Making Soap with Lye for Beginners

Transcript: Making Soap with Lye for Beginners

Melanie Teegarden: [00:00:00]

When you’re bitten by the soap-making bug, you want to try everything in soap to see how it goes.

Jessica Anderson: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources. In this podcast, we host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.

In this episode, we sit down with Melanie Teegarden to discuss soap making using jewelweed and other botanicals. And stick around to find out later how you can order Melanie’s new book, the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Guide to Soap Making.

[00:00:50] Introducing Melanie Teegarden

Jessica Anderson: Melanie Teegarden has been proprietor of Althaea Soaps and Herbals for 20 years. She has run an international website [00:01:00] selling bath and body products to individuals and spas since 2006. And in addition to her home based business, Melanie also teaches soap making classes in her community of Johnson County, Tennessee.

So welcome to the podcast, Melanie.

Melanie Teegarden: Thank you very much. I’m glad to be here.

Jessica Anderson: We’re so happy to have you. Is there anything else you wanted to share about who you are and what you do with our listeners?

Melanie Teegarden: Well, I think most people listening will identify me when I say that I’ve always had, been a big fan of, uh, DIY, especially when it comes to things that you can make an improvement on over what you’d go out and buy in the store.

In terms of knowing the quality of your ingredients, choosing exactly what you want to use in a preparation, and also in terms of frugality. Often I find that homemade goods with a little practice are much better than their store bought counterpart. My years spent making soap have also been so rewarding because I’ve been able to make something both beautiful and useful out of such humble, raw [00:02:00] materials.

Just a little oil and a little lye and a little water. I never stop getting excited about that.

Jessica Anderson: That’s wonderful. I love that. And you’ve also been writing for us quite a while at Countryside Magazine. So we’ll plug a couple links in our show notes for listeners if they want to read more about what Melanie has been writing about in our sister publication, Countryside. She has some great articles up there.

So before we jump into soap making in general, I’d love to hear how did you yourself get into soap making?

Melanie Teegarden: Well, I was attracted to the idea for a really long time. I, it fit in well with the other things I was doing, like, you know, cooking from scratch and canning and freezing and drying and growing my own herbs. Um, especially the growing the herbs part. I was always looking for new ways to use the herbs. Um, I used to come home from my day job and I would just plop down in the middle of my garden and smell everything. And that was my way of kind of unwinding when I got [00:03:00] home, it was my therapy. And I was always looking for ways to use those plants. You know, I did cooking and I did tea, but also I did potpourri and dried aromatic wreaths and things like that nature.

I loved the Phyllis Shaudys book in using herbs in craft. Um, she also had a, uh, a couple of recipes like a lavender scones and, uh, curry cookies. And actually curry cookies are very good. You shouldn’t knock it till you try it. Yeah, I was scared of the lye, and that was the main problem that held me back for a really long time. I’m kind of a clumsy person, and I just, I just didn’t trust myself. But then my husband developed pretty bad eczema, and his skin was so irritated by the soaps at the store that he was reduced to just kind of like using a baking soda solution as a soap. That was the only thing that didn’t irritate his skin even worse.

So I guess I was into the concept, but like a lot of people, I need a little kick in the pants [00:04:00] to finally make the leap.

[00:04:01] Using Plants in Soap Making & Their Benefits

Jessica Anderson: So before we jump into the how-to of soap making, I thought we could start with some questions just about soap making in general. So my first question is, what makes plants and soap go so well together? You see a lot of soaps that have those botanicals or flowers or something like that paired with it. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

Melanie Teegarden: I think there’s a lot of overlap between people who grow their own plants and people who like to DIY another way. It’s natural. I mean, when you’re bitten by the soap making bug, you want to try everything in soap to see how it goes. You want to try your flowers, your herbs. You want to try your vegetables and your fruits. You’ll try baby food. You’ll try everything. Whether you’re adding a touch of marshmallow root powder, which kind of soothes irritation, or jewelweed to remove urushiol oil from poison ivy, or sometimes you’re just using powdered alkanet to turn your soap a lovely shade of purple. There’s just so many [00:05:00] different ways to use plants in soap, and they, they often go together.

Jessica Anderson: Are there any benefits you want to mention about using homemade botanical soaps, whether that’s therapeutic or maybe even a medicinal property?

Melanie Teegarden: I’d say the biggest benefit is that you can tailor your soaps to fit your specific preferences. You know, whether it’s adding extra super fat for a more moisturizing bar, or experimenting with blends of your favorite scent, or adding some soothing calendula to a recipe when your skin is a bit irritated. You’re customizing it just the way you like it, according to the priorities that you have for your skin.

