Hi Elaine,
Welcome to the forum!
How much research have you done? Are you interested in making cold process soap or melt and pour? What supplies do you have?
Cold process soap needs at least 4 weeks to cure. You won't have enough time for it to be cured to give away at Christmas unless you put a "do not use until" date on them. You could make hot process soap which you can let cure only 2-3 weeks but I still consider a longer curing time better. Curing isn't only about letting excess water evaporate from the soap. The soap goes through a further change - becomes milder and the lather becomes better.
Melt and pour (or glycerin soap as some people call it) is pretty much instant gratification if you're making fairly basic soap.
A lot of people prefer it and they make some very intricate soaps with it. It's more time consuming if you really get into the artistic side of it. Here's a link to a recent discussion about MP soap which you may find interesting.
http://soapmakingforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=32888
There are also more recipes in the Soap Making Recipes and Tutorials section and in the topic "Share your favorite recipe"
http://soapmakingforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=736
You can look at soapqueen's blog to find tutorials on both cold process and melt and pour soap.
http://www.soapqueen.com/
IMO, start out with something simple if you want to try making CP. You can get olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil (if you're not opposed to using it), castor, lard, tallow, sunflower and other oils in local stores. You can find lye at stores in the drain cleaner section. Just make sure the label says 100% Sodium Hydroxide on it. I just recently posted a recipe which I'm very happy with and you might want to take a look at it to see if it's something you might like to make.
http://soapmakingforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=33780
You could also just make a 100% coconut oil soap with a 20% superfat. You could leave it like that or add some salt to it to make if a salt bar. I personally love salt bars but some people don't like them. Another recipe I posted for salt bars was 80% coconut oil, 15% sunflower oil and 5% castor oil. However, I like to allow salt bars to cure longer than 4 weeks but that's personal preference.
Some sites which would give you more info about making cold process soap is soapqueen's blog but she also have a youtube series on cold process. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR6ttCSrLJI&list=PLAADF6209996265D2&feature=plcp"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR6ttCSr ... ature=plcp[/ame]
http://millersoap.com/
http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/coldp ... cpsoap.htm
Also, reading through topics in the CP section and Melt and Pour section will give you a lot of information and probably more questions. :wink:
