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I recently bought a tub of butter instead of the wafers and it is... Tough. The ice cream scoop I use for Shea butter didn't work. I ended up using a serated knife and cutting it into chunks, which works surprisingly well. When I next need to order I think I'll do another cost comparison...

There are a few tutorials on YouTube for wood grain pour. I watched a few of them and then kind of winged it. Making sure you cut the bars correctly is the tricky part. I really like how the finished bars look, even cut across, so I now use this technique for a few of my designs.

Finally got to try out my new oil MB tool and I'm in loooooove. It's a 15L candle wax melter off of Amazon. After a slight snafu with my olive oil (left the spout open when filling... Oops) I successfully prepped 15kg of oils! I use 1kg of oils per loaf, so that's 15 loaves. Way better than my...

I used Dutch processed cocoa as one of the browns in my wood grain soap (Mahogany Shea). I dispersed in oil like I do with my micas, but definitely had to use more. It's the furthest right in the last pic. Pretty happy with how it turned out. I figured with the multiple browns, it would still...

1. peachymoon - I've been wanting to work with cocoa! 😋 2. glendam - chocolate soap is in my to-do list, this is perfect! 3. Mx6inpenn - I haven't used natural colorants since I first started. 4. TheGecko - I need to make another batch of my Chocolate Espresso (cocoa in the batter, cocoa line...

What method do you do for rendering large batches of lard?

I've been a bit quiet on here because I've been insanely busy. I thought I was perhaps overly optimistic about my potential soap sales when I first started talking about scaling up, but that has not been the case. I've been selling soaps faster than I can make them (with cure time, of course)...

Alright, enough of you have posted great sounding Gardener's Soap recipes that I thought I'd hop on the bandwagon and give it a try. This will be marketed as a highly exfoliating and tough cleansing soap - not my normal sensitive skin friendly soap. Thoughts on the beta recipe before I make a...

I attempted this method today and ended up with a gloppy mess. My fault for attempting to rush a soap before my shift at the brewery! I'll try again another time.

Thanks! One of my big selling points is that I don't use Palm Oil, so unfortunately I don't think that substitution would work for me. I may try Babassu as a sub for the 15% Coconut Oil, since I have some on hand and don't use it in any of my main product lines. I'm not sure if people with...

Thanks! I definitely want to do the coconut and castor version next time. For this round, I had a number of clients specifically request no coconut oil, so I thought this would be a good chance to test this recipe at 100% olive oil. I think this batch will be good for that section of the...

I made 4 loaves of Zany's No Slime Castile this past week. I've had a few customers request Coconut Oil Free soap, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to try Castile. The short curing time of Zany's method (supposed to be 2 weeks) was also very appealing, as my sales have been much...

Thanks for sharing! I think I'm going to try this with a loaf of rose soap that I need to rebatch.

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Oh I totally agree! Unfortunately my markets have already started so I wanted to have products available that are covered by my current provider. I'll be researching insurance companies and reintroducing a hemp line once I have coverage.

This could be really fun! I would definitely participate. I could even do two batches - one with my well water, and one with the city tap water from my mom's house. She likes my water so much better that when she visits, she brings empty gallon jugs to fill up for her drinking water. I was...

Yep! I'm really curious to see how this affects prices of other oils, as well. Luckily I just stocked up on large amounts of my base oils, so I should be able to ride this out well.

Very fair point! They're at 2 weeks now and I tested a piece of an end slice. Definitely less bubbles than normal but it lathered nicely and worked well. So I think they may be worth keeping.

Right??? This is always my boyfriend's request, as well. I'm currently using sorbitol, citric acid, and aloe vera juice. This seems to be enough to make the bubbles acceptable. 🤦‍♀️

Pretty sure I figured out the issue with my slow-to-set soaps. I made those with the lye that I had masterbatched and (doh!) put in the refrigerator. The lye solution formed crystals, which I thought I had re-incorporated, but I'm thinking I didn't do as well as I thought and ended up with less...