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sorry to barge in, I was reading you and when you suggested shea for eczema I thought "youch!" Shea can be an allergen, so I would be careful using it for people who are already sensitive. I myself cannot stand shea, it makes my skin awful (I'm in permanent recovery of eczema, always on the...

Yeah, and she also makes a good point about stress relief! lol It does have something relaxing to it. For me anyway, it's partly because I'm still learning and don't really know what might happen, so I'm in a sort of calm but alert mode and I like that, it's sort of thrilling as something new.

Hello there, I'm not in South Africa, but South America... As no one seems to have replied, I thought I might help you out in finding lye (I know it's something hard to find when no one points it out to you). I've never found lye in supermarkets personally, but that's where lots of people...

I think that it is quite easy to make it cost effective. Especially if you're starting this mainly because you want to ditch the industrial soaps. You just have to watch out to not fall into the excess. You don't need to have fancy molds, fancy soap cutters, fancy colored and fragranced soap...

I've been keeping record of what I specifically bought for soapmaking to be able to compare afterwards. So far, for all the supplies, I've spent 72 USD (50 Euros). That includes scale, stick blender, jug, bowls, spatula, spoons, whisk. For the raw material, I've spent 45 USD (32 Euros)...

You mean that you take (for example) 2oz of lye, mix that with 2oz of water until it dissolves and then add that to the oils and then add additional water? Is that risky to do?

=> yup, listen to the expert.

Your site only explains why not to use palm oil but doesn't say anything about the other oils they use... that wouldn't guarantee what you are looking for. For example, they use soybean oil and the production of soybean oil uses hexane, which is toxic. So the people who make the oil, even...

I wouldn't trust that recipe. If you use it, you'd probably have a lye heavy soap that would be irritating to the skin. To get that amount of lye in soapcalc, I had to put a NEGATIVE superfat (-3), meaning more lye than is needed to do a complete saponification. I would use the numbers given by...

hum... does that mean that soap with castor oil can also be somewhat toxic? All depends on doses, but I mean ricin could pass on to the oil and probably stays in the soap...?

Yeah, of course, with this article I figured out 30% coconut oil, 25% rice bran and 5% castor. And I suppose that the rest was 40% olive... I was more interested in the water amount, cause my 25% coconut and 75% soft oils is the mushiest mess I have ever seen and I know that the salt makes...

bump?

Would you mind posting the exact recipe you used ? I might like to try that out :)

My first two batches were made in the same week. My first recipe was 100% olive oil My second was 70% olive, 23% coconut and 7% castor That was one month ago. They are both still kind of soft (well, at least softer than my tallow soaps I made afterwards). I wanted to see if the water...

I'm pretty new mysefl (half a dozen batches down the road), but your recipe sounds good to me. Simple, nothing extravagant and with a good ratio between hard oils and soft oils (maybe a little too much hard oils? You'll have to wait for some expert to jump in. Though I believe that if you don't...

You can also pre moisten your dry ingredients in some oil. That helps disperse the color in the soap and not get clumps (but yes, you'll still need to stick blend or mix well).

I have no idea where you can find that, but another idea for French style soaps would be to imiitate the packaging of the famous French RogeR&Gallet soaps with a simple round soap mold. http://www.roger-gallet.fr/bain-et-douc ... ds/f8.aspx Just a thought.

Well, I've been contacting soapmakers to purchase wholesale in my store and I've seen prices from 1,65GBP (retail price 3,95GBP) to 3,4-3,8€ (with recommended retail price at 6,30-8,50€ :shock: ). We didn't talk about minimum orders with the first one, I went upfront and told her our...

Off topic, but I just love bottle end soaps. Don't know what's with it, but I really like the shape.

I have only found two sources of lye and they are from the same company. It is packed in a sealed plastic bag (I was scared touching the outside of the bag, I almost warned the cashier who grabed it full handed! Yikes). I store it in a ziplock bag to keep moisture out. I bought if from a home...