Rebecca_IA

Donna, what about the temps of the oils and lye solution when you mixed them? Sorry if you've posted this already and I missed it.

Rename them to vanilla rose and sell them as a limited edition candle for Mother's day only.

I wonder if those are nutrients to us, lol. Isn't urea good for lots of things?

I personally find my upland slab mold a pain in the a$$. It's hard to cut even and continuous lines. I thought with the slab mold I'd have soaps that were evenly cut, wrong. If you had a cutter to go along with it, I'm sure that would work fine. I've tried cutting with the biggest knife I own plus a tool I bought from Lowe's, I think it's used for drywalling and is about 8 inches wide. If I were to buy again, I would much rather buy a mold that requires lining and has the dividers before I'd buy another slab mold that doesn't need lined but is one huge slab (and you cut it yourself). DH is making mine for me, soon, the plans are drawn the material is purchased, so I would be buying a mold again.

Bare Minerals last a very long time and it holds up on the skin really well. My daughter has dance performances, once in May and then several over the summer. I put her makeup on and it stays put throughout several dances. Including the eye liner they sell. Very natural looking and easy to apply after learning how to do it. Cynthia on the soap dish use to sell starter kits to make your own mineral makeup, but I don't have her site book marked at home. Jill from the conservatorie also sells kits to make your own and she has a ton of formula's to start out with (Cynthia might also, but she didn't the last time I looked). Jill's site is www.theconservatorie.com I bought my daughter one of Cynthia's kits last year and we've made the base, blush and eye shadow. We haven't got the color for her base quite figured out yet, but the blush and eye shadows are really nice. Very easy to do, mixing them up is the hardest part, but if you have a mortar and pestle it really helps (I found ours at lotioncrafters).

With certain FO's, I would say yes. But with the well behaving FO's, I've never noticed trace being cut down. The time its for the bar to harden up really good is much less, that's what I notice. I suppose it could help with a quicker trace, I've just never noticed it. There are charts out there that tell you what to do to get a specific % water discount. For a 33% discount, take your lye and times by 2 and that's what your water amount is. Then 33% of the solution is lye and the remaining is water. That's what I normally use, sometimes I do go lower. I'd start with well behaving FO's and use maybe 20% first and if that works for you, go higher.

I use a lot of mica's in swirls (that's the option I picked) but I also use oxides and ultramarines for base colors, lots of clays and natural colorants too. One answer was hard to pick, so I picked micas because I use that in most of my batches (as swirls) even if I've used something else as a base color. Mica's don't work too well as a base color.

Distilled water goes through a distillation process. Basically the water is in one tank that is heated and as steam is created, the steam is diverted through tubing that leads to another tank where the steam is cooled and by cooling it turns back to liquid (water). Any gunk in the water is left in the first tank. Any bacteria is killed due to the temp of the heating. Spring water comes from any spring. Might be cleaned further than that, might only be filtered to remove any large particles and then bottled. Different companies do it differently. Best to check the label to see what it says and if it's vague or no information, call them and ask.

Most of what party lite sells these days is crappy stuff. The first few years I bought from them I really liked their stuff and some of their scents were my favorite ones. The past few years though, the quality has drastically gone down, IMO. If the candle burned for a few minutes and the glass shattered, it wasn't your candle that did it, unless that tealight had a HTP 1212 in it and wasn't trimmed at all, then I might say, you might want to look at your product.

I started out using distilled water and within a year, started using the filtered water from our refrigerator. I did this for 5+ years without any issues at all. When I moved, we didn't hook the filtered water system up in our refrigerator, so I couldn't use the water from there anymore. Without thinking, I used tap water (simply because it had been so long since I bought water to make soap with). I made 3, maybe 4 batches of soap (with a recipe very similar to what I had used before) and the ash that developed on my soap was unlike anything I've ever had before. I had used 3/4 FO's I used in these batches before, so the ash wasn't caused by an FO. The only difference in my batches was the water. Lots of rusty looking stains and lime buildup develops from our water. I went back to using distilled water and my soap no longer forms ash (once again). I did not notice any difference in lather or quality of the soap, just horrid ash covering the entire surface of the soap (that was exposed to air).

When you have a 5% lye discount, that means leave 5% of the oils unsaponified, in the bar as free oils, not transformed into soap. When you add say an ounce of CB at trace, the reason people do this is the theory that by trace, all of the lye and oils are already starting to bond, so all of the CB or more of it will remain the free oil in the soap. Both are superfatting IMO. The both push the percent of free oils above 0%. A difference of 6% to 5% is not going to be very noticable, once again, IMO. From 2% to 6% you will notice the difference. Each soaper has their own special numbers they have settled on. 4%, 5% or even up to 8% or higher.