For instance, I really like to add a high super fat percentage to my recipe. Two reasons. First, I have very sensitive skin, and when it gets dry, it gets irritated. And when it gets irritated, it gets dry. It’s a terrible, terrible circle. Second, it makes my recipes a little safer for beginners, despite producing [00:06:00] a somewhat softer bar of soap.

I personally would prefer to use up a bar of soap a little more quickly if it means less dryness in my skin. That’s my priority. A lot of people seem to agree with that.

Jessica Anderson: Are there any go-to botanicals to use in soaps and bath and body products that you wanted to highlight a little bit more?

Melanie Teegarden: Well, in soaps, being Althaea Soaps my company, I always use a small amount of Althaea officinalis. Althaea officinalis is also known as the common marshmallow. The roots are dried and they’re powdered and that’s how you use it in the soap, is in a powder form. It has a kind of a viscous quality, sort of like okra does, if you can imagine that sort of smooth, you know, slippery feeling. But in soap, it gives it a very silky, lotion-like lather, and that is very calming to the skin.

It used to be we put lavender and aloe and everything to soothe skin, but so many products [00:07:00] have come to contain those two ingredients that now people are becoming allergic to them more and more because they’ve been exposed so many times. On the other hand, marshmallow root is still a fairly uncommon ingredient. People don’t tend to have a sensitivity from it, from overexposure.

[00:07:18] Where to Get Soap-Making Ingredients

Jessica Anderson: Now, with your company, how do you source your ingredients when you’re making things like soap?

Melanie Teegarden: That’s been something I’ve devoted a lot of time and thought to over the years. Of course, anytime I can buy an ingredient locally, I will go for that.

However, most of our ingredients are manufactured in other places. The olives come in from California mostly. The coconut oil is usually from Indonesia. I have ceased using palm oil for environmental reasons, and that also means stearic acid is out because it’s made from palm. The only exception to this is raw red palm oil, which I buy in small quantities from ethical small producers. I use it in my Mr. X Angry Skin Soap, which is [00:08:00] designed for my husband, who has eczema. The red palm oil delivers an intense dose of vitamin A to the skin, which is great for increasing skin cell turnover rate. It makes outbreaks heal a little bit faster while also moisturizing the skin and preventing new irritations.

But back to sourcing. I got a little off on a tangent there. Fragrance oil components and lots of essential oils come from elsewhere, as does the mica for colorants and the clays we use for color and other benefits. My best practices have been to buy what is manufactured locally, and if that’s not possible, at least buy from a local non-chain business.

If that’s not possible, I buy from a small business in my region at the very least. I try to keep my dollars in the community as much as I can, whenever I can. It’s more expensive, it adds to overhead. To me, there’s really no other way to do business.

My favorite way to source ingredients is to have the customer provide it to me fresh. I have customers who bring me big [00:09:00] bags of fresh jewelweed in the spring, and I trade items for soap when it’s finished. I’ve had customers bring me milk and cream, yogurt, fresh fruit and vegetables, and even freshly rendered lard and tallow. Lard and tallow, by the way, are fantastic soap making ingredients. Don’t count them out.

[00:09:16] Techniques for Making Soap with Lye

Jessica Anderson: That is so great. I love that last technique that you were highlighting.

Final question before, uh, we take a break and then jump into some of this how-to for soap making. I know when it comes to soap making, there can be a few different techniques. So what are the different kinds of soap making techniques you’d recommend for someone, uh, to implement at home? And do they vary in level of difficulty? And could you only use botanicals in only certain soap making methods?

Melanie Teegarden: You could probably use botanicals in all of these soap making methods. And there really is a wide range of ways that you can do this, from the very simple to the, all the way to the [00:10:00] bare-bottom scratch. You can buy already processed melt-and-pour base, which is real soap. Not all of them are, you have to check the ingredients, but some melt-and-pour is real soap. You can buy fresh plain soap online or from a local vendor. And you can grind it down and then melt it and add your botanicals and your colors and your fragrances, whichever you want. This is called “milled soap,” by the way, or “rebatched soap.”

There’s also the cold-process method, which is my favorite, where you start off with the lye and the water and the oils and make an emulsion, to which you add whatever you want and then pour into the mold, where it’s finished transforming into soap over the next day or two. It’s, uh, pretty much ready to use in about three or four weeks.

