Orange Spice and Pink Grapefruit

Assorted soaps

Sometimes I wonder why it takes me so long to download pictures from the camera.   It's not that complicated of a process, yet it takes me forever!

Pictures

I should work a little harder on ths Blog.   Stuff Christians like motivated me to add some pictures today.  Let me know what you think.

Bergamot

Until I started making soap I had no idea what Bergamot is.   It's in quite a few fragrances.   It is
 An oily substance extracted from the rind of the fruit of a dwarf variety of the Seville orange tree, used in cosmetics and as flavoring in tea.  In fact, it's one of the main flavors of Earl Gray Tea.  A Bergamot orange is yellow and has a pleasant fragrance.    The juice is not used.     They are mainly grown for their essential oils.

Mango Butter!

Butter is one of my favorite words.   I think Paula Deen likes it too.   Watch her cook, she adds butter to or on or in everything.    Mango Butter is pressed from the seed kernel of the Mangifera Indica, a tropical evergreen tree indigenous to India and Malaysia. This soap making oil is especially good for dry and mature skin.  It is supposed to help mature and senstitive skin, reduce fine lines and help dry skin. 

I've ordered some Mango Butter to try in soap.   Can't wait to try it.  Hope I don't eat it.

Why use store bought soap?

I don't know!  I can't figure out why I used it for so long.   I thought it was fine until I started making soap and using it.   Now, I see the difference.   I don't have dry itchy skin.   If anybody has sensitive skin, it's me.  

I was a Bath and Body fan at one time.   And, there are some scents they carry that I still like.   They are such good marketers that I wanted to try everything.   But, the shower gels dried out my skin.  Still like some of their lotions though.

About all of the store bought soaps are made from detergents.   Synthetic soap is the answer to mass producing a product.   Detergents contain petroleum distillates rather than oil. On the other hand, true soap is made from natural oils (such as olive, coconut and palm) and is a gentle cleansing product more appropriate for use on skin than detergent and much more mild than detergents.

Bunnies, wolves, sheepdogs and sheep

This link does a good job of explaining how soap is created

http://www.canis-art.com/soaping.htm

Shea Butter

I love Shea Butter.   It lends a nice creaminess to soap.  And what I love most about it, is it comes from the African BUTTER tree.  What a fantastic name.    The tree grows in Central Africa and the butter has been used for food and body care for a long time.  Shea Butter is gentle enough for babies and people with sensitive skin to use.  

From cooking to soaping

   I started making soap during the winter last year.  I always like to learn something new when it's too cold to go outside and play.    I researched  the Cold Process method and decided it sounded like something I could do.  It's kind of like cooking.   I can make yeast breads, carmel, and many advanced recipes that many people wouldn't attempt so I figured soaping shouldn't be that difficult. 

When my supplies finally arrived I dove right in.   I had read and watched Youtube videos on mixing lye. I put on my gloves and googles and stirred the lye flakes until they disolved into the distilled water.   Mixing the lye was the most worrisome part.   Sodium Hydroxide reacts with water.   So, if you have water on your skin and a lye crystal or powder lands on it, you might want to be near running water.  And the fumes are noxious, so it's nice to have a close by window to open.  Oh, and the once the lye mixes with water the temperature shoots up to 160+ degrees.  There is steam.

Then I melted the coconut, palm and canola oils.   The lye and the oils can be mixed together between 80 -120 degrees.  From what I see, it just depends on who authored the recipe.  I stay between 95-105 degrees.     And you want to keep the lye and the oils no more than 15 degrees of each other.    Once my lye and oils were within the range I mixed them together.  I used a stick blender and blended until I thought we'd hit the "trace" stage.   Trace is when the soap mixture is ready to be poured into the mold.   The mixture looks like a thick pudding and leaves a trace of the mixture on top when you use a spoon and drizzle it on top.  Then it's ready to pour!  

Cranberry-fig soap

A 2lb batch of soap scented with Bramble Berry's Cranberry-fig fragrance oil is now curing.   6 more weeks and it'll be ready to use.   I used the tried and true recipie of coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil and castor oil and colored it with Burgundy iron oxide.     The only problem was getting it out of the mold.   I've never had such a stubborn soap!   I think it was a user error and the mold was not lined properly.

Making more soap soon