Cream Soap Update!

A couple weeks ago I made some Killian's Red Irish Stout and carrot cream soap. I finally have uploaded the pictures from the day I made it. It is now smooth and creamy, but still a bit too hard. I will be adding some more extracts tomorrow to loosen it up a bit. I think I will scent it with a mixture of dragon's blood, oakmoss, and sandalwood. I have been having a hard time coming up with a scent to use, so if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them. :)

This picture was taken just after adding sodium lactate, panthenol, and silk amino acids.


This next picture is at the end of the cook. Over the next day the soap will turn a creamy golden orange-brown.


Here is what the soap looks like now. It needs a bit more liquid and fragrance still, but I am very happy with how it looks.

Killian's Carrot Cream Soap

--> I am making some Killian's Carrot Cream Soap today following the class on Yahoo's cream soap group. I am currently simmering some Killian's Red Ale to get rid of the alcohol. It smells pretty awful. I will post some pictures of my soap later today. If you don't know what cream soap is check out some of my previous posts where I made it here, here, here, and here.

Organic Oils?

I have been thinking about changing all my oils over to organic oils as I run of of my current stock. How many of you currently use organic oils in your soap and other bath/body products? What is the general preference...do you care if your soap is made from organic oils or not? This would require me to raise my prices by probably 50 cents to $1, though I will have to price everything out to make a final decision on that. I would love to hear your opinion on the use of organic oils.

Finally, since it has been sooo long since I last posted pictures I will tease you with some new items that will be listed in my store soon. The first is some Pumpkin Pie Cream Soap. This is the real stuff...real soap not the foaming bath stuff.

This is Lavender Shea soap made with lavender essential oil. I brushed the top with mica so that is has a nice sparkle.

This red hot soap is cinnamon scented.
Lavender bath oil. Made with turkey red castor oil so that your tub does not get slippery. Turkey red castor is a water soluble oil.
Patchouli roll-on perfume.

Soap and scrub

Just whipped up a batch of pumpkin soap, using real pumpkin, and a batch of jasmine salt bars. I changed up the salts in the salt bars to a fine grain from the medium grain and I think they look better. I am also working on a double batch of oatmeal, milk, and honey soap to replenish my stock and for a custom order that wants an entire loaf.

I have also been playing around with my pumpkin cream soap that I made a while ago. I finally got it to the thickness that I like. I want to make some of the cream soap into a scrub, so I have been testing out different ingredients. I tried raw sugar, sea salt, luffa, and jojoba beads. The sugar turned out fantastic. I scented it with brown sugar FO and it is really to die for. The salt seemed to "melt" into the soap and turned it very thick--too difficult to use. The luffa and jojoba beads would probably be good for a facial scrub, but they just didn't do too much for me. I may try out some exfoliating waxes, apricot kernal, aluminum oxide, or synscrub spheres. I think I will stick with the sugar for the body and test out some of the other options for the facial scrub.

I will try to get some photos of the new soap up tomorrow.
Hope you all were able to enjoy the beautiful day!

Productive Weekend!

After having spent all day Saturday at a renaissance fair that Dylan's kung-fu demo team performs in, I was feeling the need to make LOTS of soap. So, Sunday I made 5 batches of CP, rebatched some shampoo soap that was soft, and made a batch of cream soap. It was a lot of fun! For the cold process soap I made them all with a blend of shea butter, olive oil, castor oil, palm oil, and coconut oil. For scents I made a vanilla, lavender vanilla, black raspberry vanilla, lemon poppyseed, and chocolate espresso. They all smell marvelous. The cream soap contained coconut oil, cocoa butter, olive oil, jojoba oil, castor oil, stearic acid, palm oil, and glycerin. For additives I included hydrolyzed silk protein, hydrovance, panthenol, kaolin clay, and calendula petals. The calendula petals provide a light yellow color which should look very nice once the glistening sheen develops in the soap. I will post picture of all the new soap soon!

Homemade Toothpaste

I have been actively commenting on the soap dish to try and get my 100 comments needed to use soapsaver. There has been discussion about homemade toothpaste or tooth soap on there and someone happened to mention using cream soap as a toothpaste. This sparked my interest due to my recent batch of cream soap. So I went and tasted my soap to see if it was nasty tasting...but low and behold it tasted great! It must be due to the glycerin in the soap, cause it has a light sweet flavor. I am planning to add a bit of baking soda and some peppermint EO and make a bit of tooth paste to try out. I am not sure how much of each to add so any suggestions would be welcome.

Cream Soap 2

Day 2 for cream soap. This soap was formulated with some palm oil since it is rich in stearic acid. Stearic acid is really what gives cream soap its sparkling white luster. Often cream soap is made entirely with stearic acid or just a little liquid oil. When you add palm oil to act as some of your stearic acid it apparently makes the cream soap very very thick and almost salve like. My last cream soap batch (see here) was basically a thick sticky liquid after 1 day. I do not think I like this recipe as much as my last one. Though I have be able to get a better consistency if I whip in in my kitchen aid and add some water or aloe gel. I will keep you updated on how this soap changes over time.

Cream Soap

I am in the process of making another batch of cream soap. This time I tried a recipe from the Failor bulletin on cream soap. This batch is made with stearic acid, palm oil, coconut oil, and avocado oil. The picture below shows the soap after the cook and super creaming. It was in the process of cooling and you can see how it is starting to turn a creamy white color instead of a translucent gel. It is really quite interesting all the stages cream soap goes through before it actually becomes the nice creamy soap it is destine to be. Any suggestions on what to add to this batch?

French Clay and Ginger Cream Soap

I just received my containers for a bunch of new items I will soon be adding to my store. They are all a little smaller than I expected. I may get 16oz containers in the future instead of 8oz. The picture below is of my French Clay and Ginger Cream soap in one of my new containers. It also shows one of my new labels (though I forgot to change the net. weight from that of my lip balm...haha lucky I only printed two labels). I really love this cream soap. I just put a little dab on my mesh poof and wow...so much lather! Plus the ginger smells great and it feels nice as a facial soap too. I think it would also make a great shaving soap, though I have yet to try it out as such.

Cream Soap

I made a basic cream soap recipe from a class on the yahoo group cream soap making a few weeks ago. I was getting really concerned because it had not thickened up...I was about to buy some boric acid to thicken the soap. I decided today that maybe it needed to be whipped. So I put it into my kitchen aid and mixed for about 30 minutes. It ended up turning into a thick marshmallow fluff-type texture (without the stickiness). You can see below the initial water type texture of the soap.
Below is a photo when it thickened up. It is like a cool whip texture...dense but fluffy cream.I added French green clay and ginger souffle FO to this part of the cream soap batch. Dylan tried it out and thinks it is really cool. I can't wait to see what it does with a mesh sponge in the shower.