Hearts for the face

I like the heart shape.  Pretty corny, I know, but like the Barbara Carland romances that I used to read when I was twenty, I find the heart shape to be comfortable and soothing. So I'm always drawn to cookie cutters, picture frames, little boxes, ice cube forms and cake forms that are heart shaped and naturally I have used those for soaps.

It's not very practical, but I did make some heart shaped soaps by pouring the soap into a shallow mold and using cookie cutters.  It wastes a lot of soap, but I figured I needed some to rebatch anyway.  I thought afterwards that I should have made a small hole in them to thread a ribbon through, kind of like a Christmas decoration.  It could make a nice gift before the holidays.   I made the soaps with all sorts of nice oils for the skin although it's a bit high in Coconut oil.  But with all the butters I thought it would be fine.  I imagined that it would make nice facial soaps and therefore decided to make small soaps.  This is the time that I, rather optimistically, tried to use Hibicus as a colourant.  No red colour from that, but it does make a nice tan though!

I also poured some sope into an ice cube tray that I had picked up cheaply at a thrift store.  Same recipe, same tan colour.  It took forever to get them hard enough to be able to get them from the form, but when they finally popped out they looked nice.  I need to repeat this with a madder root colour and use a bit more of that than I did last time to get a darker pink.  But even if the Hibiscus didn't provide much colour to the soap it is supposed to have strong anti-oxidant qualities and it has been used to treat allergic exzemas and other skin conditons.

The recipe has some strange numbers, but I made it up as I went along and just wrote down what the scale said (rather than slavishly trying for an even number), but check it in a lye calculator.  I have no idea why I used such tiny amounts of Shea butter and Rice Bran (it's kind of like: Why bother?), but the soap is quite hard and really has the creamiest softest lather.  Quite lovely.

Buttery facial soap:

36% Coconut oil  -  180 g / 6.3 oz
26% Grapeseed oil  -  132 g / 4.6 oz
24.5%  Almond oil  - 124 g / 4.4oz
10% Cocoa Butter  - 50g / 1.8 oz
2% Shea Butter  -  10g / 0.35 oz
2% Rice Bran oil - 10g / 0.35 oz

Water  102g / 6.8 oz
Lye 70 g. / 2.5 oz

This time I used 8% SF.

I wouldn't necessarily repeat this recipe unchanged.  I would probably use less Coconut oil and a bit more Rice Bran oil.  Possibly up the Shea or skip it.

The photo: That retro yellow coffee cup and saucer with the bowl was a find that my daughter snatched up. I put my home made body lotions in nice glass bottles and store it on my night stand.  The doilies are destined for the wedding dress.  

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