Ingredient Spotlight: Lavender Essential Oil

Lavender essential oil is one of the most popular and well known essential oils. It is generally known to calm and relax the body to the point that it is often used to promote sleep. Did you know that it is also antibacterial and helps burns to heal faster and without scaring? Lavender oil is also one of the safest essential oils and can be used to treat children’s minor cuts and scrapes. Many essential oils are not safe to use on children.

© Beisea | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

Lavender essential oil comes from over 20 different species and they can be grouped into 3 main varieties. 

1.   True lavender. Lavandula angustifolia, L. officinalis, and L. vera are commonly known as common lavender or English lavender. These plants feature narrow leaves, short, crooked stems, and barrel-shaped flowers. The flower gives off a sweet, floral scent that sooths, calms, and relaxes.

2.   Spike lavender essential oil. L. spica and L. latifolia are coarser plants, with broader leaves than true lavender (L. officinalis). While these varieties yields up to three times the amount of essential oil as true lavender, the scent is less highly prized. The oil from spike lavender flowers is more akin to a combination of eucalyptus and lavender. 

3.   Lavandin essential oil.L. hybrida is a sterile hybrid plant that results from the cross-pollination of English lavender and spike lavender. This oil is more camphorous than L. angustifolia and has similar, but less pronounced, therapeutic properties. It can be included in formulations intended for pain relief or disinfection. Compared to true lavender plants, these plants have larger leaves, longer stems, and larger flowers that are pointed at the tip. Lavandin produces more oil than true lavender; however, the scent is quite different from true lavender. Lavandin tends to have a woody scent with a hint of a spicy-green, camphor aroma. While Lavandin does have therapeutic properties, it is not be used as a substitute for true lavender since the therapeutic properties differ. 

Lavender Oil is often the first essential oil that is used to help recover from burns. Here is an interesting tidbit: This amazing property of lavender essential oil was first discovered by René-Maurice Gattefossé in 1910. The following is a tale traditionally told about his discovery:

“In 1910 French chemist and scholar René-Maurice Gattefossé discovered the virtues of the essential oil of lavender. Gattefossé badly burned his hand during an experiment in a perfumery plant and plunged his hand into the nearest tub of liquid, which just happened to be lavender essential oil. He was later amazed at how quickly his burn healed and with very little scarring. This started a fascination with essential oils and inspired him to experiment with them during the First World War on soldiers in the military hospitals.”

While there is some truth to this tale, the real story as told by Gattefossé himself, in his book Aromathérapie: Les Huiles Essentielles Hormones Végétales (buy here translated into English), states:

“The external application of small quantities of esences rapidly stops the spread of gangrenous sores. In my personal experience, after a laboratory explosion covered me with burning substances which I extinguished by rolling on a grassy lawn, both my hands were covered with a rapidly developing gas gangrene. Just one rinse with lavender essence stopped “the gasification of the tissue”. This treatment was followed by profuse sweating, and healing began the next day (July 1910).”

Ladybug Soapworks Lavender Soap

Ladybug Soapworks uses lavender essential oil in our lavender soap, lavender bath salts, lavender roll-on perfume oil, and lavender bath oil. Try some of these products to experience the calming and relaxing properties of lavender oil.

For more information see:

Aromaweb.com  - Great website with lots of information on essential oils.

http://personalcaretruth.com/2011/04/gattefosses-burn/- Good site with the true story of how René-Maurice Gattefossé found the burn healing properties of lavender.

Ingredient Spotlight: Neem oil

If you don't know anything about Neem oil, I can assure you that the first time you encounter the oil it will make a strong impression. Strong in the sense that it has a very powerful odor! Boy does this oil stink! If you can get past the smell though, Neem has some wonderful properties and has been used in Ayurvedic (Indian) medicine for over 2000 years! In India, the tree is often referred to as the "Sacred Tree" and the "Panacea for all diseases". Obviously, this tree has made a huge impact on their culture. Neem oil is a liquid vegetable oil that is pressed from the fruit and seeds of the Neem tree (Azadirachta indica) which is originally from India.

Neem tree with fruit.

