Anfängerglück

This is my first soap. I called it Anfängerglück (beginner's luck) because I was so thrilled that all the greasy mess had actually turned into soap without any lye being spilled.

Buying sodium hydroxide was really hard. The first chemist looked at me as if I had asked for bomb-making instructions to go with the sodium hydroxide. Aren't there people who clean their drains or strip paint off garden furniture with this stuff? Well, I finally found a chemist who sold me some, but I have since preferred to buy the stuff online, it's much less of a hassle.


I had bought basic ingredients like coconut oil, olive oil, palm oil and rapeseed oil at the supermarket because I wanted to try the beginner's recipe recommended at Naturseife.com. Also, I had ordered lots of (perfume) oils, pigments and moulds online, but I couldn't wait for it all to arrive, so I used a Pringles box and an ice-cream tub as moulds and used food colouring instead of pigments. When the ordered soap making ingredients finally arrived, the soap was already removed from the moulds so I could try the new fleur-de-lis stamp right away, as you can see in the photo above. Unfortunately, I forgot to use distilled water and I am not sure whether our local tap water is 100% free of any sapophagic germs. Hopefully, Anfängerglück will not spoil too soon. I'll keep at least one bar and see how long it will keep fresh.

Above you can see my label for Anfängerglück.
The artwork is courtesy of Julia Galster, who
kindly put some of her designs online for non-commercial use.