Salt Bars (with safety update)

Up until recently, the only divided molds I have had are fancy-design cavity molds.  This is fine for regular soap, but I wanted to try my hand at salt bars.

Jenny at Lather Be Soaping posted this tutorial on salt bars, which explains a lot about why coconut oil (and the high percentage) and other things - definitely go and check out her post for more information and some pics of a beautiful bar of soap.  I wanted to try out making my own bars, and I got my hot little hands on some pink Himalayan salt to use.  My husband uses Himalayan salt blocks to cook steaks (which are delicious, by the way!), but I went and bought medium-ground salt for my soaps :)

I used the same recipe Jenny uses on her blog:
80% coconut oil
15% avocado oil (I love avocado oil!  I use it in all my recipes)
5% castor oil

I superfatted at 20%, since such a high % of coconut oil can be very drying.  My problem was understanding how to size this recipe.  I wasn't sure whether the salt would dissolve into the recipe or if it would add additional bulk to the recipe, so I sized it to fit a 9-bar mold for bars that were 3.5"x2.5"x1.25" (or approx 40 oz oils).  I added 36 oz of salt to the recipe at trace, since you can use a salt weight of anywhere from 50%-100% of the weight of the oils used.

I definitely over-produced :)  The salt does add additional volume to the bars (duh in retrospect), and it made nearly double what I was looking for.  Therefore, I needed to cut the bars in half to get them to a size that can be held (and used).

Here's a pic of the soap being mixed:

The salt didn't mix in as well as I thought it would...  I had to do the same thing as Jenny and switch to a whisk.  MUCH easier after that :)

Here it is in the slab mold before I put in the dividers.  One note on sliding in the dividers - I don't think I pushed hard enough on the dividers, and there was a layer of soap stuck underneath the dividers when I tried to unmold.  I haven't had this happen on my other soap recipes in this mold - may have been the thick batter and saltiness.

Love that pink color!

And here are the cut bars.  They got pretty crumbly around the edges when I tried to cut them.  I waited about two hours until they were solid-feeling (but still warm), and then cut with my miter box.  The soap was much crumblier than I had anticipated - probably because of how much undissolved salt was in the bar and I may have needed to cut them a little sooner...

The color is nice, but all the edges are kind of crumbly.  A couple days after cutting, though, and already the lather is feeling lotion-like.

I have a feeling that even though the salt bars may have won this round, I am going to win the battle!  (muah haha)

SAFETY UPDATE:  I realized after this posted that I am showing a picture of my bare hands with the caustic soap batter above.  When I soap, I follow the safety precautions prescribed by numerous blogs, including Soap Queen (Google cold process safety procedures if you're new to CP soaping and want to try it out).  I had removed my gloves to grab my camera to take this picture so that I wouldn't get soap batter on my camera from my gloves.  I just forgot to put the gloves back on for the picture.  Any soapers that are new who want to try this recipe, PLEASE PLEASE follow good safety practices for soap making.  

Listen to Sweet Brown - Lye Burns: Ain't nobody got time for that! :)

~Chrissy

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.

Dog Shampoo

I have 2 adorable (and poorly-behaved) Yorkies.

Meet Hannah - she is nearly 8 years old, is a little crazy and is a tough mudder who can run with me for 5 miles and will steal the rawhide bones from dogs who are 10x her weight.

Here is Hobbes - he just turned 4 (which is unbelievable to me - where does the time go), he looks like an Ewok, he barks all the time, and he enjoys smelling high-quality cocktails.

These two hate baths, and I currently use some natural liquid dog shampoo to keep them squeaky clean.  I found this recipe from poster Nicholray on Talk Soap Forum.  I had the ingredients (except the lanolin) to make this CP bar soap, so I decided to give it a whirl.

16% avocado oil
20% castor oil
16% coconut oil
6% cocoa butter
20% neem oil
22% olive oil
Add tbsp ppo lanolin
3% sodium lactate (its a soft recipe without it just takes longer to set and cure)
2:1:1 ratio of lavender: eucalyptus: naiouli EO

I sized it so it would make only 3-4 bars in the column mold I have.  I forgot the sodium lactate, and made some changes to the EO blend, since I don't have naiouli (or honestly even know what it is...). The recipe certainly smelled like neem oil when I mixed it, but after curing for a couple days, I can smell the EOs and not the neem as much.  I hand-stirred to avoid the air bubbles, and this neem soap doesn't seem to have the bubbles that have shown up on the other bars I've cut with the wire cutter, so maybe I just need to be more mindful of the air bubbles as I mix.

The color is a nice yellow-ish color.

The soap cannot cure fast enough.  I have some dirty dogs in need of some cleaning :)

Who needs a bath?  Not me!!

~Chrissy

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

Soaps with Milk

Long absence everyone!  I have spent the past month enjoying time with family and friends, some down time for myself, and a little bit of time sick in bed with the flu that's going around and other various winter diseases.

