One of my favorite fragrances is Coconut Lime Verbena, a BBW copycat scent. It's coconut-y and citrus-y in just the right combination. My first CLV soap was white with green swirls and a leaf design on the top. Unfortunately, the white slowly became a creamy off-white color due to the Vanillin contained in the fragrance oil.
When it came time to make more Coconut Lime Verbena soap, I was prepared -- or so I thought. I purchased some Vanilla Color Stabilizer from Wholesale Supplies Plus. The stabilizer is mixed in a 2:1 or 1:1 ratio with the fragrance oil 2 minutes to (no more than) 15 minutes before adding to the soap.
Little did I know that Wholesale Supplies Plus has 3 types of Vanilla Stabilizers -- one for melt and pour soap, one for cold process soaps and one for lotions. I had purchased the M&P kind. Since I had 16oz of stabilizer and I rarely use melt and pour soap, I decided to try it in my soap.
In the following video, I make CLV soap using the M&P vanilla stabilizer. I think it worked! What do you think?
Nighttime, it's when I soap. The littles are asleep. The house is mostly quiet. And it's peaceful. Tonight, I created a cold process soap using essential oils. And I'm in a generous mood, so I'm sharing my recipe. Please run your own lye calculations though a soap calculator to confirm. Oils/Fats: 20 oz beef tallow 18 oz coconut oil 18 oz palm oil 4 oz castor oil 17.51 oz distilled water 8.76 oz sodium hydroxide (lye) 2.25 oz fragrance oil or essential oil
Follow all safety precautions for working with lye. At a minimum, that means wearing gloves and goggles and keeping pets and people (especially children) away from the working area. Work in a well ventilated area or open a window while mixing the lye as it emits fumes.
Weigh the oils and melt to combine.
Weigh the distilled water and place in a suitable container (I use a Pyrex glass batter bowl, but a stainless steel and some plastic containers are acceptable.) Don't use aluminum.
Weigh the lye and add it to the distilled water. Stir briefly with a stainless steel spoon or silicone spatula. Never pour water onto the lye. Remember the expression "it snows on the lake" -- the white lye flakes fall into the water.
Wait for the lye water to cool and turn clear.
Add the lye solution to the melted oils.
Mix with a stick blender until it looks like thin pudding.
Add the fragrance of your choice and stir.
Pour into your mold(s).
Spray top with 91% rubbing alcohol to prevent the formation of white soda ash on the top.
Next day: remove soap from mold and cut into slices.
Place soap on a non-aluminum surface to cure for 3-6 weeks.
I have a lot of ideas. That's an understatement. One day a few years ago, I sat at our dining room table designing a new soap -- a soap for feet and legs. My idea? A two-sided soap with a scrubby side to clean my feet and a slimy side for shaving legs.
The scrubby side would be loaded with powdered pumice and the slimy side would have bentonite clay. Extra sugar would make the soap extra bubbly and extra sea salt would make it extra hard. That was the plan...
Well, reality hit and when I poured the bentonite soap mixture on top of the pumice soap mixture, they mixed. Yeah, there was still some separation between the 2 sides, but honestly, you can't shave your legs with pumice soap.
The good news: the soap turned out to be awesome for cleaning tough stains on hands and feet! I prefer flipflops and sandals, even when working in the garden or feeding the chickens. Buckwsr, the hubster, repairs small engines on the side. A friend used this same soap to clean stubborn glue after a tiling project. This soap worked wonders!
The bad news: I lost the folder containing the recipe for about a year. I looked through all the spiral folders I could find. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Then one glorious day the folder appeared! I adjusted the recipe because the 2-sided technique didn't work.
Here's the video of the remake of this soap for your enjoyment:
It's probably time to make this soap again in a sweeter-smelling fragrance like lemon lavender or Love Spell type. Want to buy a bar? This soap is coming soon to our etsy shop: Nancy's Garden Soap Co
After spending time making, cutting and curing our hand crafted soaps, I'd wrap them with a cigar-band style label and place them on a shelf or in a box. However, the soaps would continue to shrink as they cured, and the cigar band would slip off. Sometimes the soap would fall off the shelf and become dented. I needed a better way to label soaps and protect them from damage. I bought some 4" x 6" shrink wrap bags and some labels... pulled out the hair dryer and began sealing soap!
Pros:
shrink wrap bags are inexpensive (less than 3 cents each)
can shrink 40% of the bag's size (fit many sizes of soaps)
can be cut for even smaller soaps or a tighter fit
heat can be applied with a hair dryer or craft heat gun
protects soap from dents and damage
protects soap from germs (craft show fingers and noses)
fragrances do not spread from one soap to another (different soaps can be stored in the same box or shelf)
soaps can be stored on metal shelving (soaps placed on metal are more likely to develop DOS - dreaded orange spots)
labels stick to shrink wrap
shrink wrapped soap looks "professional"
shrink wrapping is fun
Cons:
soaps continue to shrink after wrapping and may need to be "tightened up" with more heat prior to selling/shipping
it's difficult to smell soap through the shrink wrap
wrappers can rip if overheated or the soap has a sharp edge
corners of the wrapper can be sharp if not properly pushed down
not as environmentally friendly as other wrapping methods
your cat may try to eat shrink wrap wrappers (mine does)
customers may have difficulty unwrapping the soap
If you need a better way to protect your soaps for gift giving or resale, you might want to consider shrink wrapping them. Here's a quick tutorial:
Do you shrink wrap your soaps? Do you shrink wrap any other items? Let me know in the comments below!