And then there’s hot-process soap making. It starts out like cold process, but then you cook the soap in a crock pot for a few hours until the lye has completely reacted with the oils and becomes soap. So there’s no lye left in it [00:11:00] when you pour it into the mold. Once you pour it into the molds and let it cool, it’s ready to use. Of course, it’s better quality soap if you let it cure, but it can be used right away without any problems. .

[00:11:11] The MOTHER EARTH NEWS Guide to Soap Making by Melanie Teegarden

Jessica Anderson: If you like what you hear on this podcast, you’ll love this book by longtime soap maker, Melanie Teegarden.

In the Mother Earth News Guide to Soap Making, Melanie inducts readers into the time honored tradition of making soap while dispelling much of the intimidation associated with crafting it at home. In this book, you’ll learn to handle lye safely and confidently while gaining working knowledge of base oils, colorants, and fragrances by working with them in classic recipes, including Cherry-Almond soap, Lemon-Lavender soap, and more.

Whether you’re looking to sell your homemade bars or simply supply your family with the gift of homemade soap, this guide unlocks the magic of soap making through simple step-by-step instruction. [00:12:00] Buy it online now at Store.MotherEarthNews.com. Item No. 12217.

[00:12:10] Soap Making Procedure and Ingredients

Jessica Anderson: So for this second half of the episode, I know we’re on audio, but I thought it would be a great opportunity to walk through together what a soap making process would look like. So, Melanie, my first question is, uh, regardless of the recipe, for home soap makers, what are the essential pieces of equipment that you would, uh, recommend someone would need?

Melanie Teegarden: Okay, first off, uh, all the equipment that you use for making soap should be used only for making soap. Never mix together your eating things and your soap making things. You’re using fragrances and essential oils in these things, and if there are traces left, that can sometimes be a little bit unhealthy for a person. So, you always want to make sure you have separate, you have separate, uh, pieces of equipment for [00:13:00] your soap.

Now, first of all, I would say a few pieces of really thick and flexible plasticware, like a big mixing bowl for the whole batch, and a smaller mixing bowl, a few large cups for separate, uh, separating out portions of soap to color or to add different ingredients to. I like my big mixing bowl to have a handle and a pour spout. I bought dozens of these bowls at the dollar store and used them for my classes and at home for years and years and years. The smaller mixing bowl is just for mixing out and mixing the lye water before adding to the oils. I like to have a handle on that too and a pour spout on this, especially since the lye water is pretty hot at first. It’s about 150 to 160 degrees. So you want to have a handle so that you don’t burn your hands.

What I use is a large, thick plastic measuring cup. And I also got that at the dollar store. You can use large plastic cups to separate out portions for adding [00:14:00] things. Like, uh, your colorants or if you want to add different kinds of herbs to certain portions of your soap batter. Again, I found plastic measuring cups with handles at the dollar store, and they have worked great for a decade or more.

Okay, that covers plasticware. Now you need a mixing implement. I recommend a nice silicone spatula, as easy as peach to use for both mixing and scraping up all the last bits of soap into the mold. I’ve had wooden spoons before, and stainless steel whisks, and other things, but I can achieve pretty much whatever I need with just the spatula.

You need a good quality scale that measures to at least two decimal places. Any fewer than two would be too inaccurate and could possibly lead to caustic soap.

You’re going to need a stick blender. Well, need is kind of a strong word. I didn’t have a stick blender until I’d been making soap for seven years. I whisked my batter intermittently with a stainless steel balloon whisk on my KitchenAid mixer prior to that. [00:15:00] Uh, but really, you want a stick blender. You don’t want to do it the way I did it. It just makes life so much easier and turns a several-hour process into something you can do in about a half an hour.

You need a good mold, of course. And this can be anything: a cardboard box lined with plastic bags or wax paper works. Empty half-and-half containers make great molds, and you just tear them off when you’re done. They make hundreds of different silicone molds for baked goods that also make ideal soap molds for individual bars. My favorite investment, though, is probably a set of wooden loaf shaped soap molds that have little fitted silicone liners. Silicone lets go of the soap like butter. It’s so easy. And if it ever isn’t easy, I just set the soap aside for a day or two and try again. It will work once it’s firm enough.

Let’s see, uh, other things that are important are paper towels, safety goggles, gloves, maybe an apron or work-over shirt of [00:16:00] some sort. Little specks of oil tend to get on your clothes when making soap, and then you get a big surprise when you pull those clothes out of the dryer with permanent grease marks.

