Soap Makers Help!

[cheeptrick]

Quote:
mine is just an old shoebox!
~Red

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q200/redhead83402/IMG_0100.jpg

LOOK at those swirls....see there....we got you all spinning and NO fear now!! LOL Those are gorgeous soaps....LOVE your chlorophyll color!! I LOVE the shoe box...I have been seeing soap molds out of everything lately. Red can you share with us your exact recipe. Your textures are VERY nice....

chickenwhisperer....you need to do a trip to the kitchen section of your local goodwill or salvation army! FORGET building them....just find something around the house.

I found this great site called Nashville Wraps www.nashvillewraps.com. I bought 100 brown kraft boxes for $16 (shipping was steep but the more you order the less shipping costs) and I can fit 4 bars in each box....perfectly! Look into their food packaging...those would make very nice soap boxes....JUST label it correctly so folks will not mistake and eat your soap EVEN though I do all the time! LOL And those glassine wax paper bags are 'perfect'!!! I sell a lot of soap in these bags at the shows...I just leave my bars bare and let folks choose and I wrap them up. All these hippies up here get all crazy about patchouli and WAX paper bags!! LOL

G'Night

 

[cheeptrick]

I also wanted to share with you some of my geode soaps from my melt and pour soap tutorials I did early last fall. It was just for fun...my DD's wanted to soap too...so we went thru the whole teach soap tutorials....we made like 4 or 5 others. But this one turned out the best. My children were thrilled to just get in and try it out.

I loved faceting the soap.

 

[ninjapoodles]

Ah, those are so neat! I have a friend who made multicolored "gem" soaps that I really admired.

Really pretty colors!

 

[redhead83402]

WOW!! ~ those are really awesome cheeptrick!! That's not your normal melt & pour! lol ~ very very cool!

LOL ~ I imagine the spuds over here will quite enjoy brown paper bags!

Red can you share with us your exact recipe.

Thank you! & Sure ~

Fats & oils
coconut oil ~ 15 oz
olive oil ~ 15 oz
soybean oil ~ 60 oz
lard ~ 30 oz
tallow ~ 20 oz

Total weight ~ 140 oz

Lye ~ 18.5 oz
water ~ 45 oz

on some of the recipes I substituted 10 oz of refridgerated, unsweetened juice to the cooled lye.

I also just let it get to gel clear into the corners & then I remove any lids used for insulation. I like to cut it as soon as it's stable enough. I keep being afraid it's gonna have to be sawed apart like my 1st batch otherwise.

I'm going to have to come up with another recipe, though, because this rendering tallow is NOT fun ~ lol. And I know these ingredients are not as high dollar as the palm oils & such, but they are what I have access to so far. And the bars do seem to lather quite well, regardless.

Also, NP & Cheeptrick, you mentioned making salt bars ~ how do you calculate your lye & such with the addition of the salt? Do you have a special recipe for salt bars?​

 

[cheeptrick]

I rebatch it into my soaps. USE only table salt....you can even use it in melt and pour...you get an different lather though. Not my favorite.....it stings too....if you have a cut anywhere. Kids are great testers....YOU hear about it. LOL I have also used kosher salt...I prefer it on the tops. Sea Salt WILL melt mp 'glycerin' soaps. (ask me how I know!) I've gotten away with just sprinkling it on the tops of mp glycerin though. You can even use it in your lye water...but I do not personally like salt bars and even when I did make them folks were not too crazy about them. I rebatched my eucalyptus mint chlorophyll and added salt to the tops only....it looks weird....still not happy with it. NOT even going to sell it because it is just UGLY soap! LOL Some folks use sea water to make soap??

Mine are still molded so I'm going to use my band saw to cut them...but I did not load it with salt so I might be ok.

editd to add another way to make salt bars...try it out and report back to us..this is from a teach soap thread.
12 oz. coconut oil
3 oz olive oil
2.4 oz lye
5 oz water

This gives you roughly 8% superfat. Mix everything as usual, go ahead and add any colorant or fragrance you're using, and at light to medium trace, add 15 oz of fine salt. Stir thoroughly to remove clumps, and pour into your mold. Easy peasy.

Keep in mind that this will be too hard to cut if you wait too long - either cut as soon as it's out of gel, or use individual molds. AND shrink wrap in plastic...because the salt draws moisture from the air and destroys your soaps over time.

 

[Morgaine]

I recently made my first salt bars. I had read about them on a soaping forum and some people just loved them, so I thought I would give it a try. Mine are only a week old so I haven't used them in the shower, but I did srub up with some in the left over pan and it wasn't course like I thought it would be at all. I really had to push it down to feel any graininess at all. You have to cut these like cheeptrick said, right after gel or within six hours because they get hard FAST!

Here is the recipe I used. You can get away with the 20% super fatting because the salt acts as a preserveative.

3 Pounds of Soap


Coconut oil 1021 grams or 36 ounces
Castor oil 136 grams or 4.8 ounces
Shea Butter 204 grams or 7.2 ounces

Water 250 grams or 9 ounces
Coconut milk 250 grams or 9 ounces
Lye 184 grams or 6.5 ounced

Salt 40 ounces

Make sure to add fragrance before salt, it gets really thick with all that salt. Add the salt at no more than a medium trace and I wouldn't use a fragrance that speeds up trace. You can use sea salt, but not dead sea salts or epsom (sp?) salt. I used a 50/50 mix of kosher salt and sea salt.

Cheeptrick Those gem soaps are georgous! I've seen the tutorials on teach soap. I think the gem soaps are my favorite ones. Hoe neat would it be to give someone a birth stone gem soap.

ETA. I added the coconut milk into the oils just before I added the lye/water.

 

[MullersLaneFarm]

Quote:
Did you get in a blind swirl?? I can't wait to see it!!!!

It's going to smell so wonderful!

 

[MullersLaneFarm]

Quote:
I won't use palm oil in my soap recipes - my skin react to the higher palmitic FA. I much prefer lard over palm.

How are your rendering your tallow? I do dry rendering in the oven and it's a piece of cake compared to rendering with water on the stove top.

If you run out of suet to render, you might just want to try using "Creamed Shortening" from the grocery store. Not Crisco or the All-Vegetable Shortening (which is usually hydrogenated soybean oil), but the generic "Creamed Shortening". Look at the ingredients - it will say made from meat oils or some such. It is usually 97% lard/tallow & 3% hydrogenated soybean. (It won't say that on the label, but when ever I've called the manufacturer, that is what I'm told)

Your recipe looks quite nice actually.

Cheeptrick - those gems are beautiful!!

 

[chiknwhisperer]

Heres the soap everyone

what do ya think?

And here is Mango my new BO rooster

 

[smom1976]

ohhhh those are nice.. I would like to get some more molds...


my mom is going to get me some for christmas.. *she already told me*

anyway where can I find molds that are good for the money.. so to speak.