Neem oil or a tea made from the leaves can be drunk, but it has a bitter taste, which is often a signal of medicinal properties. In Ayurvedic medicine, Neem is used as a blood purifier and is also heavily used to treat skin disease and irritations, fever. Small twigs were traditionally used to clean teeth like a toothbrush.

Neem is also known to be an all natural pesticide and can be simply sprayed on plants that need protection from pests, but is not harmful to mammals, birds, earthworms, and if not sprayed directly on their food source, butterflies, honeybees, and ladybugs.

I use Neem oil in my sensitive skin soap that I have specifically formulated to be gentle irritated skin. This soap works great for me when I have eczema flair-ups.

Have you encountered Neem oil?  What do you think of it?

Ingredient Spotlight: Shea Butter

Shea butter is one of my favorite ingredients to use in soap. It comes from the nut of the African Shea (Karite) tree (Vitellaria paradoxa (also known as Butyrospermum parkii)). It is typically a yellowish or ivory color, but can be refined to remove the nutty scent and color leaving it pretty much pure white. I find that the the raw unrefined butter is great when used in soapmaking, but if you are wanting to make a lotion or whipped Shea butter, the white refined version tends to suit that purpose better.

Shea Butter and Shea Nuts

Shea butter is mainly used in the cosmetic/body care industry though it is also used as a cooking oil in some African countries. You will find Shea butter as an ingredient in many products such as lotions, creams, salves, lip balm, soap, and hair conditioners. Shea butter is made of a variety of fatty acid components and many unsaponifiable (they do not react with the alkali (sodium hydroxide) and will not become soap) components. This results in soap that is more moisturizing. Shea butter melts upon contact with our bodies and is highly emollient. It has been traditionally used to reduce the appearance of scars, stretch marks and skin discolorations and sooth skin irritations like eczema, psoriasis, and sunburn.  The unsaponifiable components are also thought to protect the skin against sun damage by absorbing the ultraviolet radiation. Another great fact about Shea butter is that it has a long shelf life and can easily last 1-2 years or more when stored in a cool, dry location. This means I can buy it in bulk to keep costs down and then include it in almost all of my soap! Only my Castile soap, shampoo soaps, and salt soap bars are formulated without Shea butter.

Want to know more? Check out this great page of information on Shea butter over at the National Geographic website.

Soaps, Drugs, & Rock and Roll

I have to admit that this is really old news, but I am sure that most people have not heard this story and I wanted to share this great video. The video below explains how real soap tests positive (false-positive that is!) for the date rape drug. This is simply a problem with the drug testing kit, but it turns out to be a great way to find out if what you are using is indeed real soap and not a mixture of synthetic detergents. Their are many cases of products being mislabeled and claiming to be soap when they are in fact detergent. While this test is a pretty cool trick for us soapmakers, I am sure most people will not want to check their soap with a drug kit to determine if it is really soap. An easier way to determine what is in your product is to look at the labels. Be on the look out for "soaps" that have Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate, Ammonium Laureth Sulfate, or Cocomidopropyl Betaine as these are all common detergents used in soap-like products. On the other hand, if the label lists oils and sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide as the ingredients, then you have real soap. I should note that real soap and detergent products can be found in both solid (bar) and liquid forms.

Check out the video below and at the very end you will see a list of companies that are falsely advertizing their product as soap. As a consumer, you should be able to make an educated choice about what products you are putting on your body.

Geranium rose bath (oil) melts tutorial

Bath melts are a wonderful way to to add scent and skin nourishing oils to your bath. They are essentially bath oils made up in a solid form. All you have to do is drop 1 or 2 of them into a nice, warm bath and they will melt dispersing the oils and scent into the bath water. The melts pictured below are made from a combination of cocoa butter, shea butter, and sweet almond oil. The are scented with a Geranium Rose essential oil and topped off with some red and iridescent glitter, because sparkles make everything better!

Geranium Rose Bath Melts

A simple recipe to make your own bath melts is given below.

1. Melt 1 part cocoa butter and 1 part shea butter in the microwave.
2. Add to the melted butters 1 part liquid oil.
3. If needed, let the oils cool to below 120 degrees F and then add your fragrance (1-3% for fragrance oils and 1-2% for essential oils).
4. Mix and pour into small molds (about 1 oz mold size is good)
5. Allow to cool and harden either at room temperature or for a faster cooling place in your fridge until solid.

