Soaper's Supplies

Sifting through various soap suppliers on eBay I found P&P costs were going to set me back a bit but luckily  one of the shops I placed an order with sent a note with my stuff in the mail which directed me to their separate online store. Postage is flat rate £2.95 and all of my orders so far have been sent the next day. So not only is postage very reasonable but you get what you pay for on time too. 

Click here for soaper's supplies. 

Citrus 'C'

Citrusy indeed! By following an online recipe and doing a little bit of subtracting/substituting, I was able to achieve the following results:

Eight 4oz bars of soap slipped easily out of my new plastic un-photogenic mould. The darker areas are (I think) where it hasn't dried as much but if the other bars I've made are anything to go by then the colour will soon even out. No colourings were used and I don't intend to use them at-least not for a long time anyway.  I haven't quite yet decided whether I should stick with the new mould. While it makes cutting so simple and bars of equal measure, I like how the other mould creates unique bars with character. What would you prefer?

~Ingredients~ (in no order)

• Avocado oil
• Castor oil
• Olive oil
• Coconut oil
• Shea butter
• Lye
• Flat Corona
• Orris root powder
• Lemongrass E/O
• Sweet orange E/O
• Palmarosa E/O

Palm Free Guiness

I decided to follow an online soap recipe and chose to use Guiness as the liquid. There are plenty of horror stories of people not using flat beer and I didn't want any lye volcanoes in my kitchen so two days previous, I had heated the Guiness just before boiling point and then stored it in a jar. 

Here is proof that you don't need palm oil to make soap work: 

(I tested a teensy bit)

Ingredients:

• Avocado oil
• Coconut oil
• Castor oil
• Olive oil
• Shea butter
• Flat Guiness
• Lye
• Palmarosa E/O

~Progress~

A few soap experiments later and I notice they seem to be getting better or at least more edible looking which can't be a bad thing. I'm saving the pics of all the sad soggy soap for a post in the future that will make you laugh *I promise*

                             And behold the latest:

                                                   ~Lavender Oatmeal and Tea Soap

Made by cold process, the bars were cut this time into thick, chunky slabs which weigh around 4.5 ounces. Maybe next time I'll strain the tea instead of adding a teaspoon full to the lye solution. On another note, it looks like something I'd eat for breakfast...

The ingredients for this batch were as follows:

• Coconut
• Olive
• Sunflower
• Macadamia Nut
• Castor
• Grape seed
• Apricot Kernel
• Lye
• Earl Grey Tea
• Lavender 
• Oatmeal

New Mould, New Soap

A friend sent me some wine and of course I didn't notice the bottles at first. My first thoughts were, "Oooh look a soap mould!". So here you can see my latest batch in a mould that used to be a wine presentation case. Gone are the narrow Converse shoe boxes I used for the previous batch. The mould is perfect for many reasons since the dimensions mean easy cutting and there's even a wooden lid to aid insulation. Next time I will no doubt be lining the other side to accommodate another batch. 

After my ever increasing awareness stepped up a notch, I felt like I needed to get rid of the rest of the palm oil and did so in this highly conditioning bar of soap. I read of people using beet-root juice as a natural colorant so I gave it a shot expecting 3 tbsp to make pretty raspberry swirls.  I did get a slight swirly effect by using 2 pots and thinking I was clever but *sigh* what you see here folks, is no raspberry swirly oh no...

Here is the rosemary and swirls of a different colour, not quite green but certainly not pink. It looks interesting enough and smells very natural, well of course it is vegan after all.

My ingredients for this earthly batch were:

• Palm oil
• Olive oil
• Coconut oil
• Sunflower oil
• Castor oil
• Grapeseed oil
• Rain water (melted snow)
• Lye
• Beetroot Juice (obviously not enough)
• Rosemary

And now to order some more oil excluding palm...

Ogle At My First Batch

One day I decided to make soap. After watching Fight Club followed by hours of youtube soap tutorial vids, I was ready. I bought the equipment needed and various oils including *gasp* palm oil. If I had known all that I do now about palm oil, I wouldn't have bought it. For those of you scratching your heads watch this. In future I will be leaving palm oil out of my soap and using various alternatives.

Here you can see my first batch sitting cosy in a drawer (curing). I used the cold process method simply because I don't have a crock pot and it seemed like a good place to start. My recipe used the following oils:

• Peanut 
• Olive 
• Coconut 
• Palm 
• Macadamia nut 
• Castor
• Sunflower 
• Apricot kernel

The little black freckles you can see are poppy seeds which are apparently good for exfoliation. I did drop in some lavender oil but only a little bit and it might not have been enough. Only time will tell. I plan to document my soapy experiments in this blog so that I will be able to learn from my mistakes and receive feedback from fellow soapers.