katshe

I know its hard to be patient...most scents in m&p act well for me but fading is a given with most scents ...with m&p you can shrink wrap them to keep them from loosing scent. Hp is my other soap and i add scent after the cook and then whip with mixer. then Mold This way the lye is gone and the scent will not get eaten up bu the lye..you could probably find that methond I posted somwhere on the soapmaking board...i think I called it whipped rebatch method. I still find scent will fade over time but i have put them in sterlite containers, after the 3-6 wk cure, with a loose fitting lid and that has helped. My one concern is that some scents will totally morph and turn soap ugly and stinky...one I had trouble with was NGs Austrian bamboo grass...I made hp with this and soap was well recieved and sold out fast to family but second batch and every one after that the scent totally morphs and smells rank....I love this scent as it is a fresh scent like soapy not a food scent. I have had some soaps for a year and they still smell good...Almond (premium grade) from wellington fragrance is the best and that never fails me. My best seller too. I think for me the creamy scents work well with my hp recipe. First you should settle on a recipe then find a good scent and wait to see how it behaves in a few months...really. I know it is hard to wait but in the long run it is better to test test test. to get the best. I have never tried a soap unscented as I don't like the smell of the hp soap at all...to me it smells like cooked oil and not soap. I don't believe that scents will act the same in hp as they have for your in m&p...different animal yes.

sorry to have confused you ...you can take a cured soap and sell it. You said 4 - 6 weeks you want to go to the market and you just started a month ago...sometimes soap behaves differently after a few months that I have found with some batches and I guess if a customer say, buys a few bars ...some of those bars will sit around for a while...I use a bar in like 3 weeks. So I am hoping that down the line that all is well with your soap. I mean ...that customers bar that he/she may just get to use in like 3 months from the time they purchased i i guess i may be a bit on the cautious side.

Ok again rebececca i did research and found that you only started making cphp soap last month and i am not sure you should start selling so soon Others chime in here . It took quite a while for me to feel confident after some batches in the beginning loosing scent , dos, scent morphing and turning the whole batch into a stinky mess. ... I would suggest waiting to sell to the public and see how your soap ages etc. when doing hp you can use your soap sooner but you will notice that it is much milder after 3 weeks than the first day and. In my opinion I would want my customers to have a milder soap than one that is fresh out of the oven....It needs to cure to become more mild and it will also have better bubbles/lather after curing and harden up a bit. I have had dos show up two months later. I hope you don't take offense...I am just speaking from my experience and trying to give some helpful advise

Ok Rececca I noticed your thread on 9-3-2010 that you made your first batch of cphp and I am concerned that you are already thinking of selling to the public. Correct me if I am wrong. Your soap hasn't even cured three weeks yet...is that right? I have been making soap for more that 6 years and I know that soap...even hp needs time to cure. It gets milder with curing and also firms up considerably over the course of 4- 6 weeks You also need to be sure that its going to be just as good when cured with no dos, see if the scent lasts or morphs etc....I speak from experience...these thinks have happened to a few of my batches. Believe me I have had many failed batches and still do on ocassion . Now to the marketing thing...My opinion most people don't care what it does for them besides smell good...and this is from surveys I sent out to customers.. Some people do appreciate natural ingredients and the like but for the most part soap is soap. I put honey in all my soap after the cook and also in my one m&p base...customers are drawn to it cause of the honey and what they already know about it...I did make a base without it for a while but I always sell out of the ones with honey and the others are bought when the honey is unavailable. I think the words on the label are enough and have been for my sales. HTH

I have used weatherproof labels from online labels and they do smear on the body scrub probably due to the oil in the body scrub,,,and over time on my malibu face scrub the colors start to get funky looking. I have done the strapping tape on those labels with good results,,, but geeze I figure why spent the money on weatherproof labels when I have to tape them...well the issue I am having now with regular labels sprayed with sealer is curling edges and also bleeding ink....so i will have to tape those and see how it goes

bump... Really Michelle I need to know what u are using too!!

So If you laminate a whole sheet of labels , do you have to cut each label by hand?? I am struggling with my 3.33 inch round labels for body scrub...I sprayed with sealer and they got oily looking and smeared horribly so I am off to find a different sealer soon. I have used packaging tape on the rectangle labels but I cant do the 3.33 inch circles that way and cover the whole label.

