Soaps

April 14, 2009

Shampoo bars have hardened up nicely,  and ph levels look good, but still plan to wait the full two weeks until I try them.  We have started using the Yogurt soap.  It has a nice, rich and creamy lather.  Very happy with it for a basic soap.

I shredded the Tea Tree soap, and made dishwashing liquid out of it last week.  It separated and hardened at first, but once enough water was added, it maintained a nice thick liquid texture.

Homemade shampoo and vinegar hair wash is working now, too.  But it took a few days for my hair to adjust to fewer chemicals.

April 5, 2009

Made Shampoo bars on the 2nd.  They are very soft, apparently because of the castor oil.  I waited three days to unmold them, but still had to cut them into 1 inch bars to remove them from the loaf pan.  Hopefully, they will harden up more over the next couple of weeks. I added a little lemongrass scent, so maybe my husband will use them, too.

Also made some of Susan’s Tired Hands Cream with my blender  tonight.  Left the scent out so Alvin would use it, too.  It seems great so far!

Been reading The Soap Making Forum the past couple of days.  Printed off some recipes and added them to my Soaps and Lotions notebook.

March 29, 2009

Yogurt Parfait soap!  I cut it this morning, and it looks pretty good. It did not turn as brown as I expected.  Didn’t add any scent this time.  We’ll see how it lathers up in a few weeks.   Here’s the form: milk-soap-yogurt-parfait-march-09

I found a digital scale, two digital thermometers, washing soda, cheap molds and most of the other supplies I’ll need to continue trying different soaps and household cleaners.  My order from Pointe Vedra Soap Shoppe should be in on Monday, which includes lanolin, jojoba oil, palm oil, beeswax and a few essential oils.   We have a good health food store for such a small town, so I’ll have easy access to lots of the additives like the marshmallow root I bought a couple of weeks ago.  ( I have no idea what it does yet!)

March 26, 2009

I’ve been playing around with making soap again recently.  (I had done this before several years ago, and inhaled the lye, so I gave up until now.  I think I have fully recovered! )

The mold was too big for the Tea Tree soap made on March 24.  It was so thin it broke when any pressure was put on it:

But it smells nice and looks good otherwise, so it should be usable.  Tea tree has some antibacterial qualities, so maybe scraps can be turned into liquid soap later.  I’m going to try a loaf pan for 1-2 lbs batches.

I just finished reading Milk Soapmaking, which is a good book but there was no detailed summary of the steps, so I developed this one page form today.  milk-soap-cool-technique

I hope to make Yogurt Parfait Soap tonight.