If all these "parts" are confusing, here is an example using oz.
1 oz cocoa butter
1 oz shea butter
1 oz liquid oil (sweet almond, hazelnut, hemp oil, or pretty much any other liquid oil would be fine).
17 (1%)-50 (3%) drops of fragrance

You may want to play with the ratio of hard oils (butters) to liquid oil to find what looks and feels best to you.

Tutorial: How to make infused oils.

Infusing botanicals into vegetable oil is a great way to transfer the properties of flowers, roots, seeds, or leaves into an oil. This oil can then be used directly on the skin as a medicinal oil or to make soap, lotions, salves, balms, or many other bath and body products. Some herbs are great for imparting a color to the oil which can be used to color soap, lotion, etc. There are two methods that are most commonly used to infuse or macerate herbs into vegetable oils. Both methods are quite simple and can be done with items common to most kitchens.

The first method: Traditional Cold Brewing

Step 1: Clean a glass jar  with soap and hot water (I like to spray it with 70% ethanol to sanitize after washing). Allow jar to completely dry.

Cleaning and drying my jar.

Step 2: Fill the jar with loosely packed dry herb. You can use many type of herbs and flowers such as calendula, jewelweed, chamomile, comfrey, arnica, etc.

Jar filled with Calendula petals

Step 3: Pour in a liquid vegetable oil to cover the plant material. I like to use olive oil, but you can use sweet almond oil and many other types. You may want to choose your oil depending on what you plan to make with the infused oil. For a lip balm, sweet almond oil would probably be better than olive oil and for a massage oil you may prefer to infuse into fractionated coconut oil.

Olive oil added to jar so that it is just above the plant material

Step 4: Close the jar, shake, and place in a warm sunny window for at least 3 weeks but you could continue infusing for up to 6 weeks. During the first two weeks, try to shake the jar daily.

Soaking up the sun's rays!

Step 5: Strain out the plant material using either a metal mesh strainer and/or a cheese cloth.

Step 6: Bottle the infused oil and store in a cool dark place. The oils should be good for at least 1 year.

The second method: Quick Hot Brewing

Step 1: Place dry plant material into a crock pot, bain-marie, or a double-boiler. I prefer to use a crock pot as I can set it up and just come back occasionally to check on it. If you are doing this on the stove, you should be sure to stay nearby for safety.

Step 2: Cover plant material with oil of your choice. For this method, since you are adding heat you can even infuse into oils that are solid at room temperature (such as shea butter, coconut oil, mango butter, etc).

Step 3: Heat oils and plant material at about 100-125 degrees Fahrenheit for 1-3 hours. You want to gently heat the oil and not boil it as that could destroy the properties of both the oil and plant material.

Step 4: Strain away plant material as explained above.

Step 5: Store infused oil in a clean jar in a cool, dark place and it should be good to use for about 1 year.

This picture shows some of the other infusions I have made. The Ayurvedic olive oil is an infusion of 4 Indian herbs, the jewelweed infusion was made from the leaves of the plant, and the reddish-pink oil is alkanet root-infused olive oil. I can't wait to try the last one in soap to see how the color comes out!

Other herbal infusions

I look forward to hearing if you try either of these methods and how the oils turn out.

Adding Social Media Icons to your Blog

As you have probably noticed, I am making a lot of upgrades to both my blog and online store. My newest additions are the pretty social media icons you can see to the right. Adding these icons to my blog took a lot of trial and error, looking at the source code for other sites and trying to figure out how to modify it for my site. Well in the end Dylan helped me and I FINALLY got it to work.  Since I found this process so difficult, I thought others might be going through the same struggles as me and perhaps I could save them some time and hassle. These directions are only for Blogger (Blogspot) blogs. So here we go:

Step 1:
Find some social media icons that you like. A simple Google image search for "social media icon png" will bring up a ton of options. Download the ones you decide to use. For my site, I am using a set called "Minimalist" that was designed by Zee Que at designbolts.com. You can get them here for free.

