Candybee

I wasn't saying it was a costly oil. Its definitely one of the cheaper ones compared to others. What I was referring to was using any one oil (like coconut oil) in a high amount for all your soapmaking. For example if you are using CO at 75-90-100% you go through it pretty fast and the cost can multiply much faster than if you are using it at say 35-30% for most of your soap and or for a specialty soap. KWIM?

I really need to start buying my oils in the 50 lb pails and start masterbatching. I have been reluctant because it seemed like a herculean effort to heat 50 gallons of oil at a time. Thanks for the tips on the heaters. Now all I need is money right? But I assume the investment will pay off as these heaters should last for a few years right?

I always have those customers that ask 'do you have any lye soap?'. What they are actually asking for is a lard soap like their grandma or mother used to make. So I point them to my lard soap. Doesn't matter if you try to explain that soap is made with lye they know they want the soap made with lard. Most of them are old timers but I get a few young people that remember their grandmothers lard soap. Anyway in this area a 'lye soap' is a lard soap and many want a lard soap specifically. So a way to market a lard soap is to call it a back to basics soap, old fashioned soap, or retro soap. Just a couple ideas if you are looking for some ways to market lard soap. I call mine pure & natural, that's the name I use, and market it as a back to basics face and body bar. I sell a lot of it.

C&S is Candles and Supplies. Unfortunately the colors can bleed but I only used them to color solid bars. Embeds can bleed into the bar as I found out. I know that TKB carries non-bleeding soap colorants. I have only used them in CP.

I only used the FD&C liquid colorants from C&S in my M&P. They didn't make the clear base cloudy. What I liked about them was the easy squeeze bottles they came in so you only squeeze out a drop at a time without making a mess. I got the sample set with all the colors. That was about 8 yrs ago and I still have lots of colorant left.

Congrats on your store and your successful opening! That says a lot about how good your products are! Your set up looks nice and clean and organized. Thanks for sharing your pics!

Was that a gas stove she was heating her wax on? Hope she has homeowner's insurance and a good medical plan too! Yeah, you see a lot of these 'how to' videos on youtube from amateurs. Some are pretty bad like this one.

Oh how adorable! What did you scent them with?

Another AveryPro label program user here. I just love this program! Its free and user friendly and I am always getting compliments on my labels. People ask me where I get my labels done and when I tell them I do it myself they tell me they look so professional they thought I had them made. They also have a printer calibration tool you can use to help center your labels.

I was hoping to pick up a sample of feather palm next time I get some glass glow at Peaks. I usually carry CSNs. Thanks for the tip! I think I used LX wicks before with the crystal palm pillars. They worked okay and I don't think I tried testing out any more wicks as I quit working with pillar palm for a long time.

Will the pail heaters heat a 25lb pail of oil like coconut, PKO, or palm? or even reheating a masterbatch of oils that may have re-solidified to some extent? Hope that makes sense.

My very first year of selling soap I made all of them with lard for the entire year! After a full year of selling these soaps I had one customer ask me about. Just one! That was a while back. Now about 75% of my soaps are all vegetable and some are vegan recipes. The others have animal fats. I still do my lard soap, and soaps with tallow and even lanolin for my specialty soaps. So far I have only had that single customer say anything about animal fat and that was the one from my first year re the lard soap. BTW-- they bought the lard soap and came back for more! I don't see a problem at all with animal fat soaps. I also think that you have to consider how you market them and the quality of your ingredients and recipe. Of course there is also the seller. I sell my own soap and have turned into a pretty good salesman. I sell the dickens out of my lard soap because I market it as a facial bar and I just show my enthusiasm and knowledge about my soaps and the ingredients I use. My tallow soaps are my OMH, Beer, and shaving soaps. Every single one is a big seller and I think its a combination of the quality of your product, how you produce it, and how well you market your soap. The other factor would be your local. It hasn't effected me and I do have a lot of educated customers especially at one particular market I do. They ask very pointed questions about ingredients, how they are produced, quality, purity, harvesting, etc. Sometimes they can educate me. But they love my soap. I think another aspect is I now do pretty much all specialty soaps. I do sets of specialty soaps featuring one or more specific ingredients. People like that they can select an oatmeal, clay, sea salt, shampoo, shaving, beer, exfoliation, mud bar, or other. I think as long as your customer can choose if they want an animal fat or vegetable fat soap you should be okay. Oops-- what I meant was if you have both veggie and animal fat soaps so they can make a selection between one or the other. Frankly the biggest concern that some of my customers have expressed is if I have an unscented soap. Nobody asks about animal fats in soap. My labels clearly list all my ingredients and most of my customers read my labels. I know because I watch them and those are the ones that ask questions about particular ingredients. Most people want a gentle soap that is moisturizing. 98% of the time that is what they ask for!

I just love how these came out. I scented with my own blend of herbal EOs; lavender, rosemary, anise, peppermint & spearmint. I call it Herbal Bliss.