I keep puppy training pads handy to cover my work surface, too, just to wrap the whole mess up at the end and toss it. I used to want to use kitchen towels to clean up after soap messes, but that always leads to the heartbreak of oil-stained clothes, as I said before, even when you separate the loads out. So save yourself the trauma and just deal with a little waste this time.

Jessica Anderson: I also really loved your note too, how you don’t have to go, you can go to the dollar store to get so many of these supplies. It doesn’t have to be a fortune that you spend on some of this equipment.

I think we’re ready to walk ourselves through a basic botanical soap recipe. Before we jump into the recipe you want to talk about, how long do you want to tell listeners that it would typically take to make a batch of soap?

Melanie Teegarden: Okay, how long it would take to [00:17:00] make a typical batch of soap? It’s around 30 minutes. Between 20 to 40, I’d say, right at 30. That’s, that’s once you’ve gotten the hang of it.

Um, I’d give myself a little bit longer if you’re new to the process. But not too much longer, because you are working quickly once the emulsion begins to form and those fatty acid chains begin to link up and form a solid. Um, you’re kind of working against time, getting it into the mold at the right consistency.

I’m going to propose a very basic two-oil recipe to keep things simple, if that’s OK.

Basic Two-Oil Soap Recipe

Jessica Anderson: Yes, I’m very much looking forward to hearing how this goes.

Melanie Teegarden: OK, olive oil and coconut oil only, plus the lye in the water, and then we’ll add some ground lavender buds soaked in lavender essential oil and a bit of Amyris or Australian sandalwood oil, and that’s going to anchor the floral scent.

You need to add a little bit of a base note whenever you’re using lavender oil, otherwise it’ll just [00:18:00] completely disappear from the finished soap. There’ll be nothing to hold that fragrance there. You can get all of those ingredients in most towns from three stores: a grocery for the base oils, the olive and the coconut oil; a health food type store for essential oils and lavender buds, and clay usually as well; and the hardware plumbing section for the lye.

So even if you just really hate buying stuff online, you can get what you need locally in most places around the country.

OK, here’s the recipe. This makes about 3 pounds of soap, so make sure you have prepared a mold in advance that’s big enough to hold that amount.

You’re going to want to weigh out 20.8 ounces of olive oil. This is a good all purpose soap making oil because it’s moisturizing and forgiving in the soap making process. It doesn’t reach a thick state very quickly, so you don’t have to rush.

Now weigh out 11.2 ounces of coconut oil and add it [00:19:00] to the olive oil. You can just scoop it out cold and put it in there because the hot lye water is going to melt that coconut oil for you. Coconut oil’s function in this recipe is to lend a better quality to the bubbles, to make trace happen a little more quickly also, and to initially make a hard bar of soap. Olive oil by itself makes a rock hard bar of soap, but it does take forever and a day to get to that state, because olive hydroscopic. It pulls moisture from the environment, which is why pure olive oil soaps take so long to cure into a hard bar.

OK, lye is next. Lye turns the fatty acids and the base oils into salts of fatty acids. So if you put in olive oil with lye, you will get sodium olivate, a salt of a fatty acid. If you use palm oil with lye to get sodium palmate, that is also a salt of a fatty acid, and so on.

So, you want to weigh out 4.45 ounces of the lye into a bowl, [00:20:00] and in a separate container, weigh out 12.15 ounces of water. The purpose of the water is strictly to activate the lye and enable the formation of an oil and water emulsion.

OK, I want to say this: make sure all of your containers are lye safe, okay? You don’t want to have to be thinking about which dish is safe for what use. Just make everything safe so you don’t have to think about it at all.

Now back to mixing the lye water. You’re going to want to stand back from the water bowl at arm’s length. If the bowl has a handle, hold it with one hand. Slowly pour the lye into the water, and then stir it very gently but very thoroughly until it’s all dissolved. This won’t take very long, maybe a minute. A plume of steam is going to rise up when you first mix the lye with the water. The steam is caustic, so stand back and don’t breathe it. You really won’t be able to breathe it. If you get ahead of it, it will make you cough. You can wear a mask, even a leftover cloth mask from COVID works just fine. It’s all you need to just protect you from the [00:21:00] steam for a moment. I always leave a window open and an exhaust fan on when I’m making lye water, and I think that that’s an important idea as well. It’s just a few seconds of steam and then it quits. It’s not going to be steaming the whole time.

