Reading Ingredients

[BlueIce]

Hello friends,
I've been lurking on here for a few weeks. I'm hoping to make my first soap soon but I'd like some help in reading some ingredients from one of my favorite makers. I'm not trying to dupe these soaps per se but I am trying to figure out what makes them work for me. As I've gotten older, I have more sensitive skin on my back. This is the only soap that doesn't seem to make me break or helps keeps things at bay.

This seller has many different varieties of scents to choose from. I've enjoyed most of them thus far.

Are you able to tell what process they used based on ingredients?

It seems to me that the bath bar has lots of additives. It seems to hold up fairly well but my first bar from them melted in a week or so. I now have my new bars in a SoapStud that seems to extend the life of the soap. My uneducated guess is that everything up to Kokum Butter is the saponified soap with the superfat. The ingredients below that are the additives.

The shampoo bar I'm not sure about at all. I tried looking up shampoo bars that use Cider Vinegar in the recipe but I couldn't find anything similar to this list of ingredients. Is it possible this is a melt and pour base with extras added?

I'm totally new to all of this and have been trying to pick up as much as I can.


Shampoo Bar Ingredients:
Glycerin
Purified Water
Propylene Glycol
Polyquaternium 7
Aloe Vera Leaf Juice Powder
Cider Vinegar
Yucca Root
Sodium Stearate
Sodium Laurate
Essential Oil/ Fragrance

Bath Bar Ingredients:
Glucitol
Coconut Oil
Propylene Glycol
Stearic Acid
Water
Sodium Hydroxide
Argan Oil
Kokum Butter
Silk Amino Acids
Bamboo Extract
Sunflower Extract
Aloe Leaf Extract
Carrageenan Extract
Marshmallow Root Extract

 

[TheGecko]

Cannot help you with the Shampoo, but I dont get all the ingredients in the “bath bar”. Soap is fats + Lye/water; I see coconut oil, argan oil and kokum butter. Argan Oil is pretty spendy, so I am guessing the soap is high in Coconut Oil...which can be very drying hence the “gluitol” and “propylene glycol” (I dont get the use of steric acid) and I dont know what “silk amino acids” are. Then you have a bunch of “extracts”...helps to counter-act the drying of the coconut oil.

Wish I could help more.

 

[KiwiMoose]

They both sound like combination or hybrid bars - not fully lye based soap, nor fully synthetic ingredients. If you have not yet tried making lye-based soap, I would give that a go first, and once confident you can tweak it to include other additives you may like. I wouldn't bother getting too fancy schmancy straight off the bat because if your recipe is no good you don't want to be wasting expensive additives. Save them for when you know what you are doing.
Try a fairly basic recipe along the lines of:
Coconut oil (25% max generally) for lotsa bubbles
Either palm/crisco/lard/tallow/soy wax/butters for hardness and longevity ( between 20 - 30% depending on what you're using, often a combination of two of these)
High Oleic soft oils such as Olive, Sweet Almond, Rice Bran, etc. (usually a combination of two of these - Olive and a preferred other 15 - 20% each)
Castor Oil ( for creamy long-lasting lather 5%)
Use a soap/lye calculator such as: soap making friend or soap calc and set the LYE CONCENTRATION to 33% before adding all your oils to the calculator. Make a small batch of about 500g oils maximum in case you don't like it.
Watch a you tube video on how to make soap - and whatever you do don't stick blend as much as they do in the you tube video
May the force be with you.

Roanoke Virginia huh? My oldest and dearest friend is from Roanoke. He lives in Lexington, KY now.

 

[BlueIce]

They both sound like combination or hybrid bars - not fully lye based soap, nor fully synthetic ingredients. If you have not yet tried making lye-based soap, I would give that a go first, and once confident you can tweak it to include other additives you may like. I wouldn't bother getting too fancy schmancy straight off the bat because if your recipe is no good you don't want to be wasting expensive additives. Save them for when you know what you are doing.
Try a fairly basic recipe along the lines of:
Coconut oil (25% max generally) for lotsa bubbles
Either palm/crisco/lard/tallow/soy wax/butters for hardness and longevity ( between 20 - 30% depending on what you're using, often a combination of two of these)
High Oleic soft oils such as Olive, Sweet Almond, Rice Bran, etc. (usually a combination of two of these - Olive and a preferred other 15 - 20% each)
Castor Oil ( for creamy long-lasting lather 5%)
Use a soap/lye calculator such as: soap making friend or soap calc and set the LYE CONCENTRATION to 33% before adding all your oils to the calculator. Make a small batch of about 500g oils maximum in case you don't like it.
Watch a you tube video on how to make soap - and whatever you do don't stick blend as much as they do in the you tube video
May the force be with you.

