Making sugar scrubs from soap shreds

[AliOop]

Rather than continuing to hijack ALL the other threads here is a new thread about making foaming emulsified sugar scrubs out of soap shreds. As I posted elsewhere, I had a lot of fun making sugar scrubs from a large tub of jelly soap base that had been hanging around since the grandkids outgrew it. My next batch of foaming whipped sugar scrubs was going to be made with from a KOH paste. However, I saw this video about making scrubs using soap shreds and .

I always have the best intention of starting with small tests... but I'm not a very patient person. After shredding a whooooole bunch of older soaps in the food processor, today I made the sugar scrub base from those shreds, using my large turkey roaster pan. I started with:

~4200g soap shreds
~50% of shred weight in distilled water
~50% of shred weight in glycerin
~no stearic acid at first, since I was using high-stearic soap shreds.

I did add another 10% each of glycerin and water. The melted mixture wasn't homogenizing and was quite foamy. So, in went 910g of stearic acid (~10% of the total batch weight). Immediately the mix stopped foaming, and it quickly started coming together.

My instinct was to melt the stearic acid in the microwave before adding it to the mix, but I ended up just stirring it in. If I had to do over again, pre-melting the stearic would have been the way to go. It took SO LONG for those little white bits to melt. In fact, there were still unmelted stearic bits in the first cup of the mixture that came out to cool for a texture check. But it whipped up like a dream! The texture is nice on it's own, but it's a bit too stiff for a sugar scrub. I'll be experimenting with adding more water, glycerin, and oil to get it just right.

Best of all, although the base is an unappealing dark brown (because, brown soap shreds), it is a pale pinkish-beige when whipped. Brown is fine for coffee scrubs, or a men's shave croap, but it's nice to know that it whips up light enough to make more girly colors, too. Here is a pic of the incredible amount of whipped soap base that is now cooling, and a pic of a whipped sugar scrub made with that base. You can see the color difference!

It foams up very well, is non-drying, and is ready to be colored, scented, bottled, labeled, and donated to our church's Christmas Boutique. Yippee!

 

[dmcgee5034]

Wow @AliOop! That’s awesome! Looks incredible!

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Go big, or go home Thanks so much for sharing your process. You make it seem easy

 

[AliOop]

Thank you @dmcgee5034 and @Mobjack Bay! Honestly, it was pretty easy. It did help that I’ve made a base before and have a little sense of what I’m looking for.

I meant to take a pic or short video of the consistency when it was all melted and homogenized, which I think would have helped others somewhat. However, my guess is that the viscosity of each batch will be slightly different based on the shreds that are used.

It really is hard to mess up, since you can remelt it and adjust it if the cooled product isn’t to your liking. I definitely need to add more liquid to thin mine out to my texture preferences, but it is still quite nice to use.

I hope that both of you and others will share your experiences with sugar scrub recipes, too. @TheGecko, are you going to give it a try?

 

[cmzaha]

It is a perfect color for a brown sugar fragrance!! Good job Alison

 

[K.C.]

fantastic!

 

[KiwiMoose]

Now I wanna do it!!! I see and I like! How does one use a sugar scrub? And what gives it the 'scrub' nomenclature? Do you add sugar granules to it? Do you pipe it into little jars to sell? Tell me more...

 

[soapmaker]

Is there anything else you can do with this stuff besides a sugar scrub?

 

[AliOop]

@soapmaker yes, you can use this for anything that you'd make with a foaming bath butter base, including shave croap, bubble scoops, creamy facial cleanser, bath parfait, etc. Because it's made from soap, and not syndets, it's going to be a little more drying than a premade syndet base, so you need to include more skin-loving oils or butters that might not be needed in a syndet base.

@KiwiMoose come to the scrub side! Yes, you can add sugar and oils or butters to this base to whip it into a foaming emulsified whipped sugar scrub. It is a like a body cleanser and polisher all in one. You can dial the sugar up or down to make it more exfoliating for the body, or less so for the face. You can use any other exfoliator instead of sugar, too!

You can pipe it or scoop it into jars. You can make it any color or scent you want. Mine is brown because I had a lot of brown soap shred to use up, but I also have a batch of pretty blue-green soap shreds, and another batch of uncolored soap shreds. If you take a look at "whipped sugar scrubs" on YT, you can see all kinds of ways that people color and pipe them!

Most YT recipes are syndet-based, and I have used those myself and love them. However, when I saw the Soap & Clay video on how to make it with soap shreds, I was pretty excited. Because I have a LOT of soap shreds! And I want to use them!

That YT creator actually has a whole playlist on different ways to make foaming scrubs, including one that blends syndets and soap. Her way of presenting information is a bit different, but she does go into some of the science about why some things work, what things won't work, etc. If you are interested in learning more, it's not a bad place to start. I'd recommend watching a few others just to get a range of ideas, so you can find the one that works for you.

 

[TheGecko]

I hope that both of you and others will share your experiences with sugar scrub recipes, too. @TheGecko, are you going to give it a try?

I don't have any soap shreds. I'm one of those horrible people who toss my trimmings, so I would either have to pull soap from my donation box or from inventory or purposely make soap to be shredded.

And I would have to purchase Glycerin and Stearic Acid...something I don't normally use.

 

[Marsi]

Now I wanna do it!!! I see and I like! How does one use a sugar scrub? And what gives it the 'scrub' nomenclature? Do you add sugar granules to it? Do you pipe it into little jars to sell? Tell me more...

Foaming sugar scrubs are awesome

(I am saving my scraps for the Ciaglia method ATM, but this is a different way to make them, thanks AliOop)

 

[Liesel Atwood]

This looks amazing I've only tried it once, so far, with a small amount of soap shreds. May I ask, how do you determine what percentage of oils/butters/additives you want to add to the sugar scrub? Is there a basic formula for this? Thanks in advance.

