I must admit I was a little disappointed that I was not going to be able to do the soap camp I had planned for Oct. ’16 but this… this makes up for it and is even better!
The dates are Feb. 3rd, 4th and 5th. I don’t have check-in and check-out times yet but we will arrive supper or 4th meal time Friday and leave after breakfast on Monday. The place is Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. (The condo is actually…
I want to post this as what I consider a very important lesson in soap making. It relates to a couple of the current threads. It’s about lye and how lye works. Moisture “ruins” lye. We know that, right? What it does is deactivate it. First it weakens it and then at some point it is no longer of any strength to be called lye. It won’t make soap. (This is very rarely the reason for your failed soap…
Let me tell you about lotion (and cream*)!!
I never used to make lotion because I didn’t really like lotion and I make Skin Food which (in my old opinion) was better than lotion. I’m told that it’s not just a question of better, it’s a question of different. Skin Food is great for many things but people still want a lotion. Something lighter and squeezable or pumpable. Something you can use under makeup and a bunch of times a…
This is the note I sent to soapcalc via their contact form at http://soapcalc.net/info/ contact.asp
Hello and thank you for your wonderful soap calculator. I have one question regarding the hardness factor. Is this a measure, as it says, of hardness or of non-solubility? It is always a mind bender for new soaping students to grasp that hard doesn’t necessarily mean longer lasting and before addressing this in an upcoming class (where we’ll use your calculator) I just wanted to…
There are numerous professional methods. I find this one best, easiest and with more wiggle room for our kind of business. I figure the wholesale price. (Because that is the lowest of the possibilities) You always figure the costs of ingredients at what it will cost to replace them. So, whether you were gifted oils or bought them on sale is irrelevant to your pricing. To figure labor you use the cost it would be to hire someone to…
This is a follow up to Masterbatching Lye and Melting Coconut Oil. This is how I’m keeping the oil melted after melting it once. It will be a huge time saver. This can contains enough oil now for eight five-pound loaves of soap, 20 bars per loaf. Usually I melt enough for 4 loaves at a time. This is not that huge a difference but it will save me a good bit of time as I don’t have to dig…
The melting point of coconut oil (unless specified as 92 degrees) is 76 degrees. This can make it really time consuming to dig out in cooler weather (and if you’re as little as me, it’s too much hard work). I set out to find a solution this week after wearing out my arm mining coconut oil.
I cannot remember or find who turned me on to this particular item but you have my deep gratitude. This is one of my best…
please consider some things:
Have you ever created a cake recipe? In order to do so you need to understand what each element adds to the finished cake. What adds the moistness or keeps the cake dry? What makes a big fluffy cake as opposed to a stubby dense one? If I gave you a chart that said density or fluffiness are cause by this element and moisture vs dryness are cause by this element you would have one LARGE advantage…
Some thoughts on scents: As some of you know I tried a lot of scents from new suppliers this week which amounted to a couple of pleasant and familiar smells and an olfactory assault. It also gave me some food for thought. Fragrance is such a subjective thing! Here we are trying to determine whether our EOs are “authentic” and whose is better and it begins to remind me of the “Stones or Beatles?” wars of my youth. There…
Soleseife (pronounced zo-luh-zy-fuh) is a soap made from sea salt water and coconut oil. Other oils can be used but only coconut oil lathers well in salt water.
Around July 1 I put a freshly made soleseife soap out on my porch railing to see if it would collect moisture or appear to “weep”. My house was not humid since the air was on all the time so I figured if it was going to get damp it would do…
Soap