But now, it's back to the blog (and hopefully soaping!) Last fall, I experimented with some milks in my soaps.  I had heard all about how lovely and creamy they made the lather, and I wanted to check it out for myself.  The first soap I made with cream (about 90% of the liquids) was this Pumpkin Spice soap, also using pumpkin puree and BB's Pumpkin Spice FO.  

It was awesome (and still is).  I loved the smell, it lathered beautifully, and it smelled delightfully pumpkin-y and also spicy for the fall.  This turned out so well, that I next tried this Gingersnap soap with coconut milk - 100% of the liquids for the lye. 

The colors turned out more gray than brown, even though the swirl was nice, and these bars in my slab mold were HUGE!  They averaged around 7oz when cut...  But when I was mixing the lye with the coconut milk, it started to turn a little orange.  That's okay, I told myself, because I'd read about it happening on various forums, blogs and soapmaking books.  I probably just was adding lye too fast to the milk.  However, when I got the solution mixed in and started to mix the soap batter, YUCK - what is that awful smell!  That coconut milk smells burnt and horrible!!

I told myself it would probably go away over time, and it is a favorite of many friends and family.  After curing for about 4-5 weeks, I no longer noticed the smell of the burnt milk, and my nose was not offended by this soap any more.  Great!

Next, I tried cream again (the heavy whipping cream from the grocery store) to make a peppermint soap.

I was sure I had the hang of soaping with milks now, so I was even faster about adding lye to the soap and used 100% cream for the liquid in the lye mixture.  I added the lye to cold cream (not frozen), and before long, it turned a brilliant orange.  I was not worried, because it had turned out well in the past, and I was sure this time would be no different.  As I was soaping, I tried not to notice the horrid smell of sour, burnt milk.  It was terrible.  I scented with peppermint EO to cover up the milk smell, and let it cure.

The scent did fade over time, I noticed.  But last week when I went to get my hubby a soap for his shower, I picked up a tester I had made from this batch. (I made a second batch also with less milk, which smells much more pleasant)  Holy Hannah, did that smell sour!  I made my hubby smell, and he promptly threw the bar in the garbage.

I am worried about using milks in my soaps after this horrible experience, not knowing whether I am just very sensitive to milk now since I haven't been eating dairy lately, or if it was something I messed up.  I did a little research, asked some questions on the Teach Soap Forum, and got some answers.  

It seems that I probably used too much milk in the recipe, and I am likely sensitive to the milky smell.  I will wait for awhile before I'm tempted to try milks in my soaps again.

On a more positive note, though, I did find a fantastic winter recipe I have been using for the horribly dry and bitterly cold winters we have up here in Minnesnowta, and I will get pics and a blog about that shortly!

Hope you all are staying warm!

Shaving Soap Recipe

My husband and I gave my dad a shaving set for Christmas last year.  When I started making soaps, I really wanted to learn how to make shaving soaps for him to use with his brush and razor.  These are great holiday gifts for the men (and women!) in your life - using the shaving soap with a brush not only gives a really creamy, stable lather, which is useful for shaving, but the brush makes the hairs stand up (on face, or even on legs) to get a closer shave.  I've made the soap in mugs I found at Goodwill and attached a shaving brush I found at Walgreens for a cute holiday gift for friends and family.

I make my soap in the crockpot, with a mix of sodium and potassium hydroxide.  Here's the recipe I use, found here:

165g Beef Tallow
165g Stearic Acid
100g Coconut Oil
70g Castor Oil

180g Distilled Water
65.6g Potassium Hydroxide
25.2g Sodium Hydroxide

1 Tbsp bentonite clay
1 fl oz FO - My last batch was BB Earl Grey Lemon FO, both men and women like the scent (and even one of my dogs :) )

When the oils are combined and the lye water solution is added, the soap batter gets thick quickly.  I usually use a spatula to mix, rather than my trusty stick blender.  I add the bentonite clay after the batter is thoroughly mixed, because the bentonite clay LOVES water and will thicken the batter up considerably.  Then I dump in a crock pot on low and wait for 1-3 hours until it's fully cooked. Even though these are hot-process, I like to let them cure for at least a week before using.

I have made the soap in BB's column mold, but it's extremely hard to unmold, because the soap is more of a very soft soap, almost a cream soap.  It's firm enough to keep its shape, but the users of the soap may find it easier to use if it's poured directly into a mug or saucer to make using the brush easier.

Since the bentonite clay loves water, you'll have to work a little bit and keep wetting the brush, but the lather is amazing.  Check it out :)  It will stay for a really long time on your face / legs, too!

Even my dad loves the soap:

I've been keeping myself busy the past couple days with the new Soapmaker 3 software I got for an early birthday present.  The CPA in me is really enjoying getting my inventory and recipes documented and figuring out exactly how much each of my soaps is costing me (and my wasted batches, like the lye-heavy batch from the last post).

~Chrissy