MarieJeanette

I'm in love with Tea scents and have been collecting them over the past 2 years. I love these the best: -Green Tea from MMS -Black Keemun Iced Tea from SW -Mango Tea from SC -Blackberry Basil from SW (this smells just like a tea that my sister has) -Earl Grey & Honey from SW -Black Raspberry Vanilla from WSP (it doesn't say it's a tea scent, but this smells just like a box of blackberry tea that I have in my cupboard) Iced Tea Twist from WSP MarieJeanette

I made a soap with daystar's Kai-Halulu last week. It soaped like a dream and smells wonderful. It's a really pleasant masculine scent. I like it so much that I've decided to make it one of my 'keeper' scents. I have Good Looking Cowboy, too, but I haven't soaped it yet. OOB, it smells very much like leather to me. I love Daystar and I haven't been disappointed with anything I've bought from them yet. They are in the top 5 of my favorite fragrance suppliers. MarieJeanette

I love these: Salty Mariner from A Garden Eastward Mediterranean Sea Salt from Oregon Trails Mineral Waters Spa from Daystar MarieJeanette

I guess I'm the black sheep. I do mine as soon as they are unmolded. I soap with a 33% lye solution, though, so my soaps (even my Castile-types) are never too soft right out of the mold. I also use a potato peeler to bevel with. I don't know if that makes a difference or not in terms of messiness when compared to a bonafide soap beveler, but it's always worked nice and neat for me. MarieJeanette

Your welcome. MarieJeanette

Over at Majestic Mountain Sage, they recommend adding 2 oz of powdered colorant to 16 oz of glycerin. For their colors that are water dispersible, they say to add 1/2 tsp. to a 1 oz dropper bottle. Here is the page I found the info on: http://www.thesage.com/catalog/Colors.html HTH! MarieJeanette :smiley2:

Boy, do I second that! I added what I thought was a small enough amount of apricot seed meal to a scrubby soap, and it ended up being way too much. It's hard to get a good lather going in that soap because all of the scrubbies get in the way. It was made with 100% coconut oil with a high superfat, too, which bubbles quite abundantly for me normally. Another good tip that has helped me tremendously is checking the ScentReviewBoard website before choosing a fragrance oil. You can save yourself a lot of heartache by reading the reviews on there and avoiding those fragrances that seize when you go to purchase your scents. MarieJeanette

Very good advice. I've only ever had to do that once (with Lait Sucre from SW), but it worked like a charm and saved my batch. MarieJeanette

I use powdered clays, oxides, ultramrines, and micas. I really like them a lot. MarieJeanette

Hi Penny! Have you actually made the recipe yet or are you just in the formulating stage at this time (i.e., plugging percentages in on the SoapCalc to see what qualities pop up)? I ask because a hardness of 40 using SoapCalc's quality numbers has always given me a soap that is good and hard once it has been made. One of my other soaps has a hardness level of 38 according to SoaCalc and that one is good and hard, too. I've never used stearic by itself in my soap as an additive, but I have used Tallow, which is high in stearic acid. It gives me a nice and hard soap. I've read of others who have used stearic as an additive and I think there's a certain percentage you shouldn't go over because it could cause the soap to crack and/or come to trace really fast. Hopefully those who have actually used it will chime in and lend their soaping wisdom as to what constitutes a good percentage. Sorry I couldn't be of more help, but I hope that helps even a little. MarieJeanette

What Ruina said. I do this quite often to embellish some of my own soaps. It's very easy, and when you do it yourself, you're in complete control of how dark or light you want the colors to be. I sometimes even scent the glycerin soap chunks or curls with a different, but complimentory scent, from the scent I'm using in the soap I'm embellishing. MarieJeanette

I hope you decide to stay! Internet forums can be such tricky things to read even among those of us who speak English as a first language. So much can be misconstrued because we can't see each other's body language in relation to what we are all posting, and as a result wires can end up unintentionally getting cossed. Such is the unfortunate bane of cyberspace. For what it's worth, I myself detected no sarcasm in your post- only excitement and thankfulness- and I hope you'll stick around and enjoy soaping with us as well as those close to you. MarieJeanette

Thank you Topofmurrayhill! Your explanation of Oleic's more realistic hardness quality in relation to its iodine # has helped me to finally make sense of some things that were very little understood by me. Thank you for sharing your wisdom! MarieJeanette

The likes and dislikes of individual's skins can be.....well...... very individual. What one person's skin likes isn't always the same as what another person's skin will like. I really like the advice that RobinInOR gave and I highly recommend following it. That's how I started out and came up with with my own base recipes. Just a 'heads up" regarding the hardness numbers on the SoapCalc-- I've found that they can be a little misleading where Olive Oil is concerned. I can go as low as 26 or 27 (for my 80% OO Castile-type) and it always comes out good and hard. Another case in point is that I just recently made my very first 100% OO Castile, and the SoapCalc said it had zero hardness. Well, in reality, it's actually pretty darn hard if I do say so myself. lol. So, if you are using high amounts of OO, just be aware that on SoapCalc, anything from a zero hardness and on up should be good to go. Barring my soaps made with a high OO percentage (which seem to be the weird exception to the rule), and also my 20% superfatted coconut oil soaps (another exception), I found out through trial and error that I really like to stay within these ranges for all my other soaps: Hardness ..... 38 and up Cleansing ...... 18 and below is ideal for me. Conditioning ..... at least 55 and up. The higher, the better. Bubbly Lather and Creamy Lather..... I lumped these 2 together because I found that if I formulate my recipe to have a point or two higher of bubbly (or fluffy) lather in relation to the creamy (or stable) lather numbers, they achieve a beautiful synergy in my soap that just feels really great to me. I like the numbers on the creamy part to be at least 25 or higher (or no lower than 25), and I always try to formulate my recipe so that the bubbly (or fluffy) part is a point or two higher than the creamy (or stable) part. As an aside, I have never bothered with the Iodine or the INS numbers. All I know is that as long as I stay within the ranges mentioned above, my soap comes out lovely, regardless of what the Iodine or INS numbers say. Happy formulating! MarieJeanette

