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Why not!? I figure the less water I put in, the less I need to wait for the water to come out. I make all my soaps now with 40-45% lye solutions and haven't had any issues with quick trace. I haven't been doing anything fancy, cosmetically though.

I've made one salt bar so far, and it's the Wife's favorite soap of the three dozen I've made... 70% CO 14% OO 8% Shea 8% Castor with 12% SF and 10oz Him salt (fine) to 25oz oils. I used a 45% lye solution and began using the bar at about 4 weeks. It's got a great lather, and nice exfoliating...

I did get a nice subdued green from French green clay and a pinkish/red/orange from French red clay and I really didn't use much of either - though I'm assume these colors I'm getting aren't as pronounced as other colorants would be. I'm going to try French yellow when I get my hands on some.

Your Shea looks nearly black when melted? That seems odd to me.

We use an Epson c3500 printer. It's a nice little beast with affordable ink and paper options. A bit upfront though.

I got the apricot shells from New Directions Aromatics.

We recently made a soap with finely ground apricot shell that is quite nice, though perhaps right on the limit of being too scratch for the face - I'm going to use a bit less next time. I've used pumice, but overdid it and it was rather scratchy and ticklish. My Wife loves the salt soap I...

+1 on candelilla wax - this is what we use for all of our vegan customers. I find that using about 1/2 the amount of candelilla to substitute for beeswax (ie, if beeswax is 2T than candelilla will be 1T) works well. Without any wax, you'll need something like 100% cocoa and/or mango butter -...

Is your kaolin grainy? I've got some fine grain kaolin and haven't noticed it making my soap gritty, though I've just used it a few times.

Looks amazing and your essential oil combination sounds really interesting too!

I'm 100% in the category of give me natural (or at least as close as possible) over synthetic, artificial, man-made any day! But that certainly doesn't mean I'm blind to the fact that natural things (ie, things straight from the earth and/or minimally processed) can cause allergies and even...

Whoa, how is that even possible! Life's got to be hard for that man...

Rose petal and activated charcoal soap with 73% organic sweet almond oil. This soap turned out really nice in terms of lather and skin feel. I wanted to try some high AO soaps after reading some online posts regarding 100% almond oil soaps that turned out well. I also wanted to see if the rose...

Ouch, how annoying - I know I'm going to do something like this eventually! At least you realized it before soaping yourself up. While I have no direct experience doing this, there are certainly ways to rebatch soap and The Google is full of (hopefully) helpful videos!

+1 on too much castor. I recently made a 90% coconut oil and 10% Shea with 15% SF that turned out quite nicely. I'm sure this would be too drying for some, but we all enjoy it in my house, including the 3 kids (but then, they pretty much like any soap I make). It is a quite lathery, somewhat...

I've used the following so far: French green clay - green soap (go figure!) Rose petal powder - brownish soap French Red Clay - pinkish orange soap, just used a bit of it Activated Charcoal - black/gray (obviously) Australian Black Clay - gray soap Rhassoul clay - light brown, just used a touch...

Haha, good idea - and I've got quite a few fuglies I've made that can use a covering! I imagine the soap lasts quite a while like that as well. How long did it take you to make a felted bar?

While I don't think we'll be customizing soaps, we will try and offer a wide variety of options, including coconut oil free. It's actually quite interesting - all the different things that bother various people's skin and the requests we've received. There are all the typical irritants that...

So there's soap inside the wool? How interesting!