Susanne's Crafty
Corner: Cosmetics
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Licorice
Soap (6 bars left)
This
one is also a rebatched soap; the original batch was the anise/lavender soap I poured diagonally (CP of course) with
poppyseeds. A desription of that one can be found on the previous page.
Just didn't care for it! Remelted it and added honey, honey aroma and
fennel EO, now it's licorice soap and
much prettier then the original. Another succesfull rebatch!
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Lavender Rosemary
Soap (8 bars left)
This is soap partialy rebatched castille added to a
small batch of fresh castille soap. You can see in the pic a few of the
chuncks from the "old batch". I scented this soap with rosemary and
lavender EO and topped it off with lavender flowers.
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Tropical Mango Soap (8 bars left)
And this is a batch of soap I did CP of which I was
afraid might have botched. The recipe I used consisted of 40% olive, 40%
lard, 12% coconut, 8% castor and 100% coconut milk for fluid. Added the
scent at thin trace and poured the first half in the tilted mold. Then
colored the second half with carrots, tilted the mold back when the soap
was thick enough and poured it over it. After this I put the soap in a softly preheated but turned off
oven.
Next morning was terrible: it had a thick liquidy layer floating on top
which partially reabsorbed in the 2 days I left it in the mold. After
that I drained the liquid which appeared to be oily and cut the soap.
The white layer was hard and smooth but with spots. It wasn't lye though
since the soap isn't weeping. The orange
layer was soft and crumbly upon unmolding but hardened perfectly in the
days after. Think I've been lucky with the outcome this time! Don't know
where the white separating layer came from... it's a mystery!
Also a bit of a mystery is that after a few days strange crystals
started to "grow" on the outside of the soap, but only on the orange
part! They're like very fine white needles up to 2 mm long. It isn't
lye, it isn't salt and it certainly isn't mold. They're quite hard
actually but fragile; I accidently picked up a bar at the orange side
and felt the sharp little buggers break of against my skin. They
can be wiped off without trouble and the consensus on HCS was that's a
weird form of soda ash, propably associated with humidity and
temperature. |
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Mexican Chocolate Soap (8 bars left)
A while back I ordered some chocolate
FO because my boyfriend is kind of choco-holic. Too bad it came apparant
not long after ordering that he doesn't like foody scents very
much.Anyway this chocolate is very strong
and very sweet and I can't help gagging when I thought about soaping
this one. Luckily Crisyn from
HCS came to the rescue with the suggestion of blending it to "mexican
chocolate" by adding
some almond, and a touch of cinnamon and clove.
I used a recipe of 50% lard, 20% olive, 12% coconut, 10% sunflower and
8% castor oil. I wanted to do this CP to
see if I can do swirls, first time for CP and also the first time I
would be using sodium lactate. I used 4% af the amount of oils SL (the
60% solution) added up front with the water.
The lye was mixed, the oils measured and molten and while I was waiting
for stuff to cool down a bit (want enough play-time) I decided to
measure the fragrances. Just finished that and then I knocked it
over . My kitchen, my house and worst of all I was
smelling like chocolate and probably
would for the next couple of days... Yuck!
I mixed the lye
with oils and everything is fine. Brought the stuff to light trace,
added the scent and poured the first half in the mold. Was going to try
swirling in the mold to have more play time and less dishes. When
pouring it out I noticed it thickening quite rapidly. Stirred cocoa
powder in the remaining soap
and it got * POOF * gritty. As in beginning separation. GRRRR
Smushed the stuff as quickly as possible smooth and in the mold. By the
time I got to swirl it it was very stiff and gritty, like finished HP
but with a very fine grit. I thought perhaps I got a marble going but
certainly not the fine-feathered swirl I was aiming at.
The top of mold looked horrible so I put sarran wrap on top and
smoothed it out as much as possible. Onder my hands the soap got hot
and hotter and within the minute the whole damn thing was in complete
gel! I've never had this happening before... I mean I usually use martha
molds and I'm too lazy to insulate, my CP soap
seldom goes into gel. Now I think about it, I've used clove and cinnamon
before without trouble but that was all HP! No wonder this batch behaved
weird.