I think I saw something like that at wholesalesuppliesplus.com they look like lip compacts

I am using Nature's garden Natural Cocoa butter base as I have decided to use it instead of making my own hp soap...It has nice lather and is not sweaty and is very hard as are all their natural bases. Most bases I have tried leave my hands burning and dry. I have tried most Natural bases . i have not tried the ones that have sulfates because my husband has a reaction to that ingredient in regular soap. After much money spent Natures garden Natural bases win hands down for me:yay:

Funny, My customers love the brown color of the pink sugar soap...looks so rustic and natural.

Ok ...Success...I used my melting pot in a pan of water with a large mason jar ring to sit on... simmering on lowish, I melted 35 ounces of M&P soap in about 8-10 minutes , stirring it while it melted, The soap melted wonderfully like milk consistancy! Whohoo...Now that is what I was after...finally I can make soap easier. It poured like a dream into the mold... thanks to all again for all your help...Now my next adventure is to make little samples poured into those little take out salad dressing type containers.

I ,ll be back later to let you know how it went with my pouring pot.

Carole I line my mold with a white trash bag and yes there are wrinkles in the soap but once cut with a wavy cutter the side wrinkles look fine. Adds to the homemadeness, if that a word

I wouldn't substitute anything for the palm. I have tried many variations ...crisco, lard in place of palm but the soap just wasn't right. So as the author of this recipe ...I say keep it the same. If you need to change it you will have to go to the soap calculator and plug in your new ingredients and probably adjust other ingredients as well.

I did add distilled water to the soy base from ng and still sticky so added more ...no change but thanks for the suggestion

thanks to all...I'll be soaping first thing in the am

I am making something and have not tried it yet. Will i need an emulsifier and if so will ewax suffice? not sure on these amounts yet but i will experiment and see if it will be like a mask type texture. ingredients are kaolin clay 1/2 oz oat flour 1/2 oz oil 1oz honey 1oz glycerin 1oz eo's preservative

Thanks TheWickedWick...I am going to give that a go...it would be much easier to pour it from the melting pot than the large bowl I have been using... Can u give me an idea how log it takes to totally melt ...say, 35-40 ozs in the melting pot? My only concern is getting every last drop of soap out of it...I'm such a freak that way! :rolleyes

http://www.essentialwholesale.com/s.nl/sc.9/category.107095/.f this is the creme base i ordered and it is really nice for cracked dry skin...love it. I think there in oregon, I'm in mi. I did try a closer supplier- NG, but did not like the sticky feel from the natural soy butter base...

Ok I'm not mixing it when I do the first three rounds at 30 sec ...i will give the stirring a try first ... the wicked wick ...can you elaborate on the double boiler method please. I do my wax in a pouring pop that I set in a pot of boiling water with a large mason ring at the bottom to keep it off the bottom of the pot...is it similar to that ...i dont know how much soap will fit in that 4 lb melting pot but it seems when soap is cut into small pieces it grows lol.

i will be going to michaels then to check out this presto melter...can u tell me how long it takes to melt 2 lbs of soap candybee? I have a super small micro so maybe thats the prob...the soap base seems to start to melt very well around the edge but the middle seems to chunk together , so I try to break it up and stir best I can but it is such a pain and i am worried that the part that is liquid is going to get too hot in the process of getting the rest to melt. I have been doing between 30 and 40 seconds at a time...seems to take a lot of time ...hmmm

Please share your method of melting your soap base that works best for you. I am heating mine in the microwave in a large glass bowl chunked up first of course..and have a time getting it to totally melt and stay melted...i am heating about 35 ounces at a time and it always seems to have lumps in it and gets gooey and hardens up in the middle ugh!

Those oils you mentioned i use almost exactly and never refridgerate olive, palm, castor, coconut, i also ad a bit of cocoabutter to my recipe ...you want to keep palm so that you can stir it before use case stearic seems to settle to the bottom and needs stirred before every use.

Hi rebecca, I don't use them in my cphp but i believe it is to prevent rancidity of the oils... not a preservative against bacteria if thats what you were thinking....some oils go rancid faster than others. I am not sure how effective those ones u listed are though against that. If u use oils with long shelf life you should be fine. I have had some issues with dos in a recipe with too high a percentage of a short shelf life oil...can't remember if it was sunflower or canola but i don't use either now.

candybee the kraftoutlet says its 70 lb text weight... i dont think its card stock.... well Ill check around first...I used to use card stock then went to paper cause its cheaper ...no prob with staining here but i am currently doing an overhaul on products and labeling so the search is on. thanks so much all