Non-soap facial cleanser

I have had some issues with my face lately...  I have been changing my nutrition around a little bit, altering some of my daily habits, but unfortunately, my face has been SO DRY and full of break-outs lately.  It's been driving me crazy!

I've read about people who wash their faces with oil-based cleansers and some of the benefits of washing with oil.  One blog that I enjoy, LisaLise, has a blog that is full of great information on the ingredients in hair / face / body products.  She writes a lot of about preservatives, ingredients and how they react with skin, how they react in products, clinical trials to support claims, such as whether "noncomedogenic" equals "able to unblock pores".  Her research has been so helpful for me as I've been trying to understand how products and skin interact.

Newest Soaps

I have been pretty busy in my soaping area recently - I finally figured out a recipe I really like, even though it seems a little expensive, and I've been working on making some new soaps that will be using a consistent recipe format.

My first soap I made is slightly different than my new "standard" recipe - it's a very gentle soap for some friends who want uncolored, unscented honey soaps.  It contains honey, beeswax, mango butter, avocado oil and colloidal oatmeal (among other things).  It was created to be palm- and coconut- free.

Normally, I try to avoid power circles, but I think it looks pretty cool here with the stamp :)

I also was feeling the winter blahs, and I was out of stock of my Sunshine soap (scented with Yuzu FO and Orange EO), so it was time to bring some citrus into the house and improve our moods.  I felt so much better after making this soap!

Just looking at the bright colors makes me happy!  There are poppy seeds in the white portion for some exfoliation.

I also wanted to try to make a facial soap - I'm getting close to out of the cleanser I currently use, and I figured I may as well try to make my own!  I got this recipe from Amanda's blog at Lovin' Soap.  It has a bunch of really great-sounding ingredients, which I happened to have on hand:  avocado and babassu oils, mango butter, activated charcoal and lavender essential oil. Here is her recipe - I resized the recipe to fit my column mold, but I calculated wrong and ended up with a bunch of extra soap batter, which I poured into my cupcake molds for individual-sized soaps:


Avocado oil – 4 oz

Babassu oil – 8 oz
Castor oil – 2 oz
Mango butter – 4 oz
Olive oil – 12 oz
Rice Bran oil – 2 oz
Water – 9 oz
Lye – 4.35 oz
1/2 Tablespoon Charcoal

I wanted to make it a little swirly, so I put the charcoal in about 2/3 of the recipe and then swirled it in the mold. I also had bought some 3" column mold liners from her, since I've broken the bottom of my BB mold. The swirls weren't uniform throughout the mold - as you can see the bottom of the mold was much darker and the top of the mold got the nice light swirls. I like both looks, though, and I can't wait to try out this soap!

I also tried to make a dog shampoo for my two little yorkies - I'll post the recipe and pictures later. The recipe uses neem oil and an EO blend. It doesn't smell too neem-y, and I am excited for it to cure so I can give it a whirl!

Also, I am feeling more proud of my pictures - all of these pics are still taken on my iPhone, but I downloaded the Camera+ app and have been making better use of PhotoScape to crop pics.  I am still having trouble with resizing the widths so they appear uniform in my blog.  I'll figure it out eventually :)

Here's what my table looked like while I was taking the pictures above.  Gotta love being able to crop :)

~Chrissy