puma52

There is nothing that grosses me out more than bare naked soaps/bath & body products that people can handle all over. There is a body product store in our area that sell their soaps and bath bombs without even a smidge of wrapping on them.....imagine all the dirty and germy hands that have been all over those products. There are people who STILL do not wash their hands after using the bathroom and people that STILL wipe their noses on their hands....and they would think nothing of handling these products after doing such. I wouldn't use these bare naked products even if they were GIVEN to me. YUCK!! Beautiful and thorough packaging IS a must!

I do the same as Jcandleattic. Do second pour a couple hours later.

Welcome!

What a great tutorial Jcandleattic! This is something I have looked at, but never bit the bullet and done it yet...this just may be the push I need. Thanks so much for sharing! The folks on this site are amazing!

Cajun Candles has a wonderful lavender that I have used for years. Have you tried that one yet Maryta?

Morning Belinda and Happy New Year to ya! I hope you do try these blends....You just cannot go wrong w/vanillas and everyone who knows...KNOWS that Stacy from Daystar has some awesome and DIVINE ones! We appreciate Ms Stacy SO MUCH for offering us these wonderful scents!

I do not use soy wax, but I heartily second Lana! Caribbean Teakwood is just an awesome scent! I love it!

Yes...those last posts have to do w/regular soap recipes, but I wanted you to see and read about how wonderful milks are for your soaps whether they are M&P or CP or HP. Since you are now making cold process soap, I sure do hope that you try these milks in them too! Do not be afraid to use milks in your soaps...they are just a lovely addition! Gracious...typo on the update on fire in our area...this HAS been labeled a disaster now so our folks can now get FEMA help and low interest loans.

Biggest seller is definitely the 8 oz square masons. I retail them for $10 each or 3/$27.

Hi jfear! I love the FB vanilla ice cream, but I am one who just loves vanilla scents and I love blending these together to create the most delicious vanilla ice cream scent - .50 FB Vanilla Ice Cream / .25 Daystar Vanilla Delicious / .25 CC Vanilla Voodoo. I also love Daystar's Buttercream Frosting, Daystar's Cake Batter, Daystar's Milk Sugar Kisses and ICS Vanilla Smoothie and I have made a blend using ALL of these scents before and it is divine delicious vanilla ice cream heaven! Customers have swooned over this scent blend. I have found that the more vanilla type scents you blend together, the more awesome vanilla scents you can end up with.

Hi there Leesa! Welcome!

