Susanne's Crafty
Corner: Cosmetics
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Cinnamon
Spice Soap
This soap was made with cocoa
butter in the recipe and I wanted to try out something new for the
scent. You see I found sound real frankincense resin, the stuff used in
church incense. I so love that scent! Anyway I read up on the subject
how to incorporate it in soap and was advised to ground in down. Because
I was expecting the scent to come through I didn't use much other
fragrances in this batch.
Too bad! The frankincense scent didn't came through... I decided to
melt it down and scent it with something else. used cream as a bit of
extra fluid which made the soap turn dark brown. To complement the color
I scented it with cinnamon, clove, touch of anise and cedar wood. Topped
the soap with some powdered cinnamon. Et voila: a rescued batch!
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Oakmoss Petitgrain
Yogurt Soap
I was
wondering what yogurt would do in soap. I did a bit of research
and came up with a couple of interesting things. Yogurt has lactic acid
which converts to sodium lactate in reaction with the lye. Sodium
lactate has the nice property that it makes your soap harder, sooner.
And of course the rest pf the yogurt would also provide additional
benefits to the soap like all dairy products like a creamy lather..
I decided to use the yogurt as part of my liquids. To avoid loss of
liquids due to the amount of solids in the yoghurt, I used a tad more
then suggested by MMS. Half of that amount was water, the other half
yoghurt, this I mixed with the lye. Next time I'll freeze the yoghurt
first though, it turned yellowish. The recipe I used was 40% tallow, 30%
olive, 12% coconut, 10% sweet almond and 8% castor.
To make this a very luxery kind of Yoghurt & Honey soap I also added a bit of honey directly
before pouring (DBHP). This resulted in a caramel colored soap with darker speckels from the honey and a
whitish marble from god knows where.
Scented this soap with an oakmoss - petitgrain blend which
I really adore! Fell in love with it! And this was the same oakmoss I
didn't know whether I liked it or not from the
bottle. Couldn't stop lathering up under the shower this
morning! My boyfriend on the other hand doesn't seem to smell it so
strong as I do. Also says that he likes peppermint and floral type of
scents better.
Everybody has his preferences I guess.
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Double Layered Luxery Soap
This is a
two layer soap (no really?!) I made for a "luxery swap". It is made with
two entirely different recipes for each layer. Bottom layer has Tallow
30%,Coconut 12,0%, castor 8,0%, cocoa Butter 10,0%, Grapeseed 10,0% and
Olive at 30,0%. Made with yogurt (50 %) & honey and scented with
almond and a touch of clove, cinnamon & cedar.
The top layer has Tallow 35,0%, Castor 8,0%, Coconut 12,0%, Sesame Seed
oil 10,0% and olive oil infused with pandan leaves at 35,0%. Made with
50% coconut milk as fluid and pureed pandan leaves with coconut milk
added before pouring. No other scent was added but fresh pandan comes
through! Since I don't have enough pots to do both batches
simultaneously DBHP, I did the toplayer OHP: first time! Worked out
great, was ready sooner then the other half. |
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Lavender Peppermint Soap
This soap is my
quite plain basic recipe with 40 % tallow, 40 % olive oil, 12 % coconut
oil and 8 % castor oil. I scented it with peppermint and lavender. The
marble was made with powdered purple yam, which you see besides the
soap. This powder has a nice lavender color which stayed pretty true in
the soap.
I found the purple yam powder at the eastern store. The instructions on
the package say to use it in desserts and pies. I like it better in soap
because of the color and the tiny scrubby element it gives.
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Assorted Soap
I got myself some martha mold lookalike thingies
with great sizing for single soap molds: 8 x 8 cm and up to 5. I thought
this would be perfect to divide a basic batch in different soaps by
scent and additives. This way I get to try out those tiny amounts of FO
I got without ending up with a large and slowly fading batch.
Most left on the
backrow is oatmeal & honey with a blind swirl of vanilla. Right of
that one is Rosedream colored with paprika powder mixed up with a bit of
glycerin. On the left of the frontrow is Arabian Spice from BB with a
few drops of red liquid cosmetic coloring. On the right is Fragipani
with the yellow liquid cosmetic coloring.
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Soap in a Bag
I got a great idea to
do something with all those fragrant soap shavings I have left by now. A
shame to throw them away right? Off course I can make confetti soap with
them but it's not that I need even MORE soap... My house is swamped with
soap!
Anyway I made double layered bags of creme wrinkle organza and put the
scraps in. Sewn close they can be used under the shower without a sponge
or puff: Because the organza is rather stiff it's a very nice scrub. I
will fill the bags with more scraps next time, though. Will make the
feel of them better when wet. |
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Fresh Rose Soap
This soap was made from
a single batch split in half, done CP. The recipe was Tallow 30,0%,
Olive 25,0%, Peanut 25,0%, Coconut 12,0% and Castor 8,0%. I believe I
used canned coconut milk to mix the lye with. I scented it with 2 parts
peppermint EO, 2 parts eucalyptus EO, 2 parts rose FO and 1 part
rosemary EO. This blend came out very fresh but has a faint but very
sweet floral undertone of the rose, Marcel (my boyfriend) likes that
kind of fresh and minty blends.
If you take a good look you see that the soap is darker in the middle.
I didn't insulate the mold after pouring so this is probably caused by
partial gel.
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Peru Balsam Soap
The
after half of the CP batch mentioned above I made for my personal use.
I know Peru Balsam can be a sentisizer, but it smells so heavenly! So
for my chance I'll just take the chance. I used 3 parts balsam
peru, 1 part vanilin crystals, 1 part honey FO and 1 part peppermint EO.
The main thing to smell is the peru balsam itself but has a very
distinct freshness because of the peppermint. It also is much sweeter
smelling then the peru balsam pure, so I think the honey and vanilin did
their work as well.
The Peru balsam made the color a very nice brownish swirl. I got a bit
of ash on top which in combination with the star anise makes it look
very edible.
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Rosemary Soap & Lavender Cedar Soap
This
was my first soap with more then 12 % coconut oil. This particular
recipe has 50% olive, 20% coconut, 15% sesame and 15% peanut, 7% lye
discount and 100% coconut milk (from powder) as liquid. It makes my
hands terribly squeeky and unpleasantly dry so I think I will stick with
lower percentages of coconut oil in the future. It did seem to get a bit
milder when aging. This was the batch I used to experiment with adding
ewax. Done OHP, one half with and half without 2% of the oil weight in
ewax added extra just before pouring. Since I made this batch a tad too
big for the molds I planned to use, I also did one part CP to tackle
that possible difference. When I thought a bit more about it it was
quite logic that the ewax didn't do a thing: it would only make lotion
with any superfatting oil available.... A terrific example of DOH!
The soap with the stamp on the left is scented with rosemary EO, the
one on the right with the lavender on top is a lavender-cedar blend:
very sexy and manly! I like it very much for my own use as well.
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Petitgrain Soap
This was the part of the soap batch mentioned above that was done CP.
Scented it with petitgrain EO, boy do I love it! Haven't tried this soap
yet since it hasn't finished curing yet. The stamp I used on top is a
brass ornamental doorknob bought at a local hardware store.
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