Oh so pretty! And clever to use a spoon swirl. I’ll have to remember this for my next accelerated soap!
That is very pretty! TBH, I would be avoid even brief contact of fresh soap with an aluminum pan.
Wow, nice work, and welcome to the
I can attest to this! Having been diagnosed with both psoriasis and eczema and being prone to bouts of allergic dermatitis, low cleasing value with high conditioning is much better on my skin. I was so confused when all the recipes were saying that coconut oil soaps are great and gentle for every homemade product from baby soaps to body scrubs and oil blends, because it literally strips your skin. For me, olive oil blends and/or shea butter recipes have been the best. One of my recent recipes used oatmilk and I can't wait to try that one because the batter was so smooth and rich and luxuriously creamy! The best part of making your own is being able to create the perfect bars for you and your family. And since everyone has different needs, you can still tweak recipes to suit different peopleWow, nice work, and welcome to theaddiction relaxing hobby.
May I make a few suggestions? Save the expensive oils (fractionated CO, jojoba, argan) for leave-on products. Soap is not on the skin very long before it's washed down the drain.
FWIW, I have very sensitive skin, and my husband has psoriasis and eczema. What's best for both of us, as well as many others with sensitive skin, is to keep the cleansing oils quite low, usually less than 20%. That includes coconut oil, babassu oil, and palm kernel oil. When you do use coconut oil, definitely melt it first, unless you are using the heat transfer method. But don't use fractionated CO - it doesn't make nice soap, and needlessly increases the cost.
A lot of people don't realize that the "cleansing" number in the soap calcs really refers to "stripping all the oils off your skin." For sensitive skin, you want that cleansing number really low, even below the minimum suggested by the calc. Soap with a cleansing value of 0 will still get you clean. If you are open to using animal fats, lard and tallow make wonderful, gentle soap that is much easier on skin than coconut oil. Maybe try something like this:
45% lard, tallow, or blend of the two
20% soft oil of choice
20% CO, PKO, or blend
10% butter (cocoa, shea)
5% castor
With all those low-cleansing, high conditioning oils/fats/butters, you will have a very gentle soap with a creamy lather. If you want bigger bubbles, you can achieve that by dissolving some sugar in your water before you add the lye. It doesn't change the numbers in the soap calc, but it will definitely give you more bubbles.
Good luck, and I look forward to seeing what you make next!
Oh, I'm sorry I forgot to mention I used a bit of pink sea salt in Batch #1 and sugar in Batch #2. I always melt my solids. SoapMakingFriend calc is fabulous! I fudge around with the numbers until I like the graph balances. Won't use lard (daughter is vegan, so we will be only making vegan soaps...all good!). Really appreciate the input about the oils and that I don't have to grease silicone molds - thank you so much!Wow, nice work, and welcome to theaddiction relaxing hobby.
May I make a few suggestions? Save the expensive oils (fractionated CO, jojoba, argan) for leave-on products. Soap is not on the skin very long before it's washed down the drain.
FWIW, I have very sensitive skin, and my husband has psoriasis and eczema. What's best for both of us, as well as many others with sensitive skin, is to keep the cleansing oils quite low, usually less than 20%. That includes coconut oil, babassu oil, and palm kernel oil. While they may be nice in raw form, when they are saponified, they become very drying and potentially irritating, especially for psoriasis. When you do use coconut oil, definitely melt it first, unless you are using the heat transfer method. But don't use fractionated CO - it doesn't make nice soap, and needlessly increases the cost.
A lot of people don't realize that the "cleansing" number in the soap calcs really refers to "stripping all the oils off your skin." For sensitive skin, you want that cleansing number really low, even below the minimum suggested by the calc. Soap with a cleansing value of 0 will still get you clean. If you are open to using animal fats, lard and tallow make wonderful, gentle soap that is much easier on skin than coconut oil. Maybe try something like this:
45% lard, tallow, or blend of the two
20% soft oil of choice
20% CO, PKO, or blend
10% butter (cocoa, shea)
5% castor
With all those low-cleansing, high conditioning oils/fats/butters, you will have a very gentle soap with a creamy lather, even with a low superfat of 2-3%. If you want bigger bubbles, you can achieve that by dissolving some sugar in your water before you add the lye. It doesn't change the numbers in the soap calc, but it will definitely give you more bubbles.