Anyway, I unmolded the soap only 1.5 hours of pouring and shouldn't have waited any longer! That SL sure does
work! Inside the soap is perfectly smooth
and hard. Edges are sharp with only the tiniest beginning of the
crumblies. Think I'm in love with the SL! It indeed ended up like a
marble and although not like planned I'm glad this soap is pretty after all. Even the scent is
better then expected! Only a few little airholes indicate this batch
wasn't easy as pie.
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Nougat Soap (12 bars left)
I had some of the glycerin soap I made left for
chopping up and using in other batches of soap. The soap was kind of
sticky so I rolled balls of it. The soap I poured around it was made
with 40% lard,
40% olive, 12% coconut and 8% castor oil. Added sodium lactate at 4% of
the amount of oils to the water before adding the lye. Scented this soap
with patchouli because I thought it would mix nicely with the SOS "zen
christmas" from the glycerin soap balls.
I was right about that one! Soap smells fabulous! After pouring
the soap on top of the balls I put the mold in the oven at 80C for two
houres to ensure the entire thing went into gel. My first try at CPOP
(cold process oven process) aka IMHP (in the mold hot process).
As you can see
somehow the top of the soap became
textured, but I kinda like it. The glycerin soap balls have hardened up and are
surprisingly quite clear.
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Experimental Conditioning Soap (2 bars left)
Tejas over at the
Asylum found a patent about a process for producing a soap bar of the type comprising soap and a skin benefit agent (click
here). If I understand it correctly the
keyfactor in this is that natrasorb (or another modified starch) is
water soluble. In dry state the starch matrix would prevent the
superfatting of the soap to be binded in the rest of the soap. Only when
the soap with natrasorb/oil
mixture comes in contact with the water of the shower, the starch would
release its oil contents. The oils added with the starch would then
serve as an extra goodie for the skin.
This probably wouldn't work in CP; the active lye in the CP would
presumably react in an undesireable manner with the added natrasorb/oil
mixture. In HP soap this wouldn't be the
case because the soap is already soap and no active lye (or very little) is
left in the mixture. This discussion made wonder how the results would
be when a silicon like dimethicone would
be added to the soap. Would the dimethicone
leave an unpleasant or a nice coating on those hands?
Melusina from the Asylum tested
straight dimethicone in soap and noticed that it killed all the lather
the soap would otherwise form. Sooooo I wanted to put this to test with
a starch matrix. I used dimethicone 100 to get the nice skin feel and
put it in the natrasorb carrier to prevent it from killing the lather.
The recipe I used was 50% olive, 20% arachis, 10% coconut, 10% castor
and 10% hazelnut.
This soap is still being tested but I can report that it does lather
and leaves a thin coating on the skin. This coating makes the skin when
dried off, feel like it just has been lotioned up. Great stuff! Oh and I
scented it with patchouli, lavender and rose.
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Chamomille Castille Soap (8 bars left)
HP'd this castille with 90% olive
oil and 10% castor oil, at 7% lye discount. I used chamomille infused
olive oil for it and strong chamomille tea to mix with the lye. I
didn't add any coloring or scent, just a bit of grounded chamomille for
tiny flecks in the soap. A basic soap that is very soft for the
sensitive skin. |
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Shaving Soap - improved version (8 bars
left)
Yep,
yet another improved version of my shaving soap.This time I used a
recipe consisting of 25% olive, 20% arachis, 20% castor, 12% coconut,
10% soybean, 9% cocoa butter and 4% beeswax. At trace I added 1T
bentonite clay per 450 g of oils. This is what made the soap such a
lovely color of green. After cook I added 3T glycerine and 1T honey also
per pound / 450g of oils.
The blend I used to scent this soap with was kind of an experiment. I
wanted something fresh and manly but not too heavy. I started with some
teatree, peppermint rosemary and cedar but it still wasn't finished so I
kept on adding stuff. The blend I ended up with was cedar / rosemary /
teatree / peppermint/lemongrass/patchouli in a ratio of 2:2:1:1:1:1.
According to Marcel this shaving soap is the best of the ones I made up
until now. He tested it on a heavy 7-day beard and got the shaving man
seal of approval!
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