# need help soapmaking, recipies



## avilaleidig439 (Apr 30, 2012)

I'm a begginer at cold pressed and hot press soap making. I've had expirience making melt n pour soaps but want to learn how to make homemade soaps from scratch. So far I've made a olive castile HP soap but don't like the slimmy thin lather. If anyone could help me out with some basic body and shampoo soap recipies I would GREATLY appritiate this for I have already made several failed batches, money down the drain.

 On hand I have coconut oil(one quart), olive oil, castor oil, sweet almond oil, seasame oil, and lye beads, and many essiental oils. I made one recipies on a saop recipiesapp, and don'tknow ifitsany good as I do not know what oils make a bar of soap that won't dry out the skin, here it is.. Bar Soap With 5% discount. Lye Amount: 8.67 Ounces Water Amount: 19.33 Ounces INS Value: 169.78 Coconut 25 Ounces Almond, Sweet 5 Ounces Castor 10 Ounces Olive 18 Ounces

 So please any basic soap recipies would help me so much as I have invested quite a bit of money already. My goal is to make soaps with good lather, hard bar, and some moisturising qualities *also do not have any fancy oils(jojoba, sunflower, etc) just looking for a BASIC body and/or shampoo recipie THANKS SO MUCH SORRY FOR THE LONG QUESTION, SOAPING IS FUSTRATING SOMETIMES


----------



## judymoody (Apr 30, 2012)

Try this site:  www.millersoap.com

At your stage I would also do smaller recipes - 1.5 to 2 lbs. of oils is large enough to be forgiving of small mistakes but small enough that if you ruin a batch it's not the end of the world.

You might also try Alicia Grosso's Everything Soap Book.

Good luck!


----------



## Hazel (Apr 30, 2012)

How long did you let it cure? Castile soaps requires a longer curing period. Some people are happy with it after 3 months, some people prefer to cure it for 6 months and some people prefer to let it cure for a year or even longer. 

Soap will never be moisturizing. You can use a higher percentage of oils which are conditioning and use a higher superfat to make the soap less drying. But soap by its function will never add moisture to the skin.

Am I reading your post correctly and you used these oils at these amounts?

25 Ounces Coconut 
5 Ounces Almond, Sweet 
10 Ounces Castor  
18 Ounces Olive 

If so, it's not surprising you found it drying. The coconut oil (which is drying in soap) is 43% of your recipe. Where did you get this recipe?

If you're not sure about what oils to use, then you need to step back and do some more research. judymoody has already made some good suggestions. You might also find Summer Bee Meadow's oil properties chart helpful as a reference. Here's the link

http://summerbeemeadow.com/content/prop ... aking-oils

You'll find some helpful info on this forum. Here are some links to other sites which have tutorials and recipes for CP.

http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/coldp ... Making.htm

http://www.soapqueen.com/category/bath- ... cess-soap/

http://www.pureandnaturalsoaps.com/soap-recipes.html

http://teachsoap.com/soap-basics/

http://smftutorials.com/drupal/soap--making-tutorials

Soapqueen.com has a youtube channel. You might find the CP process videos helpful. Sometimes seeing someone go through the process helps a person to understand the tutorials more quickly. 

http://www.youtube.com/user/soapqueentv

Always double check any recipes you find online or in a book with a lye calculator. Typos do happen.


BTW, I don't consider sunflower a fancy oil. I love it in recipes because it's very conditioning.


----------



## avilaleidig439 (Apr 30, 2012)

I made up the recipie off a soap making app on my phone, I knew it was probably inncorrect lol, do u have any suggestions on a recipie I could do or tips on how I can make my own recipie with these ingredients? I did a lot of extensive reaserch and tryed talking to some local soapmakers but no helpful info.  All the recipies on the internet require palm, sunflower or shew butter which I dnt have right now , spent it all on current ingredients. 

Thanks a lot


----------



## avilaleidig439 (Apr 30, 2012)

Also I  tried soapqueen, whiched helped, and tech soap  and about soap. I know the basics of cp and hp soapmaking but I just don't know how much of each ingredient to use to make a 2 pound bar , the recipies online and in books usuaoly have like one ingredient I dnt have on hand, for example veggie shortining or palm oil :x


----------



## Hazel (Apr 30, 2012)

With the ingredients you have, you can mainly only do bastile soaps or high percentage coconut batches. The problem with your ingredients is you mainly have soft oils. Olive oil will eventually get rock hard but it will take months for curing. Coconut contributes hardness but too much is drying unless you use a high superfat. I prefer to cure high percentage coconut batches at least 2 months but I know other people start using them after 4 weeks.

What lye calculator are you using? I use soapcalc http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp

I'm basing this example on the soapcalc calculator: You can adjust the size of a batch by using percentages for your ingredients and then typing in the weight of the batch you want. For example, type in 32 oz in box #2 which is "Weight of Oils" since you want a 2 lb batch. Then in the recipe section, add the oils you want to use, the percentages you want to use them at and click "Calculate Recipe" and then click "View or Print Recipe". When the recipe opens up as a new page, you will see it lists weight amounts in pounds, ounces and grams.

Some recipes you can make with oils you have on hand.

100% coconut with 20% superfat

100% coconut salt bar with 20% superfat and whatever percentage of salt you want. You might want to wait on this one since salt bars can be tricky. There have been numerous discussions about salt bars in the CP section. I recommend you read them. Also, IrishLass posted her salt bar recipe in a couple of them. You might want to try it, too. I used the SMF tutorial to make my first salt bar batch. Here's the link http://smftutorials.com/drupal/how-to-m ... p-tutorial

For the recipes below, I'd recommend a superfat between 5%-8% and they will take longer to cure.

80% olive
20% coconut
very mild - nice facial soap

75% olive
25% coconut
mild - can be face and body


I'm going to emphasize this again - you must learn the properties of the oils. You will have to know what they contribute to the soap in order to make your own recipes.

You might want to check around local stores and see if you can find palm, lard and/or tallow. You can formulate more recipes with any or all of these oils by combining them with the oils you already have.


----------



## avilaleidig439 (Apr 30, 2012)

okay, thank you so much, that was very helpful and lots of great information i  greatly appritiate it and will use these recpies 

Yes i am using the soap cal lye calculator, its pretty easy once i got the hang of it, very imformative. being a begginer, its harder than it looks to make soap from scratch and im glad theres blogs like this to help newbies like me lol


----------



## Hazel (May 1, 2012)

I'm glad you found this helpful. I forgot to mention in the salt bar tutorial it states to use any salt except Epsom salts. But you also don't want to use dead sea salts because they'll make the batch ooze oil and you might want to also avoid kosher salt. Some people have used it and haven't had a problem. However, another member used it and had a mess. You can just use regular table salt in salt batches. It works just fine.


----------



## avilaleidig439 (May 1, 2012)

8)  ill definetly try it out, thanks!


----------

