Hey was sketching a design out and was wondering what would this be called? Anyone know of any videos that would show how to do this? I’m thinking it’s similar to drop swirl? But maybe only drop on one side and “tuck” it in?

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to CP soap making and I'm wondering if anyone uses or has used the Brambleberry quick mixes for their soap. I've been looking at the Lots of Lather. I'm just trying to see if it may be better to use those or just mix my own butters/oils etc. As I gain more experience, I'd like my bars to have beautiful lather with a luxurious feel. Thanks

Has anyone worked with the coconut oil from brambleberry? I got a 1lb tub and it came in this bag. It was hot when arrived so was melted but now it’s back to solid and looks like it’ll be kinda a pain to squeeze out 😬 Anyone work with this before? Was thinking maybe putting it in hot water to melt it down then squeeze it out. Or something.

Hey. Does anyone know if there’s an app where you can kinda visually put together a soap? Not really talking soap calculator but more the aesthetics. Like toggle through different colors and swirls, etc. could be a cool idea if it’s not there yet.

Hi there, what methods have you used to prevent soda ash from forming?

I tend to soap at around 115 - 120*F. I use distilled water. I spritz 91% alcohol immediately after pouring and several times afterwards. I keep the mold covered for 24 hours during gel phase. My soaps are about 5% superfat, and my water to lye ratio is just over 2:1.

Despite all this, I am still getting soda ash. I know it's harmless but it's not very aesthetic.

I'm pretty sure we have a steamer around here someplace. I may try that next.

The recipe I’m currently using is 32 ounces of tallow 4.2 ounces of lye 12.16 ounces of water

This is an 8% super fat soap, and makes a very hard and long lasting bar, the recipe fits perfectly into my mold.

I’ve made this recipe a few times, adding small amount of essential oils and clay, no more than a few tablespoons, and it still comes out perfect. no need to recalculate for lye.

I got this recipe from a soap maker. however, when I type this exact recipe into a lye calculator, It tells me that I only need to use around 9 ounces of water. I’m wondering why the recipe is different than the lye calculator?

I’ve thought about adding castor oil, or lard to my soap recipe , but I’m not sure how much to add, and when I go to Calculator, it expects me to know how much I want to add …. help 😅

Also, also the fact that the recipe differs from the lye calculator makes me think that I’m inputting something incorrectly, or I’m adding extra water for no reason 🤷🏼‍♀️

does anyone here make tallow soap?

Hi all. I’ve been making batches of tallow soap with beef tallow, olive oil pomace, coconut oil, and activated charcoal for a concrete-ish color. When I add Bulk Apothecary’s fragrance oils, they seem to be discoloring the bars unevenly. Smells great, but not as consistent or good looking as my unscented bars.

Will essential oils work better than fragrance oils as to not discolor things? Is there maybe a fragrance oil that won’t do this? What have you used with tallow soap that adds scent without compromising the look of the bars?

I’m open to other ideas to get good scents too. Thanks!

at first it was lovely and i thought that i had finally made it work, but as soon as i finished pouring that green i could tell things were going south. i think it would work better if i had a double boiler to melt it over, but in the meantime i’ll just stick to the stephenson bases since they’re easier to use and i like their performance better anyway.

Hi, i think about making coffee-aestetics soap, using brown colorant. I'm currently try to forecast, how many colorant needed for batch.

Do you know, approximately, how much colorant usually needed per kg or pound? I know that this mostly the question of color saturation - i want just rough approximation. I want something like this saturation:

https://preview.redd.it/cl7jddwkxdzc1.png?width=768&format=png&auto=webp&s=d06caef0989e9189e7311d218b8f2bb3e80433ab

What are your favourite glycerine soap recipes? I want to make sure I have the best chance at getting it right as we all know a failed soap batch can be quite an expensive mistake. I make lots of CP soaps, and some HP ones, but I'd love to make my own glycerine soaps as they suit my psoriasis much better. I'm not too fussed about the outcome being completely transparent like a window, as I know this can be tricky in the home environment. The biggest variation between recipes I've seen seems to be the type of alcohol used to break apart the soap molecules. Any hints, tricks and experiences (good or bad) would be very welcome!

I am new to this and I want to start making soap, can anyone give me any recommendations?

I made a sugar scrub for my mom and mother-in-law for mother's day from a Nature's Garden kit, and they sent me slightly more mango butter than I needed for the kit. It was too much extra to add to the kit, because it would have thrown off the ratio between the sugar and the oils, but it's also not enough to do anything with.