Cut them up this morning. I didn't get the swirl right on the inside but the tops look nice. I tried another taiwan swirled soap too but that one accelerated on me so fast I barely had time to get all the layers in and I knew it wouldn't swirl right. But I kind of like the rustic look. I think I know how to do the swirl now after a couple of tries. But its gonna take some practice to get it right. Here are the cut pics of both soaps. I should have waited another couple of days to cut them. They were still pretty soft and sticky:

You did post pics and I remember them. Especially the one of the tortoise shell and it's interesting circular cone-shaped air pocket pattern. I tried looking for the pics a while back but couldn't find them. I did find a couple of your old posts about your testing the different palms a while back when I was doing a search. One of these days I want to work with feather palm. I think its beautiful and I may give tortoise shell a try too. Peaks carries all the palms except crystal I think. I got the crystal palm at Candlewic and C&S. But for right now my soap is keeping me busy these days and I do very few candles now.

Have you tried cutting back to 6%? Lavenders tend to be strong enough you don't need to up the %.

Yes I would like a few of those. I do have some small pouring pitchers with spouts but not a funnel. The funnel pitchers would definitely make things less messy. But the dividers themselves are awfully messy to clean up. No matter how careful I try to be I just get soap batter everywhere taking those out! I think its just a matter of having all the right equipment and a little bit of practice and I should get better at it.

Thats a good point about the cost of the coconut oil. Its not an expensive oil per se but if you use a lot of it in all your soapmaking it can get be. For a basic soap I started out with AJ's olive oil 45%, coconut oil 25%, lard 25%, and castor 5% with goat milk for liquid. It makes an awesome bar and all ingredients can be found at the grocery store or Wally's. If you don't like the lard then use Wally's shortening with the palm oil. All the ingredients are local and shopping local while you are learning about soapmaking can save you a lot of money.

I thought you had one of Nurture's molds? With her dividers it makes the swirling easy peasy. It was actually the easiest swirl I have ever done. Its the cleanup that's a riot! Anyway, I still haven't cut it so it could be a total mess inside. LOL

I get that with cocoa butter. As soon as I use a cocoa butter soap I get blemishes on my skin. But if I continue to use it my skin becomes acclimated to it. Sooooo... in my case that tells me I am not allergic to it but have to use on a regular basis then I am okay. But there are people who definitely have allergic reactions to animal fats in soap. Have you tried tallow in soap? Its a great sub for lard.

Definitely wait at least a week or longer! I've had some rebatches that didn't firm up for about 2-3 weeks and stayed soft up until a full 6-8 weeks to be hard enough to sell/use. I assumed I used to much liquid or that some scraps were much older than others. IDK Al I do know is that what I thought was a failure just needed a whole lot of time to dry out and cure up. They lather just great and feel good on my skin. I still have about 3 of those fuglies left on my shelf from last year. I'll show you mine if you show me yours!

Top ever since you suggested your flipping technique I started doing that. I have been doing it for several years now and it still works great. I haven't made palm pillars in a while but when I did I think it was before I started the flipping jars. I always used to poke relief holes in the bottoms to do a repour. That was with crystal pillar palm. Not sure if that is as hard as tortoise but it is as hard as feather palm. All I know is when the crystal pillar palm wax cools its rock hard yet the edges can flake or chip off after time.

I feel the same way about lime! I never, ever want to be without lime for my soaping! Its like an essential scent I must have!! I do the same with lemon. I blend it with litsea and/or lemongrass to make it stick. I prefer lemongrass over lemon too! I have a pink grapefruit EO I got from SMR that I am using this week to see how it works. Actually, I am combining it with EBB's Sea Island Grapefruit FO. Sometimes I combine the same FO and EO together to make the scent "pop" and smell more true. Will let you know how I like the pink grapefruit.

Lemongrass EO really sticks for me. I've used lemon in blends with lemongrass and litsea cubeba and it seems to work really well that way for me. I find the best citrus type EO that really sticks is lime. I love lime and lemongrass blended together. It makes an awesome fragrance for soap.

Hey its been a while. Good to see you posting again! I am really impressed with the quality of SMR EOs. I use a lot of them in my soapmaking now. Re the Orange 5x and 10x. The 5x didn't stick for me and frankly I will not waste my money on it anymore. So I tried the 1ox. I found the 10x to be stronger and so far the only orange EO that is somewhat sticking. It did fade initially but after a weeks cure it is coming back but in a soft light scent. I used a bit of litsea cubeba to anchor the orange and also blended it with some clove, cinnamon, and allspice. Like you I didn't want just orange. So for my 4lb batch of oils I used 2oz of blended EOs with orange 10x @ about 40% of the blend. The rest was the spice, litesea cubeba and a little honey FO to sweeten the blend. Now the soaps have been curing for 4+ weeks and I can still smell a light orange but the clove and spice are more dominant. Next time I will try the orange 10x at 50% of my blend. Someone has an orange 15x but I don't remember who carries it. If I can find it I will try it. Forgot to add I got the 10x from The Chemistry Store. Brambleberry also carries it and I hear their 10x is strong. I dunno... I might try theirs and see if its better. SMR only carries the orange 5x.