Tall Blonde

I can't really remember. It was 2 years ago. It took at least a week or so for the foggyness to fade. No permanent damage. Tiny scar under my left eye.

Trust me, you're better off wearing some type of eye protection. I was being careful and somehow the raw soap splashed up into my eye. I rinsed and rinsed and my husband ended up taking me to the ER. I had to lay there for a few hours with a cup on my eye and solution being poured onto it. For a week (at least) I couldn't see out of that eye, had to go to an eye doctor to make sure I didn't do any permanent damage. I wear gloves and long sleeves, because I somehow always manage to get lye on me and the skin on my arms is more sensitive than anywhere else (but that's another story). Anyway, you can be incredibly careful and still have an accident. More likely, if you can soap without splashing on yourself you've been lucky. So far.

As someone who has gotten raw soap splashed in the eye and then spent several hours in the ER getting my eye flushed and not being able to see for a week and frying my eyelashes...yes, I wear goggles. From the time I need to pick up the lye canister to pouring the soap into the mold. And proper shoes and jeans and long sleeves. Which makes soaping in summer a ton of fun.

Does oil have "live" properties?

That's what I figured. I can't find any list of ingredients on line. Where I live we don't have any stores that carry this really high end stuff. I'm very curious though. Wouldn't it be nice to charge $50 for lotion or body butter?

According to an article I read recently, wax based lip balms do little in helping your lips. It would be interesting to see if the stearic would help harden it up. I used soy wax in mine, but soy is so soft, you have to use more of it to keep it from melting. Being a lip balm junkie, this would be an interesting experiment.

Can someone tell me what is in Hermes body lotion (and perhaps these other high end lotions) that they can charge $55 for 6.5 oz? Besides the fragrance and the packaging what is in this stuff to make it so pricey? Or is it the just the name factor? Do people really spend $110 on body cream? Even the soap is $25 for 3.5 oz. Can someone explain this to me???

I used muffin cups.

Personally I have a difficult relationship with honey. I've never used powdered honey, just regular honey. I mix it with some of my oils, make sure I'm soaping at a very cool temp and add it in at light trace and then cross my fingers!

I also like to do this. Once you look up the ingredients you find many are just thickeners and emulsifiers. A girl from work wanted me to make some Lovespell lotion like VS. When I read the ingredients it was pretty much mineral oil with a bunch of thickeners. When you do your research you'll find you can make the product much more simply.

I have some old (I'm talking over 1 year old!) 100% oo that developed DOS, but I make castile (100%) most of the time and this was the only batch to develop DOS. Weird.

Yeah, if you want to harden up a bar of soap, go with the stearic. I don't know about candelilla, but carnuba is REALLY hard!!!

Just be careful about adding too much flavor oil. I did that once and then later when I used the lip balm my lips were stinging. Had to melt it all down and dilute it.

I was reading on the Dish about using a pressure cooker for lotions. It sounds great and easy, but I wonder about cleaning. Pressure cookers are generally aluminum. So how would you clean it? Wouldn't bleach corrode the aluminum? Or would it be in too small a percentage to corrode? Or would you use some other type of cleaner/sanitzer? I'm all for finding easier ways of making lotion, but I'd like to know more about the process first.

Yeah, I'm probably going to stick with WSP. I know a lot of people complain about them, but I've always gotten my stuff pretty fast (and I'm in California!) and they have such a variety of stuff. I have no complaints about their service or anything. Stick with what you know.