Fisherman’s Soap and Orange Gifts
I’m participating in the reddit secret santa initiative and thought some homemade fisherman’s soap would be a great gift!
You can find the recipe for this soap in the shared soap recipes section.
Winter Moisturizing Soap
With winter coming, I thought I’d make a extra moisturizing soap. This soap takes a simple base and adds moisturizers like Lanolin, Shea Butter and Vit. E.
Milk Based Homemade Soap
This video is an updated version of a previous video that had audio problems. This is a quick video to show the process I went through to create a very nice soap with lavender flowers embedded in it. The soap is made with milk (heavy whipping cream) and then palm oil, coconut oil, soybean oil and cocoa butter. I added Vitamin E, Peach coloring and Lotus Blossom fragrance after the soap reached trace. Enjoy!
Summer Illusions Soap
This video talks about some tricks you can use to preserve the oils that you use to make soap. You can use Vit. E, BHT, Rosemary oil or just put the oil in a fridge.
Creamy Dream Soap
Fluid (goat’s milk) needed: |
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Handmade Soap Exfoliants
When making natural handmade soap, you can make all types of soaps to fit your desired niche. One of the possibilities is that of including an exfoliant in your soap to help lift away any dead skin or caked on dirt that needs a little extra scrubbing to get clean. One such exfoliant is Sodium Bentonite Powder which can be found at most health-food stores. This exfoliant will not only remove dirt and dead skin but also help to lift away the toxins in your skin. If you don’t have access to this clay, you can also start using products you probably have sitting around in your kitchen right now. You can use poppy seeds, blueberry seeds, ground almond meal, ground walnut husk meal or even ground oatmeal. Below you will find a more complete list which you can experiment with.
Once you have chosen what exfoliant to use, you will need to add it to your soap recipe. The perfect spot to add exfoliants is right after your soap has reached trace and you are adding your fragrance, superfat or color to the soap batch. With most exfoliants, because of their fine granular nature, you will want to mix them beforehand with a carrier oil so you don’t have to worry about lumps in your soap. There is nothing worse than finding huge pockets of exfoliant in your soap when you are using the soap. Once you have added the exfoliant to the soap mixture, you just need to mix it in thoroughly. Some exfoliants may thicken your soap batch while you are stirring it. Don’t panic! Your soap will be fine. Just continue to mix the soap but get it into the mold quickly before it thickens beyond your ability to fill the mold. At this point, you would treat this soap as you would any other soap and allow it to saponify for a few days, cut it and then let it dry in bars.
- Almonds (ground)
- Calendula (chopped or ground flower petals)
- Chamomile Flowers
- Clays (rhassoul, kaolin, bentonite, pink, red moroccan, french green etc.)
- Coconut Flakes
- Coffee Grounds
- Corn Meal
- Eucalyptus Leaves
- Fruit Seeds (cranberry, blackberry, blueberry, strawberry, apricot etc.)
- Jojoba Beads
- Kelp (too much can smell fishy though)
- Lavender Buds
- Loofah
- Oatmeal
- Oatstraw
- Patchouli
- Peppermint
- Poppy Seeds
- Pumice
- Rose Hips (not the seeds) (finely ground)
- Rose Petals
- Rosemary
- Sandalwood powder
- Spearmint
- Sunflower Petals
- Tapioca pearls
- Tea leaves
- Walnut shells
Green Patchouli Soap
Fluid (kombucha tea) needed:
added patchouli and cedar essential oils |
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Making Laundry Soap
If you are a soap maker, you have at some point come across the controversy of soaps verses detergents. Many see soap as a natural product whereas detergents are synthetic creations coming from a lab. In reality, both soaps and detergents are synthetic products that take naturally occurring chemicals and synthesize them into a new product. The big difference for soapers is that soap is easy to make at home while detergent is far too complex. Soap and detergent, while both good at cleaning, have different properties when placed in different environments. The biggest difference is that when soap is placed in hard water or an acidic solution, it forms a scum that is difficult to get out of clothes (if using for washing). Detergent does not suffer from this problem. The other major difference is that detergent works as efficiently in cold water as in warm. It is really these two reasons that detergent has taken over the laundry soap business.
The basic ingredients you will need to make your own laundry soap are:
- 3 oz soap (preferably homemade)
- half a cup washing soda
- half a cup borax
Soap: You really can use any bar of soap you like for this. I tend to like to use a simple soap that is made of 1/3 olive oil, 1/3 palm oil and 1/3 coconut oil that has been made with very little superfat discount. You will need to use about 3-4 oz of soap for this recipe.
Washing Soda: The biggest supplier of washing soda is Arm and Hammer. Because of this you might get confused between this product and their baking soda product. They are not the same! Washing soda is sodium carbonate whereas baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. This powder will give your soap a boost in removing dirt and odors.
Borax: This ingredient is a naturally occurring mineral that helps remove various forms of oils and dirts as well as deodorizing the laundry. Borax is just another name for sodium borate and can be found in most grocery stores in the laundry aisle.
The process of putting these ingredients together is not very time consuming and is well worth the cost savings per load of laundry (it costs about a penny a load). Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket. Now add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel. You use half a cup per load. You now have homemade laundry soap!
When you use this soap, you will notice it does not act like laundry detergent when cleaning your clothes. The homemade soap will be a little thiner of a gel than detergent and you will not notice as many soap bubbles when washing. This is perfectly natural and in fact, the bubbles do not indicate any type of cleaning properties. Now enjoy your freedom from the laundry detergent companies!
Honey Heaven
Fluid (water and honey) needed:
vanilla and rose fragrance |
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Spring Eclipse
Fluid (mint tea) needed: |
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