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Go to the regular soaping forum and do a search for Lindy's shampoo soap. Its a great recipe but its high in iodine so it can develop DOS. I played around with it and switched out the soybean for grapeseed. Lowered the avocado to 20% and added 10% coconut oil. That helped lower the iodine and I...

Thats really pretty beer soap! It makes me want to buy some of that. So far I have made bourbon and whiskey soaps but have yet to make beer. I even have my beer fragrances from Brambleberry ready. I was going to do them this fall just haven't had time. Good luck Seawolfe on your first beer...

I confess I am a clay junky. I use a lot of clays; pink, green, red, in my soap. Lately I used some cocoa powder for the first time and now have a new love. I think the one I hate working the most with is activated charcoal. When you open the container the charcoal is so fine it just gets into...

I use pringle cans for my shaving soaps and PVC pipes for my beer soap. I line them with either freezer wrap or one of those thin plastic flexible chopping mats from the dollar store. I opted for the cappers for the PVC pipes. They are dirt cheap so I get them for both the top and bottom. I...

Thanks for all the tips on the palm and PKO. Since I have been buying the large jugs lately I have been melting them down in a warm bath to transfer the palm oil into a bucket for easy use. Maybe thats why I haven't noticed any problems with it because it ends up getting well stirred. Funny the...

Now this is interesting. I buy my palm oil at SMR and never stirred it and never had any inconsistency problems. I also buy my palm oil at ED. Because the ED oil comes in a jug I heat it to pour into another container tending to stir it. So perhaps the SMR is a no stir? palm. I wouldn't know...

I sometimes use black walnut hull powder as a natural colorant for brown. Can't say it has had any effect on relieving poison ivy.

Congratulations on your first batch! Looks pretty good. I had a crumbly batch of 100% castile a while back. Turns out it was the olive oil I had. I bought a brand I wasn't familiar with. It must have been adulterated or going bad. Don't know. When I made my next batch I was sure to use my...

You may be thinking of pko - palm kernal oil. It can come in solid and flake form. I believe the flake form has to be mixed before use. Not so the with the solid. PKO should not be confused with palm oil. They are two entirely different oils with different soaping characteristics. Re palm oil...

Soapers Choice/Columbus Foods has the best prices including shipping prices I have been able to find. But I also have backup suppliers too. I buy my lye in bulk from Essential Depot. They also carry soaping supplies and carrier oils and sometimes when I order lye I go ahead and buy an oil or...

Suzie please don't give up because of the competition. Everyone makes their soap different so no two soaps are exactly the same and customers are smart enough to know what they like. So just make the best soap you can. I have seen soapers come and go because some don't bother to go through all...

Suzie makes a good point. It does help a lot to start with a basic recipe to learn how the oils work and feel in your soap, what they do or do not contribute, etc. Having said that, I make a few soaps with lanolin and I can most definitely feel the difference with it in my soap. But I tend to...

LOL You should add to that list that there is still market research to do. You may love the scent, its conditioning properties, and tested it and retested it until you feel with total confidence it is ready to sell. Then you take it to market and it just sits there. Nobody buys it. Why? Because...

I would save the liquid silk for leave on products and use the fibers in CP. I use tussah silk and don't have any discoloration at all. I buy mine from soapmakingresource.com. It's labelled as cruelty free silk.

It won't be as moisturizing as its meant to be until its been cured for at least 6 weeks. Also, depends on how much coconut oil you used in your recipe and your tolerance for it. I prefer 10-20% coconut oil in my soap as more makes my skin itchy and dry feeling while others like theirs at 30% or...

I have several wholesale accounts and sell them what I have available. I can't stress how important this is. If you start making a whole line of soaps specific to this customer it means you always have to have them on hand to sell them. So if you don't ordinarily make them don't start a new...

Its been a while but I have added eggs to my soap before. Just wanted to try it out. The soap came out nice and creamy. I used whole eggs, about 2 for a 3 lb batch, and tempered it with some goat milk. The gm and egg mixture I tempered further by adding to my oils. I figured this would thin it...

Higher castor oil works well in high conditioning recipes like shampoo, facial, baby, and dog soaps. In these I use more castor. In my regular bath soaps its never higher than 5%.

Very pretty! I am curious about the surprize too..

Nice experiment. I learned through my own experience that too much castor will kill lather. It always reads nice on soapcalc and looks like its gonna give you a really creamy bubbly bar of soap. When it comes to castor I trust my experience with it rather that what it says on soapcalc. Now I...