Jadryga

Where exactly are you, PiP?

Very upscale looking. Nice!

Try Snowdriftfarm.com Ran a search for you... Found someone who mentioned this (http://aromatherapy.tribe.net/thread/cd00f24c-ed1e-4253-8ba4-0ccdac4ce567): "I thought about it for as while, and finally decided to order some perfumer's alcohol from Snowdrift Farm up in Canada. I ordered it online and was so excited when it came in the mail. A liter costs about #26, including postage and all." I have no idea whether this guy means that Snowdrift Farm is in Canada, or that he's in Canada and ordered from Snowdrift. His profile says he's in Oregon and from what I checked, Snowdrift's in Tucson. Either way, probably worth a look at?

Alrighty, will look into getting some of those too. Thanks EN!

Pretty neon swirlies!

OK! Update 1 hour later... I can't get past the tacky glycerine-ness. 30% glycerin is just too much for me, I think. I'm probably going to cut the glycerin to 2-3 tbsp and up the oils. More mac nut oils, and probably some grapeseed instead of coconut. Additional note, apparently the other person on the Susun Weed forum got the original recipe (same ratio of beeswax : oils : glycerin) from "The Natural Beauty Book", by Anita Guyton.

I modified a simple waterless "Coconut Whipped Cream" recipe I got from a thread in Susun Weed's forum. Really simple to make and fun! 3 tbsp beeswax pellets 2 tbsp macadamia nut oil 3 tbsp rice bran oil 3 tbsp coconut oil 6 tbsp glycerine The original recipe called for 4 tbsp each of coconut and sao, but I can't quite get sao here and I'm having a love affair with mac oil and rbo, so I substituted those instead! The mac oil helps it sink in, nothing softens my skin like rbo and the coconut oil is good for you, though I don't like coconut oil much since I can only get vco here, and I'm not too fond of the coconut-y scent (I love the smell of coconut cream though. I used vco for this, and now I smell like coconuts ). Might substitute the vco with 1 tbsp avocado and 2 tbsp grapeseed or sunflower. Not greasy, though there's a slight tacky/greasy feeling I can't quite describe... I think it's from the glycerine. Now I'm inspired to get some IPM and hydrovance/honeyquat from Lotioncrafter! Not sure if this cream will separate, waiting to see. BTW, cleaning the stick blender is a pain and a half

I think Lotioncrafter's there too, though I'm not sure. They've got 3 types of misters and 2 types of rollers and lots of shipping options Love how classy their packaging options look, though they don't have big jars

Deleted - Double post! :embarasse

I'm in Malaysia, so our Independence Day is actually on the 31st of August, heh! My basic list of oils is different too, these are what I can easily get here at supermarkets, aromatherapy shops, health food stores and rustic Indian shops... castor oil rice bran oil (nothing softens my skin like RBO, though it's slightly thick) sunflower oil macadamia nut oil (LOVE this stuff!) palm oil olive oil grapeseed oil sesame oil coconut oil palm oil avocado oil hazelnut oil canola oil cocoa butter I'm thinking about ordering in some shea and jojoba soon though

That's right... ran that list off the top of my head and forgot BCN...

Thanks suds She hasn't replied, still waiting on that. If there's nothing by tomorrow I'll post a follow up. Thanks for the lye suggestions too, everyone! I never really put much thought into it since I was importing soaps and I was having fun playing with other things anyhow, but now that this has come up, I think I shall seriously weigh my other options, just in case.

Oh wow! I wonder if that can be done for a lotion bar or salve with honey!

There's a lot of sources out there... though I'm not quite sure what you mean by "reasonable"... price? ingredients? Try Majestic Mountain Sage (MMS), Brambleberry, Wholesale Supplies Plus (WSP), Essentials by Catalina... I don't know, there's so many!

Hey E'dee! Lip balms/lotion bars and whipped butters are good, easy things to start with, and use mostly the same stuff! You're probably going to have to experiment a lot to see what you'd like to keep in your line. I know I'm still experimenting! Scrubs are good too... you could probably start with anhydrous and move on to emulsified later. I'm still wary of making things that require preservation... not really up for forking out for testing yet, and don't want to inflict untested products on people. Still, it's fun to experiment for myself If you want to include lotions in your line, maybe you could start with a good lotion base while you practice Simple things you could start with: Lip balm Lotion bars Lip glosses Whipped butters Salves/ointments Massage/moisturizing oils Cyclo sprays for body, linen, etc Salt/sugar scrubs Bath melts Bath bombs Bath salts Bath teas ... awkay, I think that's about enough to fill a BIG spa basket

I might be able to ask the crafts store that I know carries lye to get more for me, though the one reason I haven't really been going there is it takes an hour or so for a one-way journey to that place. Thanks though for the suggestions I've looked in hardware stores, I remembered the Red Devil controversy so I thought I'd check out drain cleaners... we have a brand called Pye, but they don't list ANY of their ingredients! Scary. I think I'll try the crafts store before the school, but you know Suds, that makes me remember all the fun I had fooling around in the chem lab back in school! I used to swap stories with my friends, and it's amazing how much havoc can be caused during an hour of class.

