Going cold...

When I first started making soap I used the cold process method. After mixing the oils and lye solution you pour the soap into a mold of some sort and wait for four or more weeks before you can use the soap. Saponification doesn't usually take quite that long but you want to be sure there is no live lye in your soap and you want to give the bars a chance to harden.

With hot process soap you basically cook the soap batter either by heating it in a crockpot until it volcanoes and goes through applesauce, mashed potato and Vaseline stages, or by soaping at high temperatures (in the 200F area) in a stainless steel pot/plastic container, all of the stages happen pretty quick when soaping that hot. It's pretty fun to watch this all take place within a half hour.

There are a few advantages to the hot process method. First, it's fast, once the cook is over, saponification has taken place and you can use the soap immediately. Usually you give it a few weeks to evaporate some of the moisture and give the bar a chance to harden. Another advantage is you're able to add the superfats to the soap after saponification so you can add the really good fats then, giving you the chance to control which awesome oils aren't eaten up by the lye. It's good practice to use the more pricey oils at this point. It can also help to add essential oils after the cook so they're not superheating and loosing their oomph.

There are a couple of disadvantages to the hot process method as well...at least for me. One is, the soap batter is pretty thick and while it's possible for some soapers to get some amazing swirls, it's not as easy to get the pretty bars that you get with the cold process method...at least for me. Another disadvantage is that there can be quite a bit of stirring of the hot batter which is like stirring a mix between brownie batter and cookie dough.

Due to the job I have, my hands and wrists already take a beating and stirring a thick batter gets extremely painful. Over the summer I've been working on cold process soaps because it's not as hot as working over very hot soap batters. Making the cold process soaps made me realize how much easier it was on my hands and wrists and I'm thinking I may have to go back to that method.

One concern I have is not having the ability to choose which oils/fats will superfat my soaps. I'm not even sure it will be noticeable. I'm going to give it a try and see if there is any difference in the properties of the soaps. Quality, moisturizing soaps is my number one goal. I'll do what works best to achieve that!

Christmas Soaps

A few months ago I started thinking about various soaps to make for my shop that represent the upcoming Holidays. There are still some bars of the Autumn Pumpkin Soap available for now but I wanted some soap for Christmas as well. Making organic/natural soaps can make that a little bit tricky.

It's been difficult to find a natural colorant that makes soap a Christmas red so I passed on that pretty quick. And many of the scents we associate with Christmas (cinnamon,  nutmeg, clove) can only be used in very minute amounts because they are "hot" oils that can be irritating to skin.

I asked for input on Facebook and received some great suggestions!

I ended up with three different soaps, Gingerbread Soap, Eggnog Soap and Christmas Tree Soap. I used the bare minimum of essential oils but like any new skin care item I really...highly...recommend you use these only on your hands and wrists at first to make sure you have no issues with the essential oils. And as always, check the ingredients lists to make sure you have no allergies to anything in the soap.

Gingerbread Soap

The Gingerbread Soap has some pretty awesome moisturizing oil: avocado, castor, coconut, shea butter, etc. It also has a bit of annatto seed oil and cacao powder for color, maca powder and apricot seeds for a bit of exfoliant, ginger essential oil and a bit of ground nutmeg sprinkled on top (didn't think ginger would show up very well). I love the little orange speckles and it smells so good! The bars are a bit shorter but they are also wider. You can see that it went through a partial gel, there's a darker oval that reaches almost to the edges of the soap.

Eggnog Soap

I love Eggnog, so rich and creamy and...noggy. Pretty amazing oils in this soap, too! I added a tiny bit of turmeric to the bottom to give it a creamy color and left the top plain for a bit of whipped cream. It also has nutmeg sprinkled on top, bentonite clay and nutmeg essential oil. It smells amazing!

Christmas Tree Soap

I love the way this soap smells! It has fir needle and cedarwood essential oils and it smells very Christmas tree-like! Spirulina powder was used to add color for this "tiger stripe" swirl. Still getting the hang of those swirls. 

All of my Christmas soaps will be listed in my shop on December 1st and there is a very limited quantity available!

Sweet Erica's Honey, Oats and Goat Soap

I absolutely love this soap. Milk soaps have pretty amazing qualities and have been used for centuries as a luxurious soap. Goats milk soap has a distinctive scent, its a lovely rustic scent that reminds you there's milk in the soap. It's quite lovely and I don't know if it's my imagination but I smell the oatmeal as well!

Milk soaps contain lactic acid which is a gentle exfoliant, it helps remove dead skin cells (who knew!) and goat's milk (and other milks) contains vitamin A which is helpful in moisturizing and maintaining healthy skin.

I love the orange bars of the Sweet Erica's Honey, Oats and Goat Soap but I wanted them to be more representative of the oatmeal color of the very first oatmeal soap I made. Its such a lovely, creamy color and the oatmeal has been blended to a powder so it's not too scratchy. I love seeing the speckles of oatmeal in the bars.

So I went old school with this batch and used the cold process method (it seems to be a bit nicer to do in the summer). I was very fortunate to have my son, Tyler, here to help I definitely needed the extra pair of hands! 

Mixing lye into milk sometimes takes an extra step, it's not always necessary, it's more of an aesthetics thing. To keep the milk from turning a dark orange when adding the lye you can freeze the milk first. Freezing keeps it from overheating (and possibly scorching) when you start adding the lye. Then you add the lye to the milk ice cubes a tablespoon or so at a time and stir...a lot. The frozen milk starts to melt pretty quick and you just keep slowly adding the lye and stirring...a lot...until all the lye has been added and the milk cubes melted. Then you stir...a lot. 

