Saturday, September 4, 2010

My bad - Salt soap

Etageres are irresistible to me.  This one is new, but looks
old. It was an impulse buy, but looks good in the sunroom,
filled with whatever little trinkets that needs a home.
Feeling a bit blue and bored the other day, I had the idea to make a blue soap.  I have some indigo and have read that it will make a blue soap.  Salt soap, I thought, would look nice in blue.

Feeling quite a bit less blue,  I took out the bag of the coarse sea salt that I picked up the other day and happily pulled out my oils.  I made a pretty simple recipe, but there was nothing pretty about the outcome.  It didn't have a trace of blue and it was just pure ugly.  But it smells nice, still.   Don't know if it will last.

There is something really sad about ugly soaps.  Soaps should be pretty.   This soap is very ugly.  Even more so than the photo suggests.  I sometimes try to like my ugly soaps.  Try to think of them as ugly ducklings that will turn into beautiful swans.  Sometimes they actually do.  Some of them turn out to have a great lather or smell or feel on the skin and end up as my personal favorite in the bath.  But some are just ugly soaps and there is nothing to be done, but rebatch.  I don't even know if it is possible to rebatch salt soap!

Appart from the failure to turn blue, nothing much went wrong, perhaps I just don't like the coarse salt.  It doesn't have a good feel to it.  Crumbly and difficult.  I need to try it out in the bath to see what it's like.

The recipe was a rather uninspired 30% coconut oil, 25% lard, 20% olive oil, 15% cocoa butter and 10% sunflower.  I put the salt into the soap at trace at the ration 1:1.  The fragrance I used was lemongrass, bergamot and peppermint.  At least it smells nice.  I need to find out more about indigo in soap.  This obviously didn't work.  But what the heck!  Chuck it up to experience.
.

11 comments:

  1. Thank you for your post, I'd often wondered if indigo would work, but wasn't game to try and I still haven't got around to making a salt soap. It looks quite nice in the photo I think, like the colour of ice and the fragrance sounds lovely. I just hate it when I make a soap and it doesn't do what I wanted it to, so disapointing:( but I suppose that's what we get with soapmaking, it's always a surprise how it's going to look.

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  2. Were we on one wavelength with this topic of salt soap or what?..Too funny
    I'm wondering why your blue didn't take...when did you add it and how much? My indigo seems to come with an invisible warning: Use SPARSELY. It's so intense that I usually get far more of a blue than I'm aiming for. As for ugggly soaps..sista, we're going to have to start a mission here among our soap blogging community: Believe, there are NO uggly soaps
    Remember, your uggly may be my pretty and vice versa. So embrace that lil' salt sucker and enjoy your spa bar :)

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  3. Lately I've been intrigued by salt bars, and I'm so glad you blogged about it. Would you mind sharing your thoughts on salt bars? What makes them good? Thanks in advance!

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  5. Yes, do let us know what makes 'em good, Ambra (seems I took care of the opposite ;)

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  6. El jabón debe ser bueno y no importa que sea feo. Besos.

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  7. Yes, the indigo. I did the wrong thing! I had to try to see if it did anything if put in oil. It is clearly miscible in it, but obviously I need to put it into the water phase. My bad indeed!
    I had to laugh too when I saw your post, Cocobong, and you are right. Of course there is not such thing as an ugly soap. I rather look foward to trying it out.
    And now on to what is a good salt soap. Hmmm. Well I actually think that getting a lot of lather is a lost cause, so instead of a lot of coconut oil I would prefer to load it up with emollient oils and butters. Also I am going to try to bash the coarse salt into smaller pieces and see if I like that better. I really liked the one I did with fine table salt. It is creamy and soft against the skin but the soap itself is hard like a rock and it has a nice peppermint smell. I will do another try with the indigo in water and a finer grain of salt. I'll keep you posted.

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  8. I love what Cocobong has to say always... there is no such thing as UGLY soap. I really like the way this one looks! As for salt soaps, I love mine. I have only tried mine and I have tried several different variations but I just love them. Mine are LOADED with coconut oil. I like fine salt as well as medium course salt. My first attempt had too much water (same as a normal bar) and it not only bled but actually wept... dripped. The newer ones have much less water. Hard for me to get a strong scent. But the lather and hardness is what I love. I think I may post pictures of the lather I get. xo Jen

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  9. Realmente no lo encuentro feo, es mas me gusta.
    Un beso

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  10. Hello,
    It's not bad.
    Love the look of your spa bar.
    I have tried, with mainly coco oil and, various salt and clays. It's a great spa bar even for hair and skin...
    Have you tried indigo mixed in oils before adding lye? it works.
    have a good day
    Swanee

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  11. Jen - What you said! Absolutely agree.

    Texia - Thanks, but it looks worse in real life than in the photo.

    Swanee Noa - Thanks, but...I will make another one and try the indigo again. I did have it in oil, but for some reason that didn't work for me. I'm going to try it in the water and see what I get. I love your blog BTW.

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