 

[Christa10]

Rather than continuing to hijack ALL the other threads here is a new thread about making sugar scrubs out of soap shreds. As I posted elsewhere, I had a lot of fun making sugar scrubs from a large tub of jelly soap base that had been hanging around since the grandkids outgrew it. My next batch of foaming whipped sugar scrubs was going to be made with from a KOH paste. However, I saw this video about making scrubs using soap shreds and .

I always have the best intention of starting with small tests... but I'm not a very patient person. After shredding a whooooole bunch of older soaps in the food processor, today I made the sugar scrub base from those shreds, using my large turkey roaster pan. I started with:

~4200g soap shreds
~50% of shred weight in distilled water
~50% of shred weight in glycerin
~no stearic acid at first, since I was using high-stearic soap shreds.

I did add another 10% each of glycerin and water. The melted mixture wasn't homogenizing and was quite foamy. So, in went 910g of stearic acid (~10% of the total batch weight). Immediately the mix stopped foaming, and it quickly started coming together.

My instinct was to melt the stearic acid in the microwave before adding it to the mix, but I ended up just stirring it in. If I had to do over again, pre-melting the stearic would have been the way to go. It took SO LONG for those little white bits to melt. In fact, there were still unmelted stearic bits in the first cup of the mixture that came out to cool for a texture check. But it whipped up like a dream! The texture is nice on it's own, but it's a bit too stiff for a sugar scrub. I'll be experimenting with adding more water, glycerin, and oil to get it just right.

Best of all, although the base is an unappealing dark brown (because, brown soap shreds), it is a pale pinkish-beige when whipped. Brown is fine for coffee scrubs, or a men's shave croap, but it's nice to know that it whips up light enough to make more girly colors, too. Here are a pic of the incredible amount of whipped soap base that is now cooling, and a pic of a whipped sugar scrub made with that base. You can see the color difference!

It foams up very well, is non-drying, and is ready to be colored, scented, bottled, labeled, and donated to our church's Christmas Boutique. Yippee!

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Looks like a fun project. How much (what percentage) of sugar did you use in your recipe?

 

[AliOop]

Hi @Liesel Atwood and @Christa10, I started with the recipe provided in this YT video. She has a whole playlist about making sugar scrubs, including one about making it from soap shreds, and another about how to fix texture issues. Here is a summary of her basic recipe for sugar scrubs from soap shreds:

Start with X grams (or oz) of shreds.
Add distilled water at 50-100% of the shred weight (more water for drier/older shreds, less for softer/newer shreds)
Add glycerin at 50-100% of the shred weight

Add up the total batch weight.
Add stearic acid at 10-30% of the total batch weight.
Optional: add another oil at 10% of total batch weight.
Melt everything together.
Let it cool completely - don't skip this step!
Begin whipping it until becomes fluffy.
Add 50-100% batch weight in sugar.
Whip in thoroughly.

Because everyone's soap shreds will be composed of different soaps made with different oils, and people have different preferences for the final texture, some experimentation is required.

 

[dmcgee5034]

@AliOop - any concerns that all the shreds are different scents? I know you had that ginormous batch of brown that I assume were all the same scent? My shred pile is a hodgepodge. Do you think that would impact the final product?
Also, what do you think is a good weight of shreds for a test batch? Thinking about this got me inspired to bevel all my soaps this morning! TIA

 

[Liesel Atwood]

AliOop...thank you SO much for the information. It is extremely helpful. Have an awesome day

 

[Marsi]

Hi AliOop, why is it necessary to cool the mix completely before whipping?

 

[soapmaker]

I have never heard of a croap. ???

 

[Kcryss]

I have been looking for a way to make whipped soap base to use as soap frosting. I think this must be IT!! Thank you for sharing! I can't wait to try it out!

Off to melt shreds!

 

[AliOop]

@dmcgee5034 A saner person probably would have started with 500g of shreds, not 4200g. In the video I seem to recall she used about 750g shreds, but you might double-check me on that. Mine were actually quite a combination of scents. After tossing them all together, I had a sudden panicked thought that maybe the scents wouldn't combine well. Oops, too late! Fortunately, the heat during long melting process and the dilution with water, shreds, and stearic made the final scent pretty mild. I don't think it will be hard to cover what's left with any scent that I might choose. However, many of the soaps I shredded were ones in which the scent didn't stick, so overall, my shreds weren't highly scented to start with, and YMMV.

@Marsi the reason for cooling the base is the same reason that many pastry recipes start with cold butter: temperature affects texture, structure, viscosity, etc. The video does go into detail about this and emphasizes that the base must be cool to whip up correctly. Apparently the reason for creating the sugar scrub series was that someone posted on FB that the recipe was a flop and wouldn't whip up well at all. The creator responded saying that it was obvious from the pictures posted that she didn't let the mixture cool, or she whipped it so long that it became warm and deflated. In the end, she made a whole series on whipped sugar scrubs to show the different ways to make them, but they all require starting with a cool base so that the end product remains "whipped" and doesn't deflate.

@soapmaker a "croap" is a cream soap that lands somewhere between hard soap and a liquid soap. I've seen it most often in reference to shave soap, or shave croap. It uses a higher amount of KOH instead of NaOH, and less dilution water than a liquid soap. They can be kind of fun to make. If you take a look at the whole sugar scrub playlist by that YT creator, Soap & Clay, the last video shows how to make a shave croap.

@Kcryss I'm guessing if you want a frosting consistency, you would start at the lower end of water and glycerin, and use more stearic acid. Still, I don't know if this would ever truly harden; did you want something that stays soft? I am excited to see what you make!