Newbie to the world of CP soap making - Help needed :)

[CottageSoaps]

Hi guys.

I am new to this whole wonderful world of soap making. I wanted to try it for a while after watching so many videos of people making such lovely designs and thought I would give it a go as a creative outlet.
I made my first ever batch with melt and pour soup base, lemon (I think fragrance oil, not sure, cant remember) and added lemon peel on top for decoration. I gave a bar each to my 4 nehighbours to try it and one of them loved it so much they want to sell my soap in their shop! Amazing!
However this means I need to learn fast! instead of a slow relaxed learning pahse I now have to speed up a bit.

So, I have made a bacth of CP lemon and a CP citrus soap. The Lemon batch I used dehydrated lemon slices for decoration on top and added in lemon essential oil at trace. While I think they look alright they don't smell that lemony, not as much as the melt and pour version I did. I was wondering if this will improve with curing time?? I made them 6 days ago and they have a little soap ash on them which im not worried about but they also smell kinda odd. (pic below)


The citrus CP batch, I added into the batter more of the lemon essentail oil hoping for the smell to be stronger as well as citrus powder made from the dehydrated lemons, limes and orange slices blitzed up into a powder. I added this to the batter and sprinkled it on top, again hoping to add to the nice smell. (pic below, im really not happy with these ones at all)


Has anyone else had their soap smelling odd at first? I'm hoping the odd smell of both batches will fade with curing time and the lemon essential oil with shine through again?? Any thoughts?

 

[lsg]

Welcome to the forum. I would encourage you to try making M&P lemon slices and using them as embeds. That way they would melt at the same rate as the bar and would not be abrasive. I would also encourage you to experiment on various recipes and techniques for at least 6 months before selling. If you are selling to the public, you should consider purchasing insurance.

 

[Noreen Moore]

I think the CP is very pretty! Now if you are new to CP it is important to know citrus essential oils fade. The scent will fade.
And yes some soaps scents will change after a 4 to 6 week cure.
Since I fell head over heels for this craft I learned of essential oils that are multiple times stronger. Like Lemon x 5 etc. will last longer.
Also adding your oil to a clay like Kaolin and adding to the fats helps hold the scent.
Happy soaping!

 

[cmzaha]

To put it really bluntly I do not find those soaps pretty at all. I am talking about the middle pictures of soap. The bottom ones look fine. Sorry, I am not trying to be mean but I do not sugar coat either and say something is pretty when it is not and can be dangerous. If those soap could have not caused a problem for someone using them I would not have said anything, and they can be made very pretty, using m&p embeds. Do as lsg suggested. Step back take a few months to learn what you are doing and make lemon/citrus slices out of the melt & pour using them as embeds. The dried peel can cause severe lacerations when used as slices on soap and dried powders are quite scratchy. The other problems is those dried fruit slices may or may not turn brown or black over time in cp soap, as most botanicals do.

You need to tell your neighbor you are not quite ready to sell cp soap but can supply pretty melt and pour soaps. Also nixing the fruit slices in the melt and pour if they are for sale. Use embeds in the melt and pour. Absolutely gorgeous m&p soaps can be made. While they are selling the melt and pour soaps you can be working on cp soaps to introduce next year.

 

[shunt2011]

Hello and welcome to the forum! I have to second cmzaha. I would not sell those soaps to my customers. You don't say how long you've been making soap so will assume it's not been long at all. You have no idea how your soap will be in 6 months little lone a year. Will they last, will they go rancid? How do you know it's even a good soap. Take your time. Do you really want to sell something that may not be good and lose any customers you may get in the beginning. People will say things so as not to hurt your feelings. If you're going to sell them anyway, make sure you have good insurance.

 

[CottageSoaps]

Hi All,

You all make good points, I think I will stick with the melt and pour for now to sell, as thats the version my neighbour likes anyway. But are melt and pour bases a natural product?

 

[shunt2011]

Hi All,

You all make good points, I think I will stick with the melt and pour for now to sell, as thats the version my neighbour likes anyway. But are melt and pour bases a natural product?

Depends on your definition of natural. Arsenic is natural too, doesn't make it good for you. I don't consider my soap natural, I use lye and fragrance oils in them. There are those who call their soap natural and it's got micas, FO etc......

 

[LilyJo]

Please don't forget you CANNOT sell any soap in the UK without getting a cosmetic safety assessment first. It's about £200 and you must have one in place before you even attempt to sell to the public.

You also product liability insurance (just in case).