I make Castile-types all the time. One of the ones I love to do has 80% OO, 10% Castor, 10% Babassu (or Coconut Oil), and 1/3 of my liquid amount as fresh goat milk. It's absolutely lovely. I just recently used a one year old bar of this particular type and it was just awesome. It was good and hard, creamy and bubbly, and contained no 'slime'. MarieJeanette

Me, too! I like to formulate my soaps in such a way that the bubbly and creamy numbers are very close together, but with the bubbly number being one or two points higher than the creamy number. MarieJeanette

I definitely agree. I use castor as high as 23% in a tallow batch and it is extremely hard and as far from being sticky as Pluto is from earth. I also use it in two of my other base formulas at 10% with no sticky issues. MarieJeanette

Some good man scents that I love are Masculine Musk from SweetCakes; Green Irish Tweed from ScentWorks or WSP; Salty Mariner from AGE (both men and women love this one); and Brut from ScentWorks. MarieJeanette

I just went to the Voyageur website and looked at their soap kits. I wanted to see if they were M&P soap kits or real CP (soap made with lye) soap kits. They are real CP soap kits, so you will definitely be using lye (sodium hydroxide). They seem to look fine to me, though. As a soaper who loves to formulate and experiment, the thing that would irk me with using a premeasured kit is that I don't know what the superfat level is and all that, but for a soaping newbie like yourself, if you don't have a scale and all that, this just may be the thing you are looking for to start out with, you know? It looks like a nice way to get your feet wet and see what it's like to work with lye without having to invest too much money in buying a bunch of oils, a good scale, etc.. For a mold, if you have any Rubbermade containers, those work great. Just smear them with mineral oil before pouring. Just don't use anything metal, especialy aluminum. Anything plastic is fine, or even those silicone baking containers. Some people use drawer organizers lined with freezer paper, too. HTH! MarieJeanette

I've done both and find that CP is much easier for me. I've found that it also gives me the best results when it comes to coloring, swirling, layering etc... Of course, you'll have to try both to find out which works best for you. Both have their pros and cons, but only you can be the judge of which pros and cons you are comfortable with. Some people like to do it the HP way because of misbehaving F/O's, but if you want to make sure your CP experience goes as smooth as possible, you can virtually eliminate the potential misbehaving F/O problem by looking on the ScentReviewBoard beforehand to see which F/O's have a good reputation for not accelerating. I do CP using a 33% or higher lye solution and it goes quickly and smoothly for me, provided my F/O is not a known accelerator. It's very unusual if my soap takes more than 15 or 20 minutes to come to a heavy trace for me. Ten minutes seems to be the average, but sometimes it's a little less than that. I only HP if I'm going to use very tempting F/O that is a known accelerator. I make sure that those kinds of F/O's are few and far between in my cupboard, though, because HP is just not as enjoyable to me as CP is, and I find that it just doesn't give me as much leeway for creativity as CP does. MarieJeanette

Masculine Musk from SweetCakes turns my no-color-added soap into a mauvish-pink hue. DH asked me one day why I kept making my manly scented soap pink. I had to tell him it wasn't me doing it, but the fragrance all on it own. MarieJeanette

It could very well be the fragrance oil you used. Some fragrance oils are notorious for discoloring soaps. I would check to see if your fragrance oil is listed over at the ScentReview Board: http://scentreviewboard.obisoap.ca/index.php. It's a great place to research different fragrance oils from different vendors before you decide to buy any. On the site, people write in with their soaping experiences using such and such a fragrance oil from whatever vendor. Before I buy any fagrance oil, I always check things out over there first. The list isn't 100% complete, but it's pretty darn big, nevetheless, and your fragrance might just be one of those that are listed. HTH! MarieJeanette

Babassu Oil and Palm Kernel Oil (not to be confused wih Palm Oil) are the closest in properties to CO. HTH! MarieJeanette

I have 2 labels on my soap packaging. On the back labels, I put the ingredients on it in descending order; then just below that, I suggest using a soapdish to keep the soap dry between uses. At the very bottom I add cautions like, "For external use only" and "discontinue use if skin gets irritated", and "avoid contact with eyes". I pretty much looked at commercial bars of soap for inspiration and then came up with something that followed the same guidelines they used, but I put it in my own words. On the front label I have my name, and below that I list the kind of soap it is, such as "Castile", or "Facial Soap" or Hand Soap" or whatever it is. I personally don't believe it's necessary to have a 'how to" on the label as long as you state what kind of soap it is. People should know what to do from there (well....hopefully ). And on the bottom of the front label, I have the name of the scent. HTH! MarieJeanette

I have the SW version. I've never smelled the real thing, so I can't compare to see how accurate it is, but I love the scent of the SW dupe. I've only ever CP'd it once- in an 80% Olive Oil Castile-type soap batch. I soaped it almost a year ago in January @ .7 oz ppo. I have 2 bars of that batch left and I took one of them out a couple of days ago to use it. Wow! It smells as lovely and good and strong as the day I soaped it. I hope SW hasn't changed their formula for this F/O since I bought it last year, because my year old bottle is strong, but I've heard others who have soaped it more recently and said it had faded in their soap. I have only a little bit left of my year old bottle of it and I definitely want to buy more, so hopefully it hasn't been changed. MarieJeanette Edited for spelling.