So anyway, once you’ve mixed your lye water, go to your bowl of base oils and just pour the lye in. You don’t need to be fancy or slow about it or try to coordinate stirring with pouring. Just pour it in carefully, and then you can get busy with the stirring. Mix gently but thoroughly by hand for a minute or two until the coconut oil completely melts. Set this aside after you’ve given it a thorough mixing.

And now we’re ready to make the fragrant lavender clay mixture. I want to use about one tablespoon each of rose kaolin clay and powdered-and-sifted lavender buds per 16 ounces of base oils. In this recipe, I’m using 32 ounces of base oils total, so that’s two tablespoons each of lavender powder and rose clay. I put them into a [00:22:00] stainless steel or glass container to mix the essential oils. Never ever use styrofoam or plastic or those little water waxed cups for this. Essential oils will eat right through them, and then they’ll be contaminated.

Put in your powders into your safe glass or stainless steel bowl, and add 1.5 ounces of lavender essential oil and 0.5 ounces of either Amyris or Australian sandalwood, whichever you prefer. You can also substitute patchouli essential oil if you enjoy that, but use only 0.25 ounces instead of 0.5 ounces.

Mix the oils into the powders thoroughly before adding to the soap base. If the mixture is kind of wet at first, let it sit for a few minutes to absorb all the oils before you use it. Then add to the soap base and get out your stick blender. Here’s how I do it. I stick blend straight up and down in the center of the pot for 10-second bursts. I stir in between to observe the texture. [00:23:00] In this recipe, none of the ingredients are particularly temperamental, so you can go ahead and keep zapping in 10-second bursts until the mixture has reached a nice medium trace, similar to instant pudding that is half set up.

Pour into the mold and set it aside. It will turn into soap on its own within 24 to 48 and then you can unmold it, slice it, and cure it for 4 to 6 weeks. Curing the soap, by the way, does more than just let the water evaporate off and make a harder, longer-lasting bar of soap. The pH of soap gradually reduces during those weeks, making a milder, more skin friendly bar of soap, especially for delicate areas. And the quality of the latter also improves after a bit of curing time. It’s just all around a better quality product when it has been cured properly. And there are no real shortcuts to that.

Jessica Anderson: Wonderful. Well, thank you for walking us through that. And I also love listening to the process, because not only I feel like are you crafting something, but I feel like you’re also kind of [00:24:00] a scientist, too. You know, you have to know what turns into what, the, you know, the amount of ingredients for certain things. I thought that was so fascinating.

Melanie Teegarden: Yeah, there is a lot of chemistry. And for someone who was so intimidated by chemistry in high school, it’s really surprising how excited I get by chemistry now.

[00:24:17] Jewelweed Soap for Poison Ivy

Jessica Anderson: That’s so great. Now, we talked earlier in the episode about specifically jewelweed, using that botanical in soap. So, I thought we could touch on what makes jewelweed so great to have in soaps? And when you include that plant in a soap making process, does that change the recipe or the steps needed to create a soap with jewelweed?

Melanie Teegarden: For me, absolutely. Jewelweed is special because it’s the fresh plant matter that is active against poison ivy. Dried plant matter, even when you rehydrate it, it doesn’t work the same way. So you need to keep freshness and rawness in [00:25:00] mind when you’re dealing with this plant. You want to get the jewelweed juiced and pulped and into a finished loaf of soap as quickly as possible, because they’re still really not totally sure of all the components that are effective in the plant, nor how delicate they may be when exposed to high temperatures, high pH, and so on.

This is the reason why I use the hot-process method when I make jewelweed soap. The soap is completely cooked until it is no longer caustic, and then I add a good amount of the fresh raw pulp of the jewelweed to the finished soap right before pouring. The heat and the pH are enough to preserve the plant matter without hopefully denaturing too many of the useful parts.

Jessica Anderson: So once you have made some jewelweed soap, does that mean you can like use it on your skin? Especially if something like poison ivy you you suspect you might have caught it and it can help treat it?

Melanie Teegarden: Yes, absolutely. And with a hot-process soap, you can use it immediately. It’s a better bar of soap if you let it cure a few weeks, but you can use it safely [00:26:00] immediately after you’ve made it. And so if you’ve got a poison ivy rash that’s actively on your skin, you can just grab that jewelweed soap and use it right away.

Jessica Anderson: That’s really cool. And I know that you’ve written an article on Countryside about making jewelweed soap, right?

Melanie Teegarden: Yes, I have.

[00:26:16] Learn More About Making Soap with Lye

Jessica Anderson: Wonderful. Well, we’ll make sure to link that if people want to go more into detail about how to make that at home.