Roanoke Virginia huh? My oldest and dearest friend is from Roanoke. He lives in Lexington, KY now.

Thanks, Kiwimoose. I definitely plan to start simple and work my way up. I appreciate the recipe.
I've been trying to compare these ingredients to other soap recipes and I can't seem to find anything like it. So I was curious about them. I guess I look at these soaps as a main goal to kind of set the path. I think I'm also going to give Songwind's shaving soap a go.

Nice. Roanoke is a fairly small town. I live here but I work in Lexington, VA.

 

[amd]

My guess is that both of these are melt and pour type soaps, which may be also why the first bar melted in a week or so.
Looking at a supplier base, it seems to have pretty similar ingredients, and then I assume that the maker adds the extras (extracts, oils, etc.) unless purchased from a supplier that way.
https://www.crafters-choice.com/products/basic-white-soap-base-10-pounds.aspxInternational Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients (INCI):
Sorbitol, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Stearate, Sodium Laurate, Glycerin, Titanium Dioxide.

Common Name Ingredient Listing (FDA Approved):
Sorbitol, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Stearic Acid, Lauric Acid, Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Glycerin, Titanium Dioxide.

This is just one supplier, there are many, so each will have slightly different ingredients.

 

[Susie]

My guess is that both of these are melt and pour type soaps, which may be also why the first bar melted in a week or so.
Looking at a supplier base, it seems to have pretty similar ingredients, and then I assume that the maker adds the extras (extracts, oils, etc.) unless purchased from a supplier that way.
https://www.crafters-choice.com/products/basic-white-soap-base-10-pounds.aspxInternational Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients (INCI):
Sorbitol, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Stearate, Sodium Laurate, Glycerin, Titanium Dioxide.

Common Name Ingredient Listing (FDA Approved):
Sorbitol, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Stearic Acid, Lauric Acid, Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Glycerin, Titanium Dioxide.

This is just one supplier, there are many, so each will have slightly different ingredients.

Yep, the combo of Glycerine and Propylene Glycol on the first two ingredients rang my MP bell also.

 

[BlueIce]

This is good information. I had Google searched the ingredients and I also searched for recipes. The two didn't seem to go together. It makes sense that the bars would be MP now based on the link and the INCI/FDA ingredient listings.

I've only gone through one the shampoo bars and it lasts three months for me. I usually have short hair and it got somewhat long during the lockdown. I was able to get a haircut about a week ago. I guess some of the ingredients are synthetic since my hair didn't go through any weird phase with them. Ultimately, I want to understand the ingredients so I know what is working for me. It will also help me determine if a bar of soap will work for me from other sellers. Most soaps from the grocery store except for Kirk's castile soap, seem to make me break out.

I like both the shampoo and the soap bars from this seller/maker. I will admit that I've contacted this seller and they didn't seem to enthused when I was asking about some products. I wasn't even asking about contents or ingredients, I was asking about things included in one of their packages/sets. So maybe I'm kind just seeing if I could make my own. I don't know if I'll save money or even out. It also seems like a fun adventure.

My wife bought a shampoo bar from an Etsy seller. The ingredients list is coconut, palm, castor, jojoba oils, cocoa, and shea butters, + essential oils. Does this read more like a body soap bar?

Thanks for all the help.

 

[TheGecko]

My wife bought a shampoo bar from an Etsy seller. The ingredients list is coconut, palm, castor, jojoba oils, cocoa, and shea butters, + essential oils. Does this read more like a body soap bar?

Yes. With those ingredients, they would leave a lot of oils on the hair and weight it down.

 

[Susie]

My wife bought a shampoo bar from an Etsy seller. The ingredients list is coconut, palm, castor, jojoba oils, cocoa, and shea butters, + essential oils. Does this read more like a body soap bar?

Thanks for all the help.

That reads like a real soap. Any soap with any ingredients can theoretically be used for shampoo or body. If you want to chance using it on your hair. I, personally, would never go back to soap as shampoo if I had any choice. I lost a lot of hair when my hairdresser cut out the damage.

 

[BlueIce]

So after a little digging, I think the bar soap mentioned in my post is an M&P Argan oil soap from Crafter's Choice -- only scent and colorants added. The shampoo bar may be an M&P shampoo bar from Rustic Escentuals with Yucca Root powder and ACV powder added. Plus, scent and any coloring.

Thanks to those that have chimed in to help me along the way.

This reminds of the time that I found out that Dollar Shave Club cartridges were produced by Dorco. At the time, you could still buy from Dorco USA's site. With coupons, you could spend around $30 to get about 3.5 years worth of cartridge blades. Last summer, Dorco shut down its website and moved sales to Amazon. The prices went up and they stopped making the 2-blade cartridge I was using. So I switched to traditional wet shaving when I ran out of cartridges. No complaints though. It is one discovery after another.