Soapy Friends

Soapy Friends A friendly place for soap makers, natural plant botanical colors, clays, and crazy soapy fun!
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Ever have a handmade soap that lathers beautifully for you, while someone else swears the exact same bar barely bubbles?...
09/24/2026

Ever have a handmade soap that lathers beautifully for you, while someone else swears the exact same bar barely bubbles? Before you start changing the recipe… check the water. 🫧

Hard water contains calcium and magnesium, and those minerals react with traditional soap. Some of your soap can get tied up forming insoluble soap scum instead of staying available to clean and lather. That means the same bar can behave surprisingly differently from one house — or one city — to another.

In the new article, I’m breaking down why hard water affects lather, why it creates soap scum, whether citric acid actually helps, why I recommend distilled water for making soap, and what you can realistically change in your formulation.

Sometimes a perfectly lovely soap is just having a really lousy relationship with somebody’s water. 😆

Read it here: https://soapyfriends.com/hard-water-handmade-soap/

09/23/2026

I finally got to cut our September black soaps, and just LOOK at all those shades of black. 🖤

Between our all-member class and the Best Friends Club After Party, we played with different natural blacks, built deeper blacks from other botanical colors, and created some seriously gorgeous black-on-black soap.

And the fun part? These colors are still blooming. They’re not finished yet!

The class replays are available now, so you can catch up and see exactly how we created these colors. And, as always, I’ll add an updated photo archive once our soaps have cured and we can see where all those final colors land.

🌈 Follow along with the Year of the Rainbow:
https://soapyfriends.com/courses/natural-soap-rainbow/

Happy soaping, my friends! 🧼

Citric acid is one of those soapmaking additives that gets credited with doing a little bit of everything. 🍋Prevent soap...
09/22/2026

Citric acid is one of those soapmaking additives that gets credited with doing a little bit of everything. 🍋

Prevent soap scum. Improve lather. Help with hard water. Prevent DOS. But what does it actually do in handmade soap?

The key is that citric acid reacts with sodium hydroxide and becomes sodium citrate, a chelator. That explains why it can help with some hard-water problems — and also why some of the claims about it need a little more nuance.

In the new article, I’m breaking down what citric acid actually does, whether it really improves lather, how much to use, why you need to adjust your NaOH, whether you can just use sodium citrate instead, and what I found when I tested it for soap scum myself.

Read it here: https://soapyfriends.com/citric-acid-in-soap/

Oil? Water? Alcohol? Glycerin? If your soapmaking instructions tell you to ‘disperse your colorant’ but don’t tell you w...
09/19/2026

Oil? Water? Alcohol? Glycerin? If your soapmaking instructions tell you to ‘disperse your colorant’ but don’t tell you what to disperse it in, the answer is… it depends. 😆

Different colorants have different needs, and the right method also depends on what kind of soap you’re making. Botanicals add another layer of fun because sometimes we’re not just dispersing a powder — we’re trying to extract the color compounds from the plant.

I put together a new guide explaining how I think through oil, water, alcohol, glycerin, manufactured colorants, and botanicals, plus why the same natural color may behave differently in melt-and-pour versus cold process soap.

Read it here: https://soapyfriends.com/how-to-disperse-soap-colorants-oil-water-alcohol-and-more/

09/18/2026

I know Soapy Friends is usually all about soap, but you all asked me for some of my salve recipes… so I gave you a few. 🌼

This is the beginning of my Creamy, Spreadable Everyday Salve from the Everyday Salves class. I’m infusing chamomile into the oils and butters, including bacuri butter from Rainforest Chica , before turning it into the finished salve.

If you want to learn the basics of making salves, I have a free article on Soapy Friends that walks you through the fundamentals.

But if you want my actual recipes and methods, those are inside the Everyday Salves class, exclusively for Best Friends Club members.

And because members asked for it, I tucked in some bonus beard-care content, too. 😊

🌼 Everyday Salves:
https://soapyfriends.com/courses/everyday-salves/

🌿 Salve-making basics:
https://soapyfriends.com/stop-copying-fresh-herb-salves-from-the-internet-friendly-psa/

09/17/2026

I’m all set up for today’s Best Friends Club After Party, and we’re taking our natural blacks even further. 🖤

Believe it or not, that purple oil you see in the reel is headed toward a rich, deep black! We’ll be working with purple base colors and activated charcoal to build a progression of deeper, blended blacks and see just how much we can do without simply piling more charcoal into the soap.

Best Friends Club members, we’re live at 4 PM Arizona time today! Can’t make it live? You can catch the replay in the BFC replay library.

Want to learn more about the Year of the Rainbow classes or join Soapy Friends? 🌈
https://soapyfriends.com/courses/natural-soap-rainbow/

Happy soaping, my friends! 🧼

We had such a great time in class yesterday exploring just how different natural blacks can look in soap! 🖤We worked wit...
09/16/2026

We had such a great time in class yesterday exploring just how different natural blacks can look in soap! 🖤

We worked with different types of activated charcoal plus Rainforest Chica black clay, and I love seeing all those shades together. And look at all those lovely little black hearts I’ll have just in time for Halloween! 🎃🖤

We’re not finished yet, either. Best Friends Club members are joining me Thursday for our After Party, where we’ll start with purple soaps and build even more shades of deep, dark black with charcoal.

Want to soap along with us? 🌈
https://soapyfriends.com/membership/

Happy soaping, my friends! 🧼

09/15/2026

The table is set for today’s Shades of Black class! 🖤

We’re making a three-color black-on-black swirl while comparing Rainforest Chica Black Clay, FabricTreasury (Anne Georges) coconut activated charcoal, and hardwood activated charcoal—because there are so many shades of black.

Soapy Friends members, I’ll see you live today at 4 PM Arizona time!

Happy soaping, my friends! 🧼

Today is the last day for the annual membership bonus... and it’s also the 1st live class for our Black Month in the Yea...
09/15/2026

Today is the last day for the annual membership bonus... and it’s also the 1st live class for our Black Month in the Year of the Rainbow🌈 🖤

We’re getting together today to dig into creating rich black soap without ending up with obnoxiously black lather.

If you join Soapy Friends with an annual membership today, you can jump into the Black Month class with us, get access to the rest of the Year of the Rainbow classes, and save the cost of one month of membership.

And through the end of today, you’ll also get lifetime access to the Ultimate Natural Soap Making Course at no additional cost.

After today, annual memberships will still be available... but the lifetime course bonus goes away.
👉 https://soapyfriends.com/memberships/

The lighter edge on these bars happened because I made intentional choices based on water, temperature, and the fatty ac...
09/12/2026

The lighter edge on these bars happened because I made intentional choices based on water, temperature, and the fatty acid profile of the recipe.

That’s the difference understanding the fundamentals can make.

You stop asking, “Why did it do THAT?” quite so often... and start being able to say, “Yep. That’s exactly what I expected.”

That’s also why I don’t think fundamentals are just for beginners.

If you join Soapy Friends annually by September 15, you’ll get lifetime access to the Ultimate Natural Soap Making Course at no additional cost, plus save the cost of one month of membership.
👉 https://soapyfriends.com/memberships/

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