Hard to make plain soap?

[hlee]

I find it hard to make a plain soap also. I love them, they are beautiful and I need to force myself soon.
I have just too much fun playing in soap batter and smelling it.

 

[ClaraSuds]

Earthy colours for me, I don't like TD whitened bars, I like soaps done with a coloured clay, the natural cream of plain oil and the light tan milk and honey soaps. Flecks of coffee grounds or rice hulls if it's an exfoliating soap are nice too.

I just scented my 2nd batch this week and it smells exactly like dirt. Serious, the scent of earth that's been turned over. It wasn't intentional but I quite like it. I am strange though...

 

[KristaY]

I don't mind making naked soap because there's no stress involved. I don't have to research the FO for it's behavior or consider what colors will match the scent BUT I can't just let it sit there looking, well, naked. I usually pull out my crinkle cutter to give a bit of visual jazz, lol.

 

[Pepsi Girl]

Yep, I love plain simple soap, and a crinkle cut is nice.

I don't sell soap but many of you do
So here's what is interesting to me:
As a consumer, and of course there are many who think different from me, I would not be the least bit interested in colorful soap
If I did happen to purchase it, it would be just for sitting in a dish, thus becoming dusty and possibly throw away, not at all the purpose of soap
It's also interesting that really (correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't bought soap for many years) only homemade soaps are "pretty"
Store bought soaps are plain with the exception of Irish Spring :sick:and maybe something else.
And as for fragrance again don't most store bought soaps just smell like soap?
So do you find it interesting that people who sell their soaps work so hard at making them beautiful? And why do you think that is?
I'm just thinking out loud, so what's your thoughts?

 

[grumpy_owl]

So do you find it interesting that people who sell their soaps work so hard at making them beautiful? And why do you think that is?

Interesting? Not exactly. I find it very understandable. As far as why, because we are always challenging ourselves, pushing ourselves, trying new things and learning, and also, soap envy is very real. Just a glance through the "Browsing Soap Pics" thread could give anyone heartache/determination.

And that's not just from people who sell, I am sure. One wants to set oneself apart from the crowd, and in my opinion, the thinking is, "Well, anyone can good a good solid plain bar anywhere, so I have to switch it up and be a little big spectacular." Let's face it, we all make a wash-off product. There will be variations in condition. cleansing, hardness, bubbles, etc, but at the end of the day, everyone's looking for that little unoccupied corner to take and set themselves apart.

This is true for MP as well. I sell MP soaps and was refilling an order in one of our local shops yesterday. The owner was talking up the soaps to customers and the customers said, "Oh, we already have this one in a drawer, this one under the pillow, this one in a closet..." (They bought more, which is the good news.) But honestly, in that case, all they were buying is the scent, and my MPs are fancy and time-consuming. :x

So setting yourself apart is a good thing, and sometimes it bites you in the butt.

 

[ClaraSuds]

So do you find it interesting that people who sell their soaps work so hard at making them beautiful? And why do you think that is?
I'm just thinking out loud, so what's your thoughts?

I think partly it comes down to satisfying some inner urge within the creator to well be creative. I guess it holds interest in just accomplishing something other than saponified oil.

And yes the fear that just good soap may not be good enough to sell consistently. But that's a strange idea to my mind, because before I started making my own I bought from a niche maker. She had all kinds of pretty soap but I never bought any of those, just her bulk packs of plain soap. I eventually got tired of paying postage so started making my own. People go nuts over Aleppo soap which is as plain as you can get and Savon De Marseille sells in boutiques here for stupid money. :Kitten Love:

I tend not to buy things like soap and body items as gifts, so pretty soap is uninteresting to me entirely. I actually think artistic soap just discourages people from using it. It's like a reverse psychology, oooh...this soap is so unusual, better keep it otherwise it will be gone. Strangely no-one has a problem eating a decorated cake though....:lolno:

 

[srblatt17]

I make both kinds...artsy with glitter and plain. I use both. My plain bars I usually make HP with EO and no colors. I sell a lot of the designer type soap but I do sell the plain as well. I just like making soap...lol. lilac
herbal blend..no frills.

 

[claryza]

I cant stand plain soap lol. Well I do like making plain soap with just textures on top. But I cant stand the unscented soap. Is unscented soap with different ingredient smells different? I love using fo though it doesn make my skin smells good after shower lol

 

[Obsidian]

Yeah, different ingredients will make a different scent. 100% coconut oil soap is scentless but the soap I made the other day with coco butter and pumpkin oil has a slightly weird chocolatey scent.

 

[TRBeck]

My favorite plain soap is the first one I ever made a couple of years ago. I was trying to make something for my daughter's eczema - she was one year old at the time. I hot processed a tallow-rich bar and added cocoa butter after the cook for superfat. No fragrance. Very hard, white bars. It did help her eczema immensely, but moreover, after curing for a few weeks, the cocoa butter scent merged with the plain, earthy scent of the base soap, and it smells very, very faintly like a clean musk. In other words, it has an aroma, but it's just the scent of soap. We're currently using up the third loaf of that soap, and it continues to be my favorite, the soap of which I'm most proud. Don't know if it would sell, but then, I'm not selling bath soaps yet. It doesn't look like much, but I hope to offer it for sale someday. It's wonderful stuff.