Step 2:
If you have your own website upload your images to your Public_HTML folder. This will allow you to access the icon at www.YOUR_WEBSITE.com/IMAGE_NAME.png. Obviously, you need to change YOUR_WEBSITE to the name of your site and IMAGE_NAME to the name of the image (likely something like Twitter.png or Pinterest.png).

If you do not have your own site to upload the images you can upload them to a place like Flickr where you can get a link the the specific icon image.

Step 3:
Go to your blog and select the layout tab. Then click on the 'Add a Gadget' in the area of the blog that you would like to place your icons. In the popup, select the "HTML/JavaScript add third-party functionality or other code to your blog" gadget.

Step 4:
Give this gadget a title if desired. Then you will have to type in a modification of the code given  below. You will need to add the text highlighted in gray between <a and </a> into the content box. The first example is for Facebook. In the text below, where it says YOUR_USERNAME you will need to change to text to reflect your Facebook name. You will also have to change/modify the link to access your icon image; replacing YOUR_WEBSITE with the name of the site where the image is stored and ICON_NAME to the exact name of the icon.

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/YOUR_USERNAME">
<img width="60/" title="Follow YOUR_USERNAME on Facebook" alt="Follow  YOUR_USERNAME on Facebook" src="http://www.YOUR_WEBSITE.com/ICON_NAME.png"/>
</a>

Here are the examples for Twitter and Pinterest for my site. Now following the directions above, just change where I have Ladybug Soapworks and my website and image name to the appropriate names for your site.

<a href="http://www.twitter.com/#!/LadybugSoapwork">
<img width="60/" title="Follow Ladybug Soapworks on Twitter" alt="Follow Ladybug Soapworks on Twitter" src="http://www.ladybugsoapworks.net/Twitter2.png" />
</a>

<a href="http://pinterest.com/LadybugSoapwork/">
<img width="60/" title="Follow Ladybug Soapworks Pinterest" alt="Follow Ladybug Soapworks Pinterest" src="http://www.ladybugsoapworks.net/Pinterest.png"/>
</a>

 

I hope this tutorial will help you to get your blog looking a little more professional, too!

The History of Soapmaking

It is impossible to say who invented soapmaking and when soap was first made. Soap had been used by humans for thousands of years. Interestingly, soap was first used to clean fabrics and pots. It was not until much later that people began using it to clean themselves. Before the development of soap, it is likely that people used plants containing saponins for cleaning. The earliest known use of a natural soap-like substance was the Reeta (Sapindus) nut, which had been used by Indians since antiquity. Other plants that have been used are the Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis), many species of Yucca, Soap Lily (Chlorogalum pomeridianum), and the Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum)(1). Even today, many people throughout the world employ these plants as cleansers.

Reeta nut (Soap nut)

 A popular myth claims that soap was first discovered and takes its name from Mount Sapo a location near Rome. It is said that animals were sacrificed to the Gods on this mountain and legend has it that the animal fat and wood ashes from the braziers would be washed into the Tiber River during rain storms. The animal fat and ashes would combine to create a soap-like substance that would stick to the sides of the river. When women in the area came to wash their clothing in the river, they noticed that the soap-like substance made their wash cleaner with less effort. However, the location of Mount Sapo is unknown, as is the source of the "ancient Roman legend" to which this tale is typically credited.

It is believed that a soap-like was first invented by the ancient Babylonians at least 5000 years ago. The first evidence of this substance was found during excavation of ancient Babylon. The soap-like substance was found in clay cylinders and dates back to around 2800 BC (2). A clay tablet from Babylon dating to around 2200 BC records a formula of water, alkali, and cassia oil to make soap. This soap is thought to have been used in both cleaning wool and cloth in textile manufacture and also used medicinally.

The ancient Egyptians are also known to have made soap. A medical document, the Ebers papyrus, dating to around 1550 BC states that soap was made by combining animal and vegetable oils with an alkaline salt. The soap was used for treating skin diseases and for washing.

