Well, we are back to making some soap. Our supply from last year has been given away or we’ve used most of it so we’re on to another couple batches. Hubby blogged about it here.
We made our first 100% olive oil soap. Since we need to wait a little while before we try to get them out of the molds, I’ll tell you about the second one we made. It’s a revised version of our Lavender Goat Milk soap.
The color really darkened two days later when we sliced it.
Now to cut it.
Of course, now we need to wait three to four weeks for it to cure. I really liked the way the soap turned out and the smell was much stronger since we added more essential oil.
I have included the updated recipe below. I have updated this again in 2016. This is one of our current soaps.
Mango Butter (5%) 45 grams
Avocado Butter (5%) 45 grams
Shea Butter (5%) 45 grams
Castor Oil (5%) 45 grams
Coconut Oil (30%) 270 grams
Olive Oil (30%) 270 grams
Palm Oil (20%) 180 grams
goat milk – 342 grams (frozen)
lye – 126 grams
1.5 Teaspoons ground lavender buds
2 Tablespoons Lavender Essential Oil
This makes 2 lbs of soap or 10 bars. (We use a 4 lb mold.) As with any recipe you get off of the internet, please run this through one of the calculators. This one is my favorite.
Please refer to the cold process instructions here. To make the process go a bit smoother, we measured all of the oils ahead of time.
The frozen goat milk is put in the lye container. We then added the lye little by little as it melted the goat milk.
The lavender buds were ground and soaked in the essential oil and then added at trace.
I’ll let you know how it feels in a month!
I’m really interested in your ripply knife. What is it?
Lisa and Robb recently posted..Rolling
It turned out really beautiful! I always like simple, natural soaps the best. I’m curious to see your 100% olive oil as well!
Is there a reason you use three different types of butters instead of just one or two? I’ve stuck to cocoa butter until now but I’m curious to try out other types as well.
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Lisa, That is just a soap cutter. In fact, the Soap Solutions owners I interviewed for my column gave me that cutter. I like it much better than the regular straight cutter. Thanks for dropping by. Lynda
Kristina, I’ve started putting castor oil in all of our soaps because of its sudsing qualities. Last year when I made this recipe I wanted to just try different butters. Avocado is good for older skin and can really be used straight from the container. Mango butter is suppose to be a good moisterizer, and Shea butter is suppose to soften our skin. As I mentioned in the post, you don’t have to use all of these oils and butters to make this soap. Since I had them and they made a good soap last year, I thought I’d go ahead and use them up.
Ah. Love this! Thank you so much for sharing. When I get brave enough to make my own soap, this is the first one I’m going to try.
Love. Love. Love.
Leslie recently posted..How to Turn a Glass Jar Into an Eco-Friendly Spray Bottle
Your soap really looks lovely and I bet it smells yummy! Your cutter makes the soap look neat!
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Leslie, It took me awhile to get “brave” enough to make soap. It’s really easy and fun but you do need to take precautions with the lye. If I were starting, I wouldn’t with goat milk since it’s a bit tricky. The basic soap is a good one to start with and a great one to have around. https://lyndaheines.blog/2010/02/its-soap/ I also have on the Soap page links to other soaps and soap lessons learned. Thanks for dropping by. Love your blog!
Connie, Thanks! It does smell wonderful.
Thanks Lynda! I’ll have to go through my soap stash before we move, lots of the oils won’t be usable any more because I haven’t made soap in months. Once we move I’ll buy new supplies and one or two new butters will surely find their way in 🙂
I actually made a soap with a very high percentage in castor oil (it was like 70 percent I believe) once and it was lovely to use!
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Kristina, wow – 70% castor oil. That’s interesting!! I really like adding it to trace. I added Sunflower because I wanted to get rid of it, but love adding castor oil (3%) at trace. Lynda
Where do you buy your oils from? Also if I were to is a 100% essential oil would I need to use less (it’s a therapeutic grade oil)
Krista, I buy my essential oils from Majestic Mountain Sage. (http://www.thesage.com/catalog/EssentialOils.html). They have a handy calculator to indicate how much to use per batch depending on the strength of smell you want.
I really don’t know about their essential oils vs therapeutic grade EOs. I do know that the “therapeutic grade” essential oils are more expensive. You might check with where you purchase your essential oils as to how much to put in soap. Sorry I’m no help. Thanks for dropping by. Lynda
Linda, Have you ever tried to mold your soaps in plastic Easter Eggs? Could you pour it in each half, let it set-up enough to be semi-solid, then try and push both halves together for the remainder of the curing stage. Once cured trim off the seam line. They would be cute to give away in a paper egg carton or one cut in half (holding six eggs). Make it out of soaps that resemble speckled eggs or pretty pale green/blue eggs, brown eggs. It’s endless.
This coming Tuesday I’ll be in StL and will miss art class.
Carla, The plastic would not hold up to the cold process. If it did, it would be hard to get out of the mold. There are 3-D soap molds that can handle cold process but they are usually used with “melt and pour” soap which is soap that is already made. All you do is melt it and pour into the mold adding colors and stuff. Our whole reason to make soap is to make it from scratch so we know what is in it and that it’s as natural as possible. We do not add any color unless it’s something natural. I received a soap from a woman in a soap exchange awhile back and it was beautiful. I used it in the shower before checking the ingredients. I wondered how she got the color and found out she used color crayons. I threw the soap away. Sounds like a good class you’ll miss but we’ll see you the following week.
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Lynda, curious to know if you love this soap recipe and if you are still making it, or have further tweaked it since 2011. Thanks for the input!
Kristen, This is still one of our favorite recipes although we add different EOs and herbs. I just updated the recipe, but we no longer add oil at trace or the liquid silk. We were superfatting our recipes (adding additional oil at trace) and it really was a waste of oil and not necessary. Also, thanks for the reminder that I really need to go through and update our recipes. Thanks for dropping by.