Good luck, and I look forward to seeing what you make next!
EDIT: you don't need to grease silicone molds, or molds lined with freezer paper.
Yes, oat milk is a great suggestion for us, thank you! I love coconut oil so I'm sad it strips skin of oils when saponified. Drat. I use Dr. Bronner's and it has such a lovely coconut fragrance. Wonderful in body butters and sugar scrubs! When I did Batch #2 with shea butter and banana fragrance all I smell is the shea. Used 3% fragrance oil to the batch. I wrote Nature's Note and they suggested upping to 6% next time. It does smell pretty - just more like shea than banana.I can attest to this! Having been diagnosed with both psoriasis and eczema and being prone to bouts of allergic dermatitis, low cleasing value with high conditioning is much better on my skin. I was so confused when all the recipes were saying that coconut oil soaps are great and gentle for every homemade product from baby soaps to body scrubs and oil blends, because it literally straps your skin. For me, olive oil blends and/or shea butter recipes have been the best. One of my recent recipes used oatmilk and I can't wait to try that one because the batter was so smooth and rich and luxuriously creamy! The best part of making your own is being able to create the perfect bars for you and your family. And since everyone has different needs, you can still tweak recipes to suit different people
Sorry, I must have misunderstood what you said in your previous post, which was:
I’m so sorry for not being clear. I meant I didn’t melt the coconut oil when I used it to grease my molds. So if you look at my bow ties, they aren’t smooth. There were chunks or lumps of coconut oil in the molds and we just sort of pushed the soap batter in and hoped for the best. It’s all experimental and fun. So as long as the soap is usable I don’t mind if it’s not pretty yet. Next time!Sorry, I must have misunderstood what you said in your previous post, which was:
I think next time what I will do differently is 1) melt the coconut oil or use fractionated;
I read that to mean you hadn’t melted your CO, which had me scratching my head! But now I am curious as to what you did mean?
Oh gotcha, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying, and I’m very glad to hear you weren’t trying to blend unmelted CO into your soap batter!
Hi @Chaiat5 - I used 100% CO soaps for years, with 20% SF. I didn’t think they were drying until I tried other handcrafted soaps. I also didn’t realize how much soap scum buildup all that SF created on my sinks and pipes.
Hi @Chaiat5 - I used 100% CO soaps for years, with 20% SF. I didn’t think they were drying until I tried other handcrafted soaps. I also didn’t realize how much soap scum buildup all that SF created on my sinks and pipes.
We are fairly crunchy, so my husband is very careful with his diet and other natural treatments. Unfortunately, years of exposure to toxic chemicals have greatly damaged his immune system. So while a careful diet keeps his psoriasis to a minimum, it isn’t cured by any means.
Everyone is different in how they respond to soaps. My dear friend’s favorite for her sensitive skin is 80% OO, 20% CO. My husband’s go-to is high lard, low CO with neem oil and colloidal oats. Others with severe skin issues have to stick with 100% lard - they can’t do any CO or any OO.
It usually takes some experimentation to find the right one. I’d start with 100% lard if she is open to animal products. If not, 100% OO is probably the next best choice.
Tallow is a little more cleansing than lard, but still a great choice for sensitive skin. It can be slow to work up lather, so try dissolving some sugar in your water, or use dual lye if you are up for that.
My fault for not being clear! Being new to the forum, I have to learn how to post in such a way that the reader can understand what I'm saying.Oh gotcha, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying, and I’m very glad to hear you weren’t trying to blend unmelted CO into your soap batter!