Please, no matter how nice people think your soap get the legal stuff sorted first.

 

[JuliaNegusuk]

To back up LilyJo, you have to get your safety assessment sorted and this applies to melt and pour as much as CP. You also need to know about restrictions on essential oils and fragrances before you start this process though the assessors can help you. I was working to a deadline when I started and did manage to get recipes I was happy with certified after about 6 months of experiments (plus a further couple of months getting it all certified), set up on the cosmetic portal, labelled etc, etc. However I had been making soap for myself and friends for about 4 years so I was hardly a complete novice when I started the selling process. The certification approves individual fixed recipes. If you change a recipe you have to get it formally recertified for a fee if minor or certify from scratch if a major change. Looking back I would probably do my recipes differently, though not enough for me to bother to get recertified. But I suggest you really need to know in advance that you are happy with your recipes before you start certification. And don't think that because we are leaving the EU the rules don't apply. In the short term many EU rules will continue to be applied within the UK because they can't rewrite the EU rules overnight and probably won't want to. I also think the government has something else on it's kind right now!

Good luck - you will need it!

 

[JoeyJ]

Hope you are not put off at all, I was in exactly your position 12 months ago. I was so overwhelmed by the huge amount of things I needed to do, and just wanted to get selling! Now, I all these months behind me I can understand and (even begin to appreciate!) all the the cautions given by the experienced forum members.

Heres my advice, "this stuffs addictive!"

P.S. my odd smelling melt and pour turned out to be overheated/burnt...a smell which never goes away!

 

[TheGecko]

Melt & Pour is 'soap'...it's just a different kind of soap than Cold/Hot Process Soap. As for "natural", it depends upon your definition.

I would not plan on selling soap for at least six months, if not a year; there is just so much to learn. Speaking for myself, I researched soap making for a good four to six months BEFORE I started making soap. After I made my first sale at a craft fair six months after I started making soap, I stopped selling because I realized that I still had much to learn. That was better than six months ago and I have only recently gotten to the point where I feel that I am ready to start selling soap again.

Unlike the United States where the rules and regulations for selling soap, unless you are making cosmetic or medical claims, are almost non-existent, the United Kingdom has much more stringent rules and regulations (from soapmakingmagazine.co.uk):

What you need to do to sell your products legally?

• Formulate your products and trial them – your friends and family come in handy
• Obtain a Cosmetic Product Safety Report (CPSR) – the Soap Kitchen has more information on Safety Assessments and what you need to do here
• Establish a Good Manufacturing Practice – this ensures your products are always safe and manufactured in a professional and hygienic manner
• Keep a Product Information File (PIF) – this is record of your product and latest batch produced should it be requested by the authorities or public
• Give each batch of product you produce a unique batch code – this means keeping full record in a manufacturing log of everything you make and the ingredients used
• Label your products correctly – that way everyone know what you are putting into your products and can contact you if required
• Notify the Cosmetic Products Notification Portal (CPNP) – this is a database for the purposes of market surveillance, analysis, evaluation and consumer information.
• Get the right insurance
• Notify the HMRC, Trading standards and any other authority that your are manufacturing products

As a potential customer, I would not buy any of the soaps pictured because 1) those dehydrated lemon slices are going to be really hard on the skin, a 2) I don't want to deal with trash while I'm showering. I thought I few whole coffee beans embedded in the top of my Chocolate Espresso Soap would be really cute and it was...until I went to shower with the soap and now I have whole coffee beans to content with. It's still a cute idea, only now my coffee beans will be made out of soap. My recommendation is to use either lemon slices made from Cold Process Soap or Melt & Pour Soap or to use finely grated lemon peel...mold exfoliation and it will easily go down the drain with little mess.

And back to 'learning', your statement of "I added into the batter more of the lemon essentail oil hoping for the smell to be stronger" is proof that you shouldn't be selling soap yet. Whether you are using an Essential Oil or Fragrance Oil, you NEED to know what the maximum usage level is so you aren't selling your customers by selling a dangerous product that doesn't burn them or cause other skin issues or irritations, and can even cause death. NOT trying to scare you...okay, I am a bit...but NOT doing the research, especially since it is so readily available, is sheer negligence and not worth losing everything you own or could own in a personal injury lawsuit.

Let your shop-owing neighbor know that you appreciate their support, but that it will be another six months before you can safely and legally sell your soaps.

 

[LilyJo]

Just occured to me, if you do consider lemon slice embeds, please check the Food Imitations regs as there are some strict rules on products that look like food.