How to make your own Mabon Soap

Mabon Soap Creations

I really do love this time of year. With the changing of the seasons, the autumnal colours, the smell in the air from the earth when it rains, what is there not to love!

Change in seasons always inspires me to get creative, with my beliefs and to what I have to hand with natures gifts. So here we have another creation of mine to follow suit... MABON SOAP.

This is a hot process soap, and you would need to take appropriate caution as with anything that handles lye. 

The utensils you will be needing are:

A crockpot/slowcooker

Stick blender

Spatula

Metal spoons

Glass bowls

Scales

gloves

protective goggles

newspaper

2 candy thermometers (this is only needed if you don't let everything cool to room temp to mix) 

silicone moulds or wooden soap box moulds, whichever you prefer. 

Ingredients:

3oz Apricot Kernal oil

2oz Castor Oil

7oz Coconut oil

15 Olive oil

3 Sunflower oil

Total weight of oils 30oz

13oz Hibiscus flower tea infusion (I always make slightly more than is required, as when you strain the flowers out of the liquid there always is less than what you started with) 

4oz of Lye

1 tbsp of myrrh and sandalwood essential oils

To start: 

Cover your table with newspaper to protect it from any spillages that may occur

Put your gloves and goggles on. And start measuring out all your ingredients.

I now open up a few windows for this next step, as the lye solution creates fumes that can irritate your eyes nose and throat. Once this is done measure out 10oz of the hibiscus tea infusion and compost or discard the rest. Then take your lye and pour it SLOWLY into the tea whilst stirring. If you don't do this step carefully you may have a volcanic eruption lol. 

Once the lye is fully dissolved, put it to one side near a well ventialted area away from pets and children and allow to cool between 95 - 105 degrees F

While this is cooling measure out all your oils into your crock pot and set to low to melt them. Once these have melted, switch your crock pot off and allow to cool to 95 - 100 degrees F 

When both your Lye liquid and oils are between 95 - 100 degrees F you can mix the two.

Again here you need to proceed with caution, pour CAREFULLY & SLOWLY your lye liquid into your oils which should still be in the crock pot, and stir with your metal spoon to mix. Do this for a couple of mins. 

Now take your stick blender and immerse fully into the oil and lye mixture and mix again, this should take another few mins for the mixture to thicken to 'trace'. Trace basically means your oils and lye water have been thoroughly mixed. It should look like pudding texture. 

Next switch your crock pot back on to the 'low' setting and cook the mixture for a further 60 mins. Keep coming back to check and stir on regular intervals. At this point it should start to look like thick honey and look 'gel' like.. this is perfectly normal. 

Once 'cooked' switch off your crock-pot and add your essential oils, and mix thoroughly. for Mabon purposes I use myrrh and sandalwood, you can use other essential oils that are associated with Mabon, I just like these :) 

Once your essential oils of choice have been thoroughly incorporated into your mixture you can pour it out into your molds of choice. At this point you can add your dried flowers for decorative purposes. I use hibiscus and rose petals. Cover with cling film (this is to prevent any soda ash forming on your soap), and then wrap up with as many old towels needed to keep the heat in for the saponification process to occur. Put to one side and leave to set for 24 hours. 

After the 24hrs has lapsed check your soap, if its not too soft you can un-mold it now if not leave for another day. 

Unmold your soap and cut to desired thickness..

You can now use your soap, or wrap to give as gifts!!

Now If you don't have time or the inclination to make it yourself please visit my shop and purchase yours here

Happy Mabon Witches!!!!

~Opal Storm )O(