Lotion, Soap and Bath Salts

I made some soap, bath salts and lotion for our neighbors for Christmas.  They lavished us with gift last year, we had no idea, so we made sure to participate this year.  What a lovely tradition!

I haven't made much soap or other products in a while so it's great to get back into it after about a year.  I'll be making some more here soon since Steve and I are running out of soap for ourselves!

Merry Christmas!!

First soap in the NC House

Making the first soap in a long time at our new home in North Carolina.

It's always an adjustment to figure out how to use the space correctly and where to do what but it went pretty smoothly.  

I made peppermint soap as part of a gift to our neighbors.  We have a great neighborhood that give each other gifts at Christmas.  Love it!  I love that now I have yet another excuse to make soap and other fun stuff!!!

Gift For An Amazing Colleague

Round soap

I purchased Bramble Berry's round soap mold with a liner that is supposed to make it easy to remove.  I was $9 so why not.

I planned on making a small batch using 450 grams of oils.  My usual batch of 900 grams of oils yields 8-9 bars of soap.  I’m not counting the water/lye weight for these.  I figured the smaller batch would be a good test of the round mold and yield about 4 bars of round soap.

I measured out my oils, water and lye, then set out the essential oil of eucalyptus and some Chrome Green (teal) pigment mixed with a touch of olive oil.  I then mixed my soap.  Once emulsified I took a little less than a cup of soap out into my pyrex pitcher in order to mix the pigment with the soap.  Then I began the pour of my round soap.

I started pouring the colored soap, then some of the uncolored, then colored, then uncolored….etc. etc. until I finished pouring all the soap.  I wrapped the mold with my heating pad in a box so that it could stay in the vertical position.  

Then I went to clean up and discovered the EO was still measured out in its bowl in my mixing area.   Darn it!  I decide to pour it in to the mold and try to mix it into the soap. The soap was still liquid but I didn’t get it mixed in well enough.  Two days later I unmolded the soap; which stuck to the liner by the way and the liner created a little point on one side of the round soap. I noticed just the top of the soap had the eucalyptus smell and the half inch of soap was brown and very strong.

The rest of the soap is pretty but unscented. I sliced the EO part off figuring I can use pieces of it dissolved in my bath when I want to have a eucalyptus bath.  I’ll have to try this whole thing again and hopefully next time remember my EO!!!  I’ve never done that before!  Ugh!

I’m going to Lowes this weekend for some PVC pipes since I want to try out some plastic bag liners I purchased for round soaps.  I think the Brambleberry mold is not quite the same size as the PVC molds.  I’ll try it out and also try the bag out with the BB mold too.  I want round soaps!  If these bags work I know how I can custom make them myself therefore making them shorter or longer as needed.  I’ll post as I proceed.

Lip Balm Tint

I'm having so much fun with this!!  My lip balms have always been a friends and family favorite.  I make a sunflower, shea based balm with beeswax.  Currently I have two flavors, Honey and then Peppermint EO.  Both are awesome.

I decided to try out some lip safe colorants.  I used a burgundy oxide and then Merlot and Copper sparkle mica's.  The tutorial I was following just used the micas with an additional Gold mica.  I ended up adding 4 times the amount of colorant to the small amount of lip balm than was required in the lip balm.  I didn't want mine too sheer.

I'm thinking of getting a mini hand beater to mix in these colorants in the future.  It would help with adding colorants to soap as well.  I like to make my lip balm base in a mason jar and then take out the amount I need when I make lip balms.  I haven't made a ton at once recently so I just use the dropper method of filling the tubes rather than fill a whole tray for 50 lip balms at once.

The lip balm looked pretty dark, but really the concentration of color is not that great where you'd call it more of a lipstick.

Here are my pale lips before....

And then with a light application of the lip balm.  The lighting is bad but it still at least shows that it's sheer and natural looking.  I'm pretty pleased but plan to try out some other tints in the future.....maybe go all mica like the last recipe since the oxide I used cut down on the shimmer.

Lip prints on my coffee mug!

This lip balm is still my honey flavored one, gonna have to get some peppermint made soon,  I love then both!

Lotion Trial Number Two

I used the same recipe but lowered the stearic acid by 1% and upped the water 1%.  I accidentely added too much Jojoba, couple grams.  This time I used a Rise and Shine sample fragrance which is very light and unisex.

I purchased a bottle drying rack (baby bottle I'm guessing).  This worked nicely to sanitize all my bottles and such before making the lotion.  I kept with a higher temperature for mixing but still within the range of the preservative.  This allowed for easy pouring.  I did a smaller batch so made two 2 oz bottles and one 4 oz bottle.

I need to get the regular emulsifying wax to try out and see the comparison of the two.  I still like this recipe in general but excited to try some other oils and of course other scents!

The Color Purple

The color purple, naturally, is a difficult thing to get in Cold process soap.  At least for me it is.  In the past I was able to get a pretty dark purple.  This time I worked with 8% of my oils being alkanet root infused olive oil.  I think in a future post I will have to try alkanet again and compare this result to my next try. 

In some lights my freshly cut soap looks a little bit mauve but still has a purple tinge.  It's pretty but I'm wanting to find the perfect percentage and usage of alkanet root powder for the purple I desire for a lavender soap.  This soap was Ylang Ylang with some Palmarosa to cut the overly sweet scent.

It smells fantastic.  It will look awesome too once I trim and bevel the bars.  I'm really not a rustic look kind of soaper.  I like a bar that even at first use I can swirl it between my hands and it doesn't cut.  When I first started soaping I never beveled the edges.  Ouch!!!

My Ylang Ylang/Palmarosa soap above sits on top of my Lemongrass/Patchouli goats milks soap.  This purple color you see is more close to the actual color I see in the soap under most lighting situations.  The lemongrass soap turned out lovely.  I had a nice pour that was still pretty thin so the bars came out with no lumps or issues.

Some bars had some marring at the ends since I tweaked the silicone mold a little too much.  I just have to be careful how I remove it.  The soap stayed in the mold at least 48 hours before removal.  Additional time would be fine too, hardening the bars a bit may help with the marring issue.

Also note the dark yellow spots.  I just tossed my yellow oxide in the oils and stirred.  Lazy bum!  I really should have incorporated my yellow oxide into a small portion of the oils first then added to the rest.  The color is a bit dark too.  I should have used just one 1.25 cc scoop of the oxide.  Oh well.  I still think it looks nice and it smells amazing!

I'm trying to use up most of the fragrance and essential oils I have left before I order more.  There are favorite scents I'm dying to recreate but they will have to wait.  This weekend I intend to try another lotion; a smaller batch and perhaps just slightly less thick and finally get some bath bombs made.  Also if my order arrives in time I can try my hand at making my lip balms have a tint!  It's so much fun to get back into this hobby; but as the weather gets nicer I think I'll have less time for soap and more time for the pony.....such are my priorities!