Ebers Papyrus

It is also evident that soap was used by the Roman empire. Pliny the Elder recorded in Historia Naturalis(around 70 AD) the manufacture of soap using tallow (fat) and wood ashes (3). He states that the soap was used as a pomade for hair. This book is also the first appearance of the word sapo, Latin for soap. It was originally thought that an entire soap factory had been found, complete with bars of soap, in the ruins of Pompeii. Pompeii was destroyed and frozen in time due to the volcanic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. This has proven to be a misinterpretation, it is now thought that this building was used to clean and prepare textiles. Unfortunately this error has been repeated widely and can be found in otherwise reputable texts on soap history. While bathing is known to have been important in Roman life, cleansing with soap was not recognized as important until latter centuries of the Roman era. Soap was generally used as a treatment for skin diseases and cleaning textiles.

Soap made by the Gauls and Romans used goat's tallow (fat) and the ashes of the beech tree to produce both hard and soft soap. The name soap is derived from saipo, the term the Gauls used to describe the product of animal fats and plant ashes.

Muslim chemists in the medieval Islamic world were the first to produce soaps as we know them today. They were made from vegetable oils such as olive oil, aromatic oils like thyme oil, and lye. The formula for soap used since then hasn't changed. It is known that from the beginning of the 7th century soap was produced in Nablus (West Bank, Palestine), Kufa (Iraq) and Basra (Iraq) (4). Arabian Soap was perfumed and colored and some of the soaps were liquid and others were hard. They also developed soap specifically shaving. The Persian chemist Al-Razi was the first to record soap recipes in a manuscript. More recently a manuscript from the 13th century was discovered that details even more recipes for soap making (5).

In the Middle Ages, artisans worked independently to develop dyeing and soapmaking. Since creating good recipes required so much trial and error, the recipes became secret and were handed down from master to apprentice, and from father to son. Soap was largely developed for use in the cloth industry, to prepare wool for dyeing, and not for personal hygiene. Soapmakers in Naples were members of a guild in the late sixth century (6), and in the eighth century, soap-making was well known in Italy and Spain where soap was made with goat fat and Beech tree ashes. During the same period, the French started using olive oil to produce soap. Eventually, fragrances were introduced and soaps for bathing, shaving, shampooing and laundry began to be made. By 1200 AD, Marseilles, France, London, England, and Savona, Italy had become soapmaking centers.

From the 16th century finer soaps were produced in Europe using vegetable oils (such as olive oil) as opposed to animal fats. This switch to vegetable oil was not simply due to the fact that animal fat soap smelled so bad but also because its manufacture would deplete the nation’s tallow reserves, thereby driving up the cost of candles beyond the reach of the poor.

The most important step in the advancement of soapmaking came from two French chemists. Due to the inconsistencies in the concentration of the alkali extracted from ash, it was difficult to maintain quality control of the soap.  Sometimes it would be too oily and other times it would be too caustic. 

Nicholas Leblanc and Michael Chevreul around the turn of the 19th century help to overcome this problem. In 1791, Leblanc patented a method of making sodium carbonate or soda ash from commonly available salt. In 1811, Chevreul discovered the relationship and chemical nature of fatty acids, glycerin, and fats.

The standardization of sodium hydroxide (lye) production has allowed us to refine our recipes and be able to consistently make batches of soap that have the same qualities. We now know the saponification values for different oils, so we can calculate just how much lye is needed to completely saponify (turn into soap) a specified amount of oil. This ensures that we never have a batch of soap that has excess lye in it and we can control how much free oil remains in the soap to create a nice moisturizing bar.

Ladybug Soapworks Gingerbread Soap

References:

(1) Plants for a Future. http://www.pfaf.org/user/cmspage.aspx?pageid=49

(2) Willcox, Michael (2000). "Soap". In Hilda Butler. Poucher's Perfumes, Cosmetics and Soaps (10th ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. p. 453. ISBN 0-7514-0479-9. 

(3) Pliny the Elder, Natural History, XXVIII.191.

(4) http://www.history-science-technology.com/articles/articles%2072.htm

(5) Chemistry Google e-book by Wikimedia Foundation

(6) Understanding the Middle Ages: the transformation of ideas and attitudes in the Medieval world, Harald Kleinschmidt, illustrated, revised, reprint edition, Boydell & Brewer, 2000, ISBN 0-85115-770-X.