I need to make soap again sometime this month, and I think I'm just going to add it into my usual soap recipe (lard, olive oil, coconut oil, castor oil). It's such a tiny amount it will only be about 1% of the oils, and it's going to make zero difference to the final bar. Has anyone else ever used up a tiny amount of some oil they don't usually soap with because they had it lying around? I feel like I'm being all cheap to do this, but it seems such a shame to waste it, even if it's only 20 g or so.

Hey all! I'm relatively new to soap making and I see that a lot of folks use kaolin clay in their recipes. I understand the benefits of using it, but does anyone have a good rule of thumb for adding it to recipes? Does it work better with certain oils or worse with others? Thanks!

I don't know if anyone else has had the same experience, but recently I tried making a batch of soap without shea butter in the recipe and found that my soap had a more voluminous lather even just a few days after unmolding. And getting the lather going was more effortless. Whereas with soaps where I typically have unrefined shea butter at 20-25% I find it takes a while to get the lather going. And I find the lather to be lacking in terms of volume.

Just to compare, I bought a handmade soap bar (no shea butter in the ingredients) from a local seller and found that the soap had a nice slip to it. Lathered quick with a nice volume and when I rub it in between my wet hands I don't feel friction like I do with my own soap bars that all have unrefined shea butter in them and have been cured for at least a month.

At this point I'm considering either not using shea butter anymore or reducing its percentage. I was wondering, does anyone not like using shea butter in particular? Why? If you do like shea butter in your soap, at what percentage do you usually go with?

So I have the standard 42oz row mold that came with my melt and pour kit. I want to make a test batch for CP soap. Do you usually stick to 1lb and not fill it or do a test batch at 2-2.5lbs to get some decent sized soaps from the mold?

Hey everyone! I am wanting to make some recipes I am seeing from CP to MP. (I am trying to get comfortable with soap in general before I jump into CP)

If a CP recipe calls for

Avocado Oil: 30% Castor Oil: 10% Olive Oil: 40% Shea Butter: 10% Soybean Oil: 10%

Can I translate that into melt and pour and get similar results?

Thanks!

(I also want to say thank you to all the kind knowledge people, you’re a blessing)

I’ve looked around on google and have found what look like non government sites selling “licences” for £130 so unsure. Thanks in advance for all your help!

Hi everyone. I have cilantro essential oil and cilantro hydrosol from it. What kind of soap would you make using them, or one of them? I'm looking for some interesting ideas, because googling "cilantro" and "soap" in the same sentence gives mostly results about cilantro tasting like soap lol. Also, cilantro on its own doesn't seem to be very liked by most people, so I don't want to just add cilantro e.o. to my regular recipes.

What other e.o. would go nicely with cilantro smell? Any other additives, like salt, milk, honey, clay etc?

For the water and adding lye do you usually always go with glass container? Would this work? Plastic?

Or should I just stick with these for other parts of the process?

When you heat your oils - do u do stove top or rounds in the microwave until it’s about 10 ish degrees from/around the lye temp?

I'm trying to find an alternative for essential oil. I charted the cost per unit of the ingredients and found that using a sufficient amount of essential oil to scent my soap will balloon the cost per bar drastically. I want to scent the soap, but still have it be cheap enough to undercut well established vendors so that I can entice future business.

If I aim to do this using essential oils I would have plan to sell at cost, which is something I would like to avoid.

If I wanted to make a fruit scented soap, what would the likelihood be that I could do this using fruit juice instead of water, when preparing my lye solution?

For added context, here is the recipe I plan to use for scented soaps:

32 oz. tallow

4.2 oz. lye

12.16 oz. water

1.5 fl. oz. essential oils

I factored in all but price per kwh of energy (rendering fat) and shipping & tax:

Unscented: $9.25/ 8 bars

Scented: $31.18/ 8 bars

I normally use a portion of my measured liquid oils to disperse mica, but do I use a portion of my distilled water initially planned for use in my lye solution to disperse something like clay, or just consider it a small enough add that it doesn’t matter in soapcalc?

This soap I tried a new recipe (higher shea butter content as that’s what I had available at the time) and it gave me an extremely creamy bar that’s just gorgeous. The scent is mild and consists of blood orange, jasmine, and sandalwood. I did an angled layered pour and then a hanger swirl before piping the rest of my batter on top. Deciding on whether I should stamp it or not.

So from my understanding bath soap is category 9 for the IFRA. does this chart mean for this FO to use up to 5% of it for oil weights? Also if I were to use another one and mix them is it 5% each or 5% total so then it would be 2.5% of each?

And honestly I feel this chart is a little weird. Idk how 100% can be for hair and lip products but 2.5 and 5% for category 8s and 9s…. I feel that’s SUPER LOW.

If you guys work with droppers/Pipettes for essential oils/scents do you have one for each EO/fragrance. Or do you mingle them ? / wash them out after than dip into another scent?