hard to cut or really slippery. So I measure out all my hard oils, then I measure out my soft oils, these are the olive oil, sunflower oil, castor oil. So every soap has a different oil profile, a different blend of oils depending on what we’re trying to achieve — if it’s a really gentle soap or a really bubbly soap. Then I’ll start preparing the lye. Lye is the very alkaline ingredient which emulsifies oils into soap, and this is the dangerous bit, so, and I’m not kidding, it is actually quite dangerous, it will scorch your skin. So I get fully prepared, kitted up, mask, gloves. So I pour water. You have to be really careful when you mix up your lye, you have to make sure your lye — caustic soda — goes into the water because if you do it the other way round you’ll create a volcano. If I’m feeling really tired, I have made that mistake. So absolute concentration, make up the lye, it’s horrible fumes at this point so I’ll just stand outside for five minutes, maybe make another coffee, then I’ll come in. Now I’m ready to make the soap, so I’m going to mix our lye solution with our oils. I will have pre-melted some of my butters, my hard oils, and it’s just a very slow, rhythmical process, lots of stirring, just waiting for that moment when you see the two ingredients emulsify. We call it getting to the point of trace, and at the moment of lye trace is when I’ll add my essential oils or my additives, if I’m using calendula flowers, and I’ll mix those in. And this is the really tricky bit because you have to work really quickly, because if you don’t work quick enough, the mixture will accelerate and, basically, you’ll be spooning out your soap into the mould. So quickly get it all mixed in and I see this beautiful soap batter appear just how I want it, and I’ll pour it into my mould. So my mould is just a big rectangular box, I pour it in, I cover it with blankets, that’s going to sit now for about 24 hours, that’s the process of saponification.