Soap making 101

I have been buying handmade soap for a few years now and I love it...but at around $5 per bar it was getting a bit too expensive.  I read quite a bit about making soap online and this book had great reviews so I ordered it and some essential oils online and gathered up a giant keg of olive oil from Costco, some coconut oil from my local grocery store and some lye from the hardware store and got started.  I already had a digital scale that I use in the pottery studio for mixing glazes.

My kitchen sort of looked like a meth lab (can you tell I've been hooked on Breaking Bad?).

The soap recipe I used makes a small batch...a one liter milk carton makes a great mold.  After the soap set up for 24 hours I tore away the carton and sliced the soap into 9 bars per carton.

I only like the smell of the essential oils...NOT...fragrance oils so I ordered patchouli, fennel, peppermint and tea tree.  I added poppy seeds to the peppermint soap and ground coffee to the fennel soap so I could easily tell them apart, I left the patchouli soap plain.

I wanted to think of a clever name for each soap...so far only the patchouli has a name..."Dirty Hippy".  (I hope I am not offending any hippies out there).  I made a brown paper wrap and stamped the name on with rubber stamps...so far I've given away most of the soap to friends and family....not sure if this is saving me any money or not...ha ha.  Let me know if you can think of any clever names for the peppermint/tea tree or fennel soap.