Sponiebr

I use peppermint EO in mine, and I love it. The only thing is, if you have company you need to make sure they don't go off and try the AH-MAAAZE-ING looking chocolate mint fudge... My recipes for pine tar soap have been single fat recipes, (the soap is only for me), 20% pine tar 80% whatever fat I've settled on, 10% superfat with (I'm doing the disclaimer now: I DO NOT RECOMMEND this much unless you know what you're getting into) 1 oz PPO Peppermint EO. (yes, you read that right and that's why I did the disclaimer) I've not used SL in my batches and while they are a little soft, they're not too soft for my tastes. I've made it with lard, but I can't stand the smell of lard in my soap, it's a personal problem I have. I've also made it with beef tallow from Soaper's Choice. The beef tallow batch is actually a pretty darn good soap and has more of a true earthy smell to it if you leave out the peppermint. The tallow soap would probably lather better with a little CO and castor. My favorite batches to date though have been made with Crisco. Crisco made the softest of the different fats, but I, and anyone who tried both my tallow and Crisco soaps, liked the Crisco the best. I really want to try your recipe Chefmom. (I'm still totally adding in my ounce PPO of peppermint, 'cause the tingle must LIVE ON!!!) I definitely don't have any SL and I don't have any AO. I don't know where I'd even get some Avocado oil locally. I wonder, if salting the batch might harden it up? I've never made salt bars before so I don't know if the salt would cause this to move even more quickly than it already does. Chefmom, how fast did your recipe move on you? My batches were moving at about 45-55 seconds from combined extremely light trace to "OMG, I just barely got it into the mold with no gloppy top. (Soap hard on the side of the bowl.) I would think the OO would slow your recipe down significantly. (comparatively speaking) What a fun thread and a really nice toot! Slainte, Sponie

WOW. Were those both CP? On the hyacinth one, were you using an EO blend or was it an FO and by any chance was there any lavender in there? What happened? Did it just break on you at the last second? So many questions... FWIW: You did a FANTASTIC save on them both! Frigg'n gremlins...

I'm glad I had someone kind enough to point me here.

Cool! I'll check it out. Yeah I'm Irish/Scottish/Dutch/Mutt... I resigned myself long ago to just go with 3/4 Celt and Dutch (and I mention mostly Irish). LOL! I also play bodhrán, whistles(all) and I make and play my own version of the traverse low D flute. (I designed a few nifty improvements. )

Howdy all y'all. I'm brand new to this forum and hopefully I'm in the right place. I make CP soap, just functional stuff for me, and well those around me tend to guilt me out of some of my stock as well. (Who am I kidding?) I totally let them "guilt me" into pilfering my stock, 'cause I like making soap, and I like that they like my soap. Right now I'm fixing to get myself psyched up to make a batch of pine tar and peppermint soap for myself. I probably should double that batch this time, because that's the ONE soap that I don't have a lot of fun making, (can you say soap on a SB?). Past: I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere it was an abandoned orange grove that froze to the ground. We made soap from lard, and free/almost free mixed fat scraps from the butchers that I would wet render in the Florida summer heat out by the chicken coops... I'll say this: I don't use lard for soap anymore. The soap I made when I was growing up, it wasn't "nice" soap, it was just very functional soap that was used for cleaning and laundry and was most likely lye heavy. The stuff I make now is MUCH nicer soap. I haven't really every played with mica or oxides, but I'm hoping that is going to change soon. We also made candles growing up, but that was really more my sister's thing. I've done that as well. Just hand dipped candles (paraffin and stearic acid), maybe colored with a few left over crayons from those silly 3 packs of crayons that were given out at Halloween. I also did an ice cube hot cast candle once. The candle turned out fine, but it's a stupid and long story, and I didn't make any more. Oooh, Bagpipes... I play those, kinda and a few other musical instruments, (I play at them anyway). I made my best friend an uilleann practice set for his birthday (those are those bellows blown beautiful sounding Irish bag pipes). I'm a craftsman so I also make other stuff, just all kinds of stuff. I'm 41 divorced, currently married, and unfortunately, about to be divorced again very soon, much to my chagrin. I do have a child from my first marriage. I have to work for a living and I have to do that work at night. You'll probably pick up on this pretty soon, but in case I have fooled you thus far, I should probably let you know I can be, ever so sightly, (not that it's always a bad thing), long winded... I am NOT an expert on soap or basically anything on this forum and that is why I'm here, to learn. So just like in the beginning of Moby Dick, "Call me Ishmael", only it's, it's spelled "Sponie", (not Moby Dick... Ishmael...) Slainte, Sponie

I was just poking about here through the subs trying to find a company name that matched someone's acronym and found this: (drum roll) Suppliers by State Listing (ta-da!) I was also poking about on Save on Scents (SOS) and realized that they don't have a lot of single EO's, not many at all... They have 19 items listed on their EO's page: 2 are sampler packs, 11 are single EO's, and 6 are blends. The one EO I was after -peppermint, was $32.76 for 16 ounces. (yeah... I know! Right!?) That's the best price I've seen so far, but not really my point. My point is that SOS doesn't seem to have much in the way of EO's single or blended. They DO have a detritus-TON of fragrance oils in varying strengths. They also have a very comprehensive list of, ahem... "impressions" (or whatever your preferred term is for dupes) of designer fragrances. Anyway, please forgive my double post, but really I couldn't figure out a way to edit and append this to my previous post. (I'm new to CraftServer.) Slainte, Sponie

I only make soaps and beard oil blends right now but Save on Scents has very reasonable prices and has FO's and EO's (I haven't tried an EO yet) that can be used in soaps, bath and body, candles, and incense. I'd order one of their sniffy packs to try some scents out first though.

Out of curiosity, what was the color of the mystery ingredient and what fats were you using?

What's your name? Sponie, or best offer... How old are you? Barely 40-ish Where do you live? Florida How long have you been making candles/soap/whatever? Candles? I've done it, nothing fancy, just stuff that you can put fire to and make light. Soap? For the sake of brevity, 4 years. Whatever? (My, my, aren't we forward? ahem... ) How did you get started making candles/soap/whatever? Candles/soap? meh... It's what we did on our farm, and it wasn't nice stuff. Whatever? (There's that question AGAIN!!! I must say I'm TOTALLY feeling the love!) Are you married? Only on paper, and not for much longer... If candle/Soap making isn't your primary job, what do you do? What do I do!? I don't know! Should I know this? Frankly, I wasn't expecting a pop quiz just yet... Anything else we should know? I hope so!

That's really cool Maya!