 

[dixiedragon]

Yes, I do. What I do is pour a small amount of plain soap into a small mold, and color and scent the rest. I don't really need a few pounds of plain soap sitting around - I just like to keep a few bars of well aged nekked soap in case somebody needs them.

 

[BugSoap]

This is true for MP as well. I sell MP soaps and was refilling an order in one of our local shops yesterday. The owner was talking up the soaps to customers and the customers said, "Oh, we already have this one in a drawer, this one under the pillow, this one in a closet..." (They bought more, which is the good news.) But honestly, in that case, all they were buying is the scent, and my MPs are fancy and time-consuming. :x

So setting yourself apart is a good thing, and sometimes it bites you in the butt.

Might think of it as multipurpose use, not just for scents.
I've known people to buy fancy stuff like soaps and just let them sit around and look pretty and smell nice for a long time, but sooner or later they end up using them. Maybe the scent or color fades in time or they just want a change, so the soap is used for washing. When this time comes new is bought and goes back on the shelf, closet, etc... till it's time to use it.

Someone I knew used to have a nice display of red roses in their bathroom for display and smell, then one time I was there and it was Yellow roses, later it was soap duckies that looked like various bathtub rubber ducks. Not sure what the Ducks smelt like LOL
Don't remember if that was just a friend or a relative, but it was somewhere I was at fairly often.

 

[CaraBou]

I definitely gravitate toward uncolored soaps for my personal use, with just a hint of EOs like lavender, mint, etc. Simple but heavenly!

I am moving soon and went through all my soaps to figure out what should come with me, what I should give away, and what should just be thrown (gasp!). The "keep" pile were mostly the plain or single colored bars (selfish me). The throw-aways tended to be over fragranced or just plain stinky (couldn't do that to someone). Much to my surprise the give-aways included uglies, which I didn't think I'd do. Three boxes set out at work went lickity-split -- not a single bar left by the end of the day. Even the boxes went missing!

 

[biarine]

I definitely gravitate toward uncolored soaps for my personal use, with just a hint of EOs like lavender, mint, etc. Simple but heavenly!

I am moving soon and went through all my soaps to figure out what should come with me, what I should give away, and what should just be thrown (gasp!). The "keep" pile were mostly the plain or single colored bars (selfish me). The throw-aways tended to be over fragranced or just plain stinky (couldn't do that to someone). Much to my surprise the give-aways included uglies, which I didn't think I'd do. Three boxes set out at work went lickity-split -- not a single bar left by the end of the day. Even the boxes went missing!

I am sure they likes your soaps because they took even the boxes for me I love the unscented soap and plain white bar.

 

[BubblesnBears]

I'm very much in the plain soaper's club too... Occasionally I'll do something with a coloured swirl, but that's as exciting as I get. If I do colour, I like the nice earthy colours you get playing with clays and other natural colourants. Scents I tend to keep fairly muted too... I use EOs if I'm including them for a specific purpose, but on the whole much prefer under to overdone

 

[JayBird]

100/% coconut soap for eczema? Maybe you mean Olive oil.

I also do a 100% CO at 20SF which a friend uses for eczema. I do a four color swirl with base color, charcoal, black walnut hull, and comfrey. He's been using it a few months. I saw him the other day and he no longer has eczema on his face.

The only reason he "discovered" this is because I gave out soap samples at a demonstration, and this is my "camouflage no scent hunter's soap." When his mom told me how it was working for him, I gifted him my entire stock.

Everyone is different, though. What works for him may do nothing for others.

 

[Bubli]

No, that's all I do is naked, plain. Less is best, to me. Though I admire the talent a lot of soapers have for making some really pretty art work out of soap, I want to use it and it to be benificial. I find all the additives to drying and irritating. Sometime I wish I could use dressed up soap cuz it looks and smells so nice. Naked does get boring though

 

[grumpy_owl]

It's funny what attracts people--bells and whistles sometimes; sometimes simplicity. I was so proud of my 100 percent coconut oil laundry bars and the stain sticks and laundry butter I lovingly made from them. I send a jar of the butter and a stick, all wrapped in kraft paper and lace, with chalkboard ribbon explaining what it was and how to use it, to a couple who are scientists. They work on Mars missions, so serious stuff, and they had gone shampoo-free for some time and were intrigued by my household-product experiments.
So I got a note today saying that since the tag had proudly proclaimed "No detergent!" they figured the butter was an enhancement rather than a substitute, and put it in with the regular Tide, then noted that they couldn't smell the fragrance.
Hm...maybe they thought it was a big jar of whipped laundry scent? I stared at the note gaping open like a fish for a while.
I guess my point is that people are used to what they know, and sometimes "simple" looks TOO simple, like, "It can't possibly be this easy."