I find the olive oil recipes to be good, but they do require a longer mold time before you can turn them out (a few days to a week) and a longer cure time (minimum of 6 months is good, up to a year is best). So maybe buy a bar first to see if you like it before investing time & ingredients. I really like Aleppo soap, which is olive and laurel berry oil and I use goat's milk in place of the water
But the long wait for curing had me experimenting with other recipes to use in the meantime so for those recipes I try to keep my olive oil at about 40-50% of a recipe and use different combinations of shea butter, cocoa butter, kokum butter, sweet almond oil, avocado oil, jojoba oil, Castor Oil. These different oils I usually have on hand to make oil blends for topical use, to which I add ostrich oil. Ostrich oil has been great at relieving the dryness and itchiness but it's too expensive to be adding to soap. I would also like to add that I work recipes in percentages so my typical recipe might be:
For us, similar. He was exposed to chemicals. His psoriasis is part-and-parcel due to Parkinson's. We work with a naturopath and have a strict diet. Psoriasis is systemic, so topicals can only help, but can't cure. Can be managed with careful diet, stress relief, exercise, sleep. Gets better in the summer, worse in the winter. My daughter and I have mild eczema, but it's much easier to manage than psoriasis. He can't even take the meds! They make him sick. So we do our best with what we have.Hi @Chaiat5 - I used 100% CO soaps for years, with 20% SF. I didn’t think they were drying until I tried other handcrafted soaps. I also didn’t realize how much soap scum buildup all that SF created on my sinks and pipes.
We are fairly crunchy, so my husband is very careful with his diet and other natural treatments. Unfortunately, years of exposure to toxic chemicals have greatly damaged his immune system. So while a careful diet keeps his psoriasis to a minimum, it isn’t cured by any means.
Everyone is different in how they respond to soaps. My dear friend’s favorite for her sensitive skin is 80% OO, 20% CO. My husband’s go-to is high lard, low CO with neem oil and colloidal oats. Others with severe skin issues have to stick with 100% lard - they can’t do any CO or any OO.
It usually takes some experimentation to find the right one. I’d start with 100% lard if she is open to animal products. If not, 100% OO is probably the next best choice.
Thank you, this is super helpful!I find the olive oil recipes to be good, but they do require a longer mold time before you can turn them out (a few days to a week) and a longer cure time (minimum of 6 months is good, up to a year is best). So maybe buy a bar first to see if you like it before investing time & ingredients. I really like Aleppo soap, which is olive and laurel berry oil and I use goat's milk in place of the water
80% olive oil/20% something else (laurel berry for my Aleppo variety), or for my other recipes: 40%-50% olive oil then my remaining percentages depend on which oils I use. I just use soapcalc to play with my percentages and it shows what your lye solution should be for your batch size. Honestly, I'm still trying to find my perfect bar plus I have come to understand that the extremely hard water where I live aggravates my symptoms so it's a challenge for sure! I can't wait to try my oatmilk soap ~ that may be the lucky one! For the oatmilk soap recipe I actually went back to the holy grail basic soap recipe of olive/coconut/palm kernel/castor so if that works out well I'll post the recipe.
Also, I can use coconut in my soap recipes as long as I have plenty of conditioning ingredients also like shea butter or olive oil, I just have to keep it at a lower percentage. I haven't tried just olive oil and coconut oil yet though, but possibly an 80% Olive/20% Coconut recipe would be good which is what Marseille soap is, I think. It really is trial and error, which is why I like to work with percentages so I can scale a recipe up or down and I really like to work with 1 pound batches due to not having much space for drying and curing. I think I also want to try
50% Olive/25% shea/25%coconut
So many possibilities! Oh, and I should add that recipes that are high in olive oil won't lather much until after they fully cure, but that doesn't bother me because I'm not addicted to bubbles, I just need a gentle soap, and after saponification the end result is soap. If you need bubbles to feel like your soap is "working", you will need to use ingredients and additives that make bubbles, like castor oil or something. Which bring us back to how great it is to make your own soap!
I apologize for rambling but it is such an awesome and exhilarating experience and there's so much information to share! I wish you all the best as you work towards finding your perfect recipe!
Wow, so much in common! DH also has PD, plus four autoimmune disorders (that we know of so far, lol). Diet, exercise, sleep, stress management - all of it helps. Recently he has had fantastic results from TruDose, a targeted PRP therapy. Regular PRP did nothing, but TruDose has been amazing.