Hey Moonstar! I'm sorry I did not get back to you sooner. My sister did have to have the major scoliosis surgery and I have been staying with her in the hospital from Wed last week to yesterday when she went to rehab. As far as the Smoky Mtn.fire....the are still being tight lipped about the juveniles....strange indeed. I hope they are building a strong case. But Dolly did get over 9 Million dollars last week during her telethon...amazing! They have not labeled this a disaster and folks can now get FEMA and more help. I did use actual coconut milk....it is DIVINE! I used it in the melt and pour recipe below subbing it for the goats milk and I also use milks in all of my hot process soaps now...it makes for a very creamy and delicious soap. I have never had any spoilage...here is the Prairieannie recipe that I do believe that started it all. Candybee also throughout this thread has awesome recipes. These two be the bombdotcom of M&P I do believe. I am also going to post information that I found on using milks in soap recipes. This made me a lot braver about using these delicious milks in all soaps. My Basic MP Soap Recipe I will cut this down for the purpose of this thread because I tend to make BIG batches! (I use all of these ingredients in every bar of my soap) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2lb white soap base (I use EBC, but you can use what you have) 1/2 cup fresh goat milk (you can use canned or powdered if you want) 4T liquid soap (unscented, undyed) 2T honey 2T shea butter 1T cocoa butter 1T olive oil 1 T jojoba oil Fragrance oil (add as much or as little as you would for 2lb soap recipe) I use a presto pot .. melt the base first and then add the other ingredients mixing well. Produces skin loving bubbly bars of soap with super creamy lather! Enjoy Spotlight on Ingredients: Heavy Cream 8 Cream Drop by Kyle May Do you ever read over recipes or watch soaping videos and wonder why soapmakers use the ingredients they use? After all, the only essentials for a good bar of handmade soap are oils, water, and lye. However, certain additives do impart some nice qualities to your soap, and in a series of posts, I wanted to share some of the “extra” ingredients I use in soap and why I use them. Heavy cream has a lot of fat in it—36% fat or more. Goat milk typically has 4-5% fat. Cream is very rich and smooth. While the benefits of milks—especially goat milk—are widely known, not as many soapers use cream, possibly because of the expense. I wouldn’t try substituting all of the water in a recipe with cream, and not only because of the cost, but also because of the high fat content. The cream will likely congeal fairly quickly, even if you freeze it first, because the lye will react to the fat in the cream. If you have made milk soaps, you may have noticed that if you set the milk and lye mixture aside for a few moments, it does start to thicken as the lye reacts to the fats in the milk. Another reason you might not want to use cream as a total water replacement is that the high fat content might really throw off your superfat percentage. So how do I use cream in soap? I usually add about 4-5% of the amount of oils to a batch of soap. So, for example, if I make a batch of soap that is 500 grams (I always measure in grams; it’s more precise than ounces and easier to convert), then I would add about 22 grams of cream to the batch. I admit this is approximate because I usually add a round number of grams of cream to my soap. For example, my typical batch is about 2.5 pounds of oils, or 1120 grams, and I usually add about 50 grams of cream to a batch that size. I would recommend using heavy cream at a rate of about 3-5%. You really don’t need to use a lot. When I use cream in my soap, I remove the same amount of water from the recipe. For example, in my batch with 50 grams of cream, I remove 50 grams of distilled water from the recipe. If you use full water and cream, you might find your soap takes a little longer to harden. I have not experimented with using full water and cream. Before I add the cream to the oils, I warm it up a bit so that it is the same temperature as the oils (more or less). Then, I add my cream directly to my oils and stick blend it before adding the lye. I have noticed that it will not emulsify completely with the oils. Typically there are tiny white flecks of cream floating on the top of my oils. I usually give the oils one more quick stick blend before adding the lye water, but it probably isn’t necessary because once the lye water is added, it will all blend. I first noticed the benefits of using cream in soap by accident. I made a batch of Creamy Coconut soap with coconut milk and cream. I mainly added the cream because I felt it would be in keeping with the name of the soap to have both real coconut milk and real cream in it. When I used it in the shower, I noticed how smooth the bars felt. If you can believe it, I didn’t immediately realize this smoothness was because of the cream. I thought it might have been the coconut milk. I started noticing that other soapmakers used cream in their soaps, and when I ordered soaps from these soapmakers, I noticed how smooth their bars were. At first, I wasn’t sure why their soaps were so much smoother than mine either because there are so many variables—oil recipes, other additives, and the like. But eventually I realized it was the cream in the soap that added smoothness. I have used cream in almost all of the soaps I have made since that discovery (I typically do not use it in milk soaps, with the exception of Creamy Coconut). In addition to smoothness, cream adds some of the same benefits as other milks in soap—extra conditioning being the main benefit imparted by heavy cream. I mainly enjoy the feel of soap with cream in it. It is definitely smoother than soap made just with water. It feels silky on the skin. I typically do not have to use much lotion at all because of the conditioning oils and butters in my soap, but I have noticed even less of a need to use lotion in those soaps made with cream. Adding just a little bit of cream can add some great qualities to your soap. With my recipe of just 50 grams, I am adding 18 grams of fat, so my superfat percentage will not be drastically different from my calculation. As usual, David Fisher has experimented with cream and shared his results. You can see what will happen if you add lye to cream in his tutorial. I personally have not found it necessary to freeze the cream I use in my own recipes. In addition, I have never noticed any discoloration as can happen when you use goat milk in place of water. I actually haven’t tried using just a small amount of liquid goat milk and adding it directly to the oils as I do with heavy cream, so you might find that solution works just as well for you. How to Make Soap with Three Milks - Tres Leches Use to navigate. Three milks for tres leches soap. Photo Credit: David Fisher I've made soap with goat's milk for years. I love soap with coconut milk too - such super lather. Making soap with heavy whipping cream was interesting too - but a bit of a challenge due to the high fat content. So what was I thinking when I decided to make soap with not one, not two, but three milks? Well, I wasn't actually thinking about soap - I was thinking about a lovely dessert, tres leches cake and the three milks that go into it. About the same time, I saw a tutorial by my colleague Amanda Griffin on the "milk in oil method" for adding milk to a soap recipe. Naturally, one thing led to another…"I have three different milks that I can use in soap…why not use all three?"…and a recipe was born. Using milk in place of water for the lye solution is not difficult. Like Amanda's tutorial states, you can add the milk in a couple different ways - either as icy, slushy, frozen milk combined with the lye, or into the oils with a double strength lye solution. Since I was using three milks, not one, I opted for (and generally prefer) the second version. For this recipe (feel free to create your own soap recipe) which makes about 4.5 pounds of soap, I used: Lard - 12.7 oz. - 26% Palm Kernel - 13.7 oz. - 28% Olive - 13.7 oz. - 28% Castor - 2.4 oz. - 5% Sunflower - 3.9 oz. - 8% Cocoa Butter - 2.4 oz. - 5% Lye - 6.7 oz. Water - 6.7 oz. Coconut milk - 2.5 oz. Goat's milk - 2.5 oz. (or enough powder reconstituted into 2.5 ounces) Half & Half - 2.5 oz. 2.1 ounces of essential or fragrance oils ½ cup of finely ground oatmeal 1/8 tsp. of gold mica 1/8 tsp. of cappuccino mica

