Howdy y'all from Austin, TX

[makemineirish]

I am very much a neophyte to soap making. I have made a batch or two of cold process to make sure I understood the basics. Now I am trying to craft custom skin care products for myself and to distribute as gifts. There is bound to be a learning curve, but I am hoping to make it as steep as possible through stringent research.

I stumbled onto this resource trying to find the answers to pressing questions that were not so easily googled:
- What fats are most beneficial for skin when included in soap
(given that they undergo saponification and are on your skin
so briefly)?
- What are efficient routes to alter scored values on Soapcalc?
- Do comedogenic scores matter if the oils are undergoing
saponification?
- How do you determine which, if any, fragrance oils are
environmentally-friendly?
- Which retailers have superior or inferior reputations for quality
products and customer service?

I plan to spend this week pouring over the collective knowledge of the forum and am already grateful for the assistance that you all provide.

 

[pamielynn]

Howdy from DFW!

Not sure if *I* know all the answers to your questions, but I'm sure somebody here does. But I'll try:

- What fats are most beneficial for skin when included in soap
(given that they undergo saponification and are on your skin
so briefly)? When making soap, you want oils and formulations that will not strip the skin. Olive is a favorite of mine, as well as mango and cocoa butter. But soap won't "moisturize" your skin. You just want it to be gentle.
- What are efficient routes to alter scored values on Soapcalc? Not exactly sure what you mean by this.
- Do comedogenic scores matter if the oils are undergoing
saponification? I personally only look for this when making a leave on product.
- How do you determine which, if any, fragrance oils are
environmentally-friendly? I would think any plant oils that aren't on some endangered list would be fine. Can't think of any that don't biodegrade easily.
- Which retailers have superior or inferior reputations for quality
products and customer service? There are many to choose from. I use Columbus Oils (soaper's choice) for many of my oils.

Welcome to the addiction!

 

[lsg]

I get a lot of my fragrance and essential oils from Wholesale Supplies Plus.

 

[Hazel]

Hello and welcome! :grin:

You can look through Shopping Recommendations for information on suppliers. There are so many that's it's hard to say since everyone has their favorites for one reason or another. Something to take into account when ordering is the location of the supplier since this would affect shipping rates.

Some suppliers I purchase from are Brambleberry but not very often because it's so far away that shipping is a little high.

WholesaleSuppliesPlus for some things. Since they started the "free" shipping, some of the prices are crazy high. But they do have good prices on some items.

Peak's Candle
Soaper's Choice/Columbus Foods
Nature's Garden
Aroma Haven/Rustic Escentuals
TKB Trading for some colorants - so many people have raved about The Conservatorie's micas that I want to order from them next time I need colorants.

I see that pamielynn has already answered some of the other questions. I also don't understand the question about scored values on SoapCalc.

 

[pamielynn]

I knew Columbus OILS was wrong, but I hadn't finished my coffee yet, LOL! But I get 90% of my oils from them. I think they rock - so helpful with any question. Even the time I called to see if I'd actually placed an order

 

[Hazel]

but I hadn't finished my coffee yet

I know exactly what you mean. Been there!

 

[makemineirish]

Thanks

I did not really expect anyone to just start answering my questions. I have been trying to do my own legwork, but those are a few that have been more elusive. I really appreciate y'all taking the time to do so.

As to what I mean by Soapcalc scores....
When you enter a recipe into their calculator, a print and view tab becomes clickable. After clicking on the tab, tables scoring specific properties of your soap pop up. The characteristics of one table include:

• Hardness
• Cleansing
• Conditioning
• Bubbly
• Creamy
• Iodine
• INS

It is not perfect, and fails to compute variables such as whether or not I am using milk as my water content...but it is still a helpful guide.

I wanted to develop a whipped soap recipe appropriate for use on my face. My first attempt at a theoretical recipe had a cleansing score of 20 and a conditioning score of 46. A cleansing score or 20 seemed like it would be far to drying for me. Therefore, I was trying to drop the cleansing score and up the conditioning.

Normally, reducing the coconut oil and increasing the olive oil would accomplish this objective. However, a whipped soap recipe requires that a significant portion of the fats be solid at room temperature. My ability to raise any liquid oil percentage is limited.

I can eventually get where I want to be by trial and error. However, I wondered if there was a useful chart for manipulating the values that I had yet to come across. I am not yet experienced enough to intuitively understand what effects different butters will have without resubmitting numerous incarnations of my recipe. That would be incredibly helpful anytime I want to reformulate something for family members with different needs than my own.

I am sorry if I seem a bit intense. I have a bit of CDO. It's like OCD, but with all the letters in alphabetical order (as they should be).

 

[Hazel]

Use a higher lye discount. This will make the soap less drying and more conditioning but it won't be shown this way in the values section.

 

[makemineirish]

Thanks

Use a higher lye discount. This will make the soap less drying and more conditioning but it won't be shown this way in the values section.

Thanks. That would not have occured to me and seems far simpler than reformulating my recipe.

I am building new molds this weekend and hoping to have something to pour by next weekend. I am currently lost down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos chronicling swirl and pour techniques. It is almost enough to make me want to abandon the whipped soap idea in favor of trying pretty artistic effects.

I might have to do both.roblem:

 

[Hazel]

I do. I'm still working on an idea I had using a combination of CP and whipped. It hasn't come out as I envisioned but it's been fun experimenting. Someday, I even hope to a successful outcome.

You can get some pretty artistic effects with whipped, too. However, I haven't been able to get vibrant colors. I used to think that was just the nature of whipped soap until I recently saw Nizzy's cupcakes. He mentioned he used Neon colors for the whipped decorations. Oh yeah! Gotta get me some of those colors.