Well, I think all of that soap making recipe sounds great. Are there any common obstacles people could encounter when making their soaps at home, especially for beginners, that you may want to highlight? I know you’ve already touched on a few of them, but if there are any others that you wanted to mention?

Melanie Teegarden: Really, the hardest part, I think, is finding pure sodium hydroxide from a local store. It can be really difficult, expensive, and confusing. You have to buy it in a hardware store plumbing section, sold as drain cleaner. But then you have to read all over the packaging to make sure it’s nothing but pure lye in there. Sometimes they add metal [00:27:00] shavings and other nasty bits you wouldn’t want, so you have to be very, very sure.

Not everyone wants to go through the hassle of mail ordering and waiting on products to arrive. And of course, some people just prefer to keep their dollars in their own zip code as much as possible. But it’s really cheaper in the end and more convenient to buy lye online from a supplier who knows what this is for and has been packaging it accordingly.

Jessica Anderson: Good to know. Well, what is the shelf life typically for soaps like this that you make at home? And do you have any recommendations on how you store them?

Melanie Teegarden: Honestly, it depends on the condition they’re stored in. Just as you said, if you keep it in a cool, dark, dry location. They’ll be usable indefinitely, even if they develop DOS, the “dreaded orange spots” of rancidity. As long as the scent still is fine, you can use that soap, it won’t hurt you any.

But really, I want to stress, soap needs to be exposed to open air to stay fresh the longest. Don’t seal them in plastic, don’t set [00:28:00] them in the sun, or don’t let them sit in a puddle in the soap dish, and it’ll be fine.

Jessica Anderson: Well, as we’re wrapping up, are there any resources that you want to share with our listeners on learning more about making soap?

Melanie Teegarden: Well, some of the suppliers I have used the most over the years have been Wholesale Supplies Plus, brambleberry, Nature’s Garden, and a localish store to me called Aztec. And all of these companies have had consistently reliable products and customer service and fair pricing and sane shipping costs over the years.

Start there and you’ll find your way into a new addiction, I promise you. They have endless sources of information and articles and DIY and recipes and kits. You can put together a party where you, uh, do a craft kit from Wholesale Supply Plus or Brambleberry.

Jessica Anderson: Oh, wow. That’s very fun. And we’ll also link to a few articles by Melanie. Uh, she’s written so many great ones on [00:29:00] Countryside Magazine, so people can learn more about soap making that way.

Now also, where can people connect with you, follow what you’re doing, maybe get in touch if they have questions about things?

Melanie Teegarden: The best way to reach me is through the Althaea Soaps Facebook page or my email at MallowDrama@Gmail.com. M-A-L-L-O-W-D-R-A-M-A@Gmail.com.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.MotherEarthNews.com/Podcast. You can also email us at Podcast@OgdenPubs.Com with any questions or suggestions.

Our podcast production team includes Jessica Anderson, Kenny Coogan, John Moore, Carla Tilghman, and Alyssa Warner.

Music for this episode is “Hustle” by Kevin MacLeod.

The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast [00:30:00] is a production of Ogden Publications.

Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.

Meet Melanie Teegarden

Melanie Teegarden has been proprietor of Althaea Soaps & Herbals for more than 20 years. She has run an international website selling bath and body products to individuals and spas since 2006. In addition to her home-based business, Melanie also teaches soap making classes in her community of Johnson City, Tennessee.

Additional Resources for Making Soap with Lye

• Visit Althaea Soaps
• Order Melanie’s book, the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Guide to Soap-making
• Read more from Melanie Teegarden on Countryside, including these articles:
  • Jewelweed Soap: An Effective Poison Ivy Remedy
  • How Does Soap Work?
  • Handling Lye for Soap and Other Safety Precautions

 Our Podcast Team

Jessica Anderson, Kenny Coogan, John Moore, Carla Tilghman, and Alyssa Warner
Music: “Hustle” by Kevin MacLeod

Listen to more podcasts at MOTHER EARTH NEWS PODCAST.

Check out the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Bookstore for more resources that may interest you.

Go to the MOTHER EARTH NEWS video page for an opportunity to see some of our podcast guests on camera.

The Mother Earth News and Friends podcasts are a production of Ogden Publications.

Ogden Publications strives to inspire “can-do communities,” which may have different locations, backgrounds, beliefs, and ideals. The viewpoints and lifestyles expressed within Ogden Publications articles are not necessarily shared by the editorial staff or policies but represent the authors’ unique experiences.