Those are so pretty Jcandleattic!! I am not surprised those folks that received them loved them! You cannot go wrong with all the wonderful products that you put in them.

Those are just so pretty Candybee!! Screams Christmas, festive and anything holiday! LOVE the colors!

Ohhhhh....the black one....looks so rich and so classy!! Love!

Sponiebr....you keep it real!! What a hoot to read!!

OH MY!!!! JUST BEAUTIFUL Debratant!! Those colors are just so pretty! I have always wondered how to do this with melt and pour soap. Thanks for the wonderful tutorial!

Gosh, they are all pretty...but that #3...love it. Congratulations on your new store, I wish you all the very best on it Trappeur!!

Your table looks great and I'm so sorry your banner did not get to you in time, but I can imagine that the next show you do , is that it will look awesome! I love the red color of your table cloth... it is so festive! I hear ya on the back issues...herniated bulging discs here....but that does NOT stop us does it??!! We git 'er done and when we have to, we just take it a little easier on ourselves! The not Scentsy sign is an eye grabber and hey if it works and gets people over to your table, go for it. Congratulations on a profitable and mighty fine show and getting some Christmas shopping done too!

Hi Alison and welcome to our group!

Love this time of year.... Christmas Memories Frasier Fir Spiced Orange Vanilla Bean Noel Pumpkin Souffle (blend) Winter Candy Apple Winter Fairy Cinnamon Stick Country Gift Shop it's fun to see what is selling for everyone....

Congratulations KrazeKelly! It is so wonderful that you did so awesome!! Yea for the probable wholesale account!! What a great day you had!

Ditto above. OH my gosh!!!!! Is this THE Blacktieaffair that used to live in Pigeon Forge and moved farther South???!!! OH my, if this is you...I have worried about you so much!!! How are YOU friend?? I'm sorry...I did not mean to hijack this thread...my apologies, but Wow...just had to ask...I am pleasantly surprised and shocked! Welcome back!

Wow TallTayl!!! Gorgeous stuff!! That kiln is a doozy!! Good for you....one of these days...real soon I think...that baby will be filled to the top.

Wishing you the VERY best Jcandleattic! You work so hard and deserve it!