It's interesting to note that the lye and the fats in the goat's milk are already starting to saponify in tiny amounts during this process and tiny beads of soap start forming. The goal with all of the stirring is to make sure all of the lye has been dissolved. I always pour my lye solution through a strainer and the little tiny beads of forming soap made that a bit more difficult than usual but it eventually happened.

Fresh in the mold...love that color!

The soap smells as good as it looks! 

Oatmeal speckles!

When I mixed the lye/milk solution into the oils the lye solution was at 78 and the oils at 85. Nice cool temps for making milk soap. The soap did gel slightly and heat up to 118, surprisingly cool. But when I cut into them...

I had a slight moment of panic. I thought the soap had the...dun dun duuuunnnnn...dreaded orange spots (DOS, and yes...as silly as it sounds, it's a thing). I've heard of it but I've never had a soap with DOS...that I can remember. I did some searching, the pictures of DOS look nothing like this and the reasons behind DOS don't apply to my soaps. So if it's not dreaded orange spots, what is it?

Okay, so here's the story. When I warmed up the oils, honey and shea butter enough to melt the shea the temps were higher than my lye/goats milk solution. I was hoping to get the soap in the mold so I stuck the pot of warm oils in an ice water bath in the sink to bring the temperatures down. If you remember the name of this soap "Sweet Erica's Honey, Oats and Goat Soap...yup, that's honey. When I placed the pot of oils and honey in the ice water bath the honey solidified from the cold. I noticed it towards the end of the pour but forgot about it until I saw the spots. I think in my head (it's crazy in there sometimes) I thought the soap would superheat (milk soaps often do) and the honey would melt/blend with the soap batter as it heated.

So now you'll get the lovely properties of honey directly on your skin and since it's in soap it washes right off. Win-win, right? Well, we'll see. The soap will be perfectly safe to use and unless something crazy happens before it's finished curing, should just be soap with a few bits of honey here and there. It should be listed in my shop in mid-October.

Moral of the story? Wait until the oils and lye solution are emulsified before adding the honey.

Cory's Arizona Sunshine Soap

At the end of March my cousin, Cory, visited from Oregon. While I'm sure she visits AZ to catch up with family and friends, I think a big part of her visits here is the Arizona sunshine. She loves the sun and the warmth that Arizona has to offer, especially in March. It is a really beautiful time of year here.

Cory and I at Mangos Mexican Café in downtown Mesa, AZ.

While Cory was here she would come pick me up so we could hang out and every single time she had a Dutch Brother's mocha latte for me and an iced tea for herself. I felt very spoiled! We shopped at antique stores, ate out and spent several hours learning how to play the "Ticket to Ride" board game (thanks for your patience, Will!).

It was great visiting with her and I was especially excited because she wanted a soap specially made for her and she agreed to help me with it. I love showing people how to make soap, especially when they show an interest in the process.

We used the cold process method to make Cory's soap because I wanted two shades of orange. I wanted her to do the hanger swirl and also swirl the top. Unfortunately, both shades of orange are so similar you can't see a difference. Soaping seems to be a perpetual learning experience but I will know better for the next batch.

Cory's Arizona Sunshine Soap

The soap will be listed in my shop at the end of April. I've been using a sample and it's safe enough to list now but I want to give it one more week just to be safe.

The soap has a lovely, creamy lather from the oils and butters (castor, coconut, grapeseed, avocado, olive, sweet almond oils, cocoa and mango butters) and it has a lovely citrusy scent from the orange and tangerine essential oils.

I can't wait for Cory to try it, I hope she loves it!

Handmade Soaps

Have you ever taken the time to learn how to do something that interests you, spent hours (days, weeks, months) studying it, preparing for it and then finally getting to make it just to have people point out that you could buy that something at the store? Mmmhmmm, yeah.

Stores carry all kinds of bath products, some are even natural, but I haven’t found any that are as lovely as handmade soap.

Learning about the natural oils and butters that go into handmade soap has been a trip! Some oils create more lather, some create more bubbles, some make a harder bar of soap, some make a softer bar of soap. Some are moisturizing, some drying if you use too much. Some oils are better as cleansers. I find it all very interesting and trying to put the right oils together in the proper amounts to get a bubbly, lathery, cleansing, moisturizing bar of soap is fun for me.

Then there are essential oils. Some are great in handmade soaps, some just disappear quickly. There are a multitude of reasons to use essential oils from their antibacterial properties to their scent. I don’t feel as if every bar of soap needs a scent, they can interfere with perfumes and colognes, and they can also be an issue for people with sensitive skin.

Amanda Bavender Lavender Soap, grapeseed oil infused with alkanet root used as the colorant.

Natural colorants like the alkanet root used in the Amanda Bavender Lavender Soap can be a challenge. Some behave just like you hope, they add the color you want to the soap you’re making and they look lovely. Other’s lose their color or completely change into a color you’re not expecting. As much as I want my soap to be beautiful, a bar’s moisturizing properties are my ultimate goal. Pretty soaps aren’t useful if they aren’t good for your skin. And there are tons of pretty soaps out there that are moisturizing as well. For the soaps I make, and use, I want to stick to natural colorants.

There are also other ingredients to consider such as activated charcoal, clays and exfoliants. I try to fit the ingredients to the purpose of the soap.

All of these things together are what makes soap making so interesting to me. They are the reasons I like making soap. I also like making soap for health reasons. Our skin is our largest organ and I think it’s just as important to be watchful of what we put on our bodies as what we put in our bodies. I try to use as many non-GMO and/or organic ingredients as possible.

Hopefully, as I learn more about the many aspects of soap making, I can share them here. Other times I may just write about random things, like the weather. Either way, welcome to my blog.