She's written back apologizing and saying she'll forward my message to the supplier, so I'll wait on that. A lot of my friends and customers really like the soaps - one of my friends is even willing to invest in them, he runs an events management company, but he's always willing to look at new fields he sees potential in. This is the first faulty batch I've come across, so if she offers to replace them, I'll take it for now. If this happens again though, I'm just going to demand a refund and look at other alternatives. She'd better not ask me to pay for shipping though!

I was looking at some witch hazel over at Mountain Rose herbs. They say their witch hazel has a reduced alcohol content (14%) because it's distilled twice. If I make a toner out of this, with say, some honeyquat or glycerin and extracts, will I need additional preservative, or will the 14.6% alcohol content be adequate?

It comes under the Poisons Act for some reason or the other.. I found small amounts in a crafts supply store, though it's pretty far from here. Maybe I'll get some just to play with one day But for large batches, not very practical.

I've just sent her an e-mail letting her know how upset I am. I'm taking some pictures now to show her the discrepancies between the bars and going to send her some of the crumbled soap flakes too for her to test and see. Don't see the sense in wasting a lot more money paying for postage to send whole bars back to the Philippines...

I can't get lye in large amounts here, so I imported some CP soaps to complement my line from a nice girl in the Philippines whose friend makes them, and the first batch was great - gentle on the skin, fragrant, pretty, so I ordered a second, much larger batch. Yesterday a customer of mine ordered a few sample packs of various soaps including honey oatmeal, so I picked up a bar and got going with my soap cutter. It was a brilliant white color, which was different from the usual translucent white her honey soaps were. That was fine, until I found it was brittle, it crumbled and broke into flakes and chunks rather than the neat slice I was expecting. I frowned at the soap bar and instinctively wet a finger, smeared it on my soap then brought it to my tongue. Stung slightly, so I took a flake and put it to the tip of my tongue. BOY, did I regret that. Felt like I'd licked some acid. Washed my tongue quickly with some ACV, now it's numb. Tried another chalky white bar, it was brittle, but didn't sting as much as the last one did. Then again I'd just doused my tongue in ACV, so I don't know whether that might have neutralized it somewhat The bars also smelt like slightly rancid boiled egg yolks. I picked up one from a previous batch just to make sure it wasn't me... translucent white, slightly soft, smelt great. Now, I don't mind if it was me testing my own creations, but I paid for these, including shipping from Philippines to Malaysia and this soapmaker apparently also supplies to a lot of other people in Manila, including some beauty salons so I wouldn't have expected lye-heavy bars. Now I'm not sure what to do with them. I wasn't very happy with the girl already, as as per our agreement, for this batch she shipped 300 soaps to me through FedEx but failed to pad them properly even though I'd warned her to please bubble wrap the soaps so they don't get tossed around. Despite being pre-wrapped in cellophane, a lot of the soaps came in dented and with holes in some parts of the wrapping. DH was extremely displeased cos I spent a lot of hours fixing the packaging and trying to smooth out the minor dents. Now this! I don't know if I'm making too much of a fuss out of a few wonky bars, but it worries me about the rest of the bars - I'd already sold a few chalky white honey oatmeal bars - and they're already wrapped so it's not practical for me to rip everything and test them. I'll probably have to recall the whole batch of Honey Oatmeal. GAAAHHH!!!! Sorry, this turned out a lot longer than I expected... I'm going to go make sample packs now :lipsrseal

Actually, I've seen some at Pine Meadows; 0.5 X 1.75 in different colors - pink, mint green and natural, 80 labels per sheet. http://www.pinemeadows.net/misc.php#m7 They have 1" diameter labels for lip balm jars too.

Run a search for "bail jars", I distinctly remember a thread discussing that.

Maybe it's like putting honey in a lotion bar... have to keep stirring til it's somewhat opaque to make sure it gets suspended before pouring. I know I get the same problems with honey when I don't Icky honey pools at the bottom.

If you're planning to make this lotion lots, you might find it worth the trouble to convert it to percentages (%). That way you can just multiply the basic % later with the amount you're planning to make. For example, say 2 oz mango butter 1 oz shea butter 3 oz macadamia oil 2 oz jojoba oil 1 oz glycerin 1 oz beeswax Total everything up to get 10 oz, then divide each ingredient by the total. 2 oz mango butter = 2/10 = 0.2 = 20% 1 oz shea butter = 1/10 = 0.1 = 10% 3 oz mac oil = 3/10 = 0.3 = 30% Ingredient amt = % X (total) Say you want to make 24 oz of body butter... 20% of mango butter = 0.2 X 24 = 4.8 oz 10% of shea butter = 0.1 X 24 = 2.4 oz 30% of mac oil = 0.3 X 24 = 7.2 oz etc, etc. ..... Am I complicating things too much?