Best thing for redness on your skin IMO is straight unrefined shea, or mixed with a smidge of emu oil. Or spray on lavender hydrosol and no harsh cleansers on the skin.

Oh is she talking about fels naptha soap? That is the best at taking dirt/grass stains out of clothes. My DH and sons went caving one weekend and came home with clay covered clothes. I washed those clothes several times and they were still stained up. Put my bar of fels naptha soap in a soak bucket and filled it with hot water (to dissolve the soap) when the soap was dissolved, I soaked 2 pairs of jeans overnight, washed them and they came out 100% stain free. I had already soaked these jeans twice in biz bleach and scrubbed biz into the stains and it barely did anything. I should buy a bar and see what is in it. Regardless, you can do lard or coconut or a combo and a 0% discount and get the same results.

I made up a batch a few months ago that I am still using. I used bars from a batch that did not go well, added a bit of lye (mixed in with water first) and a bunch of water (the amount of lye depends on the weight of the soap plus your lye discount). Plus washing soda and borax. I think it made 2 gallons, but I only use about 1/4 cup or less (never measured the scooper I use). Cleans very well. I rinse with vinager (white distilled). Excellent gel laundry detergent. I've probably saved 60-70 bucks so far.

If you are done with it, I would gladly buy it off of you, or just borrow it for a week (I'm a very fast reader) if you want to keep it. Thanks!!

I've ordered from 3 different places that each sold that booklet, and I forgot to order it each time. Now for me to get it, it will cost almost $8 in shipping, so I'm waiting on buying the booklet and moving forward. I've spent a lot of time at the cream soap yahoo group and taking notes there. I think most, if not all of CF's book is covered over there, in addition to other methods. It's all just scattered about in all the messages. I've got some of those airless pumps and I'd like to get some malibu's to experiment with, just to compare the two. I think this soap would look fabulous in a clear bottle of some sort so you could see it in addtion to using it.

My first batch is still in the rotting stage. Becka, the lady that runs the cream soap yahoo group uses the airless pump bottles from lotioncrafters, she thins it down a great deal before putting it in there, how much I do not know. I think you could package this soap however you wanted. If in a jar, you'd want it thicker, and thinner for bottles. I am sure with experimenting, you could figure out a proper ratio. Just make sure to add the appropriate preservative.

Laura, I've used lard a lot and have never had any problems with it. I have read a lot about overheating it though. Maybe this is what happened since you only have one batch that smells off. The soap can still be used. If the smell doesn't fade, shred the soap and add it to another batch with a stronger FO to cover the smell. (I've done this with FO that ended up not smelling good in the end result and it has worked very well to cover the FO up, I'm sure it would work here). When I use lard, I melt my other hard oils, remove from heat and then add the lard and stir until melted. Then add my oils. If my temp has dropped too low, I give it short bursts of gentle heat. The stickiness will go away with age as Gene said.

I think coconuts are known for discoloring. If you choose this one for white, make sure it's one that doesn't discolor.

Not that I can remember at all. Other than some won't want to use it (if they are vegan that is).

Too long to post the entire chart, but go to this address and scroll down a bit and you'll see a few different charts that will give you the info you desire. http://www.babycentre.co.uk/general/536346.html

I'd drop the castor down at least by 5%, if not down to 5%. Higher than 5% I find my soaps very sticky, not just soft but sticky for a few weeks. Is that soybean oil hydrogenated (solid form) or not? If not, I might think of upping your solid/hard butters by 5% too.

That is what my understanding was, if you list any of them, you have to list them all. There are different ways to list your ingredients, you list the name of the oil after it's been saponified, like sodium tallowate, or you list water, tallow and sodium hydroxide. But you had to list all ingredients if you listed any of them (excepting the under 1%). This is off the top of my head, I don't have any notes to dig through to see if my research agrees with me though.

Use them in a bath for yourself. I doubt you could mush them together and make a soap ball out of it.

this costs varies greatly. It depends upon what area of the US you are in, what products you make, if you have store or just sell via the internet and craft stores and how much your gross sales are (or you hope them to be). I am sure here and on the soap dish you'll find threads that folks already discuss what they are currently paying. I've seen anywhere from around $150 to $3000, but there are a lot of variables.