The Blues - Tooth soap recipe

I'm not a blue person.  My colours are the warm tones, especially red.  It's not that I dislike blue, in fact I think blue is a very nice colour.  It's just not me.  So I tend to buy things that are not blue, except jeans.  And since I really like the blue of jeans, I guess it could be said that indigo blue is a favorite colour after all, even if I'm not a blue person.  I have been experimenting with dyeing from Woad and Japanese indigo.  It really is an amazing process to turn green leaves into a clear blue colour.  Just like magic.

I haven't made any blue soaps, although I did try once.  I used indigo powder, but not enough, so the colour disappeared.  Sometimes it doesn't pay to skimp on ingredients.  so when I got the idea for this soap I decided to be generous with the Indigo powder.  I somehow thought it would be appropriate to make a blue tooth soap.  I made tooth soap a long time ago and I still have most of it.  Not because I haven't used it.  It's just that it lasts forever.  But I started to feel a little deprived of the fresh minty taste of conventional toothpaste.  My old tooth soap had baking soda in it and baking soda just doesn't taste very good.  So I have been wanting to do a new tooth soap.  And then I thought about the old blueing agents.  Since i'm quite old, I remember when it was possible to buy a blueing agent to make white laundry appear whiter.  Admittedly, I just barely remember the stuff, but it was sold in the olden days and used.  Now they have something that works in a similar, but in a more sophisticated way, called optical brighteners.  But I thought it might be a great idea to make a blue tooth soap, maybe it would make teeth appear whiter, or it would just look nice.

I have mint growing in the garden and I harvested all of it when it was starting to get cold.  I made some mint jelly, but decided that it really is just too weird to eat that with lamb.  Even if British people do that.  It tastes just like toothpaste.  I guess one has to be reared on that to appreciate it.  But I used part of the mint for a tea that I used as the water phase in my soap.  So the genius me didn't quite think things through.  The art major should have known that mixing the yellow mint tea and the blue indigo would produce a magnificent green.  But I just didn't think.  So here is my "blue" tooth soap:

It's a small recipe (200g/7oz), but it'll last for a long time.

Olive oil 30% 60g / 2.1oz
Cocoa butter 30% 60g / 2.1oz
Coconut oil  22% 44g / 1.6oz
Soybean oil 15% 30g / 1.0oz
Neem Tree oil 3% 6g / 0.2oz

Mint tea 38% 76g / 2.7oz
Xylitol 2 tsp

Lye 28g / 1oz

Peppermint eo
Ginger eo
Licorice extract

Since I don't want the tooth soap to produce too many suds, I used much less coconut oil than usual and much more of the cocoa butter.  The neem oil has anti bacterial properties, so I added some of that.  I also added 1 tsp licorice extract, which is supposed to be good for the gums,  to the essential oil blend. I used 1/4 tsp ginger (again that is supposed to be good for the gums) and 1 tsp peppermint for that fresh minty taste that I had been craving.  I also ground up 1 tsp zink oxide and 4 capsules of magnesium citrate (good for teeth) with about 1/4 tsp indigo powder.

I made these into little hearts since I think they look kind of cute.  I have tried the soap already although it needs some more time to cure.  Well I can't say that it whitens the teeth, but it has a minty taste and it cleans well without sudsing too much.  I might add some more xylitol next time and even some more peppermint eo.  Just to get that really, really fresh minty taste.  And I might even skip the mint tea and go for a truly blue soap.

Pink at last - Using fresh Rumex oil

Since I really wanted some pink soap, I kept making soap but this time I used the new Rumex oil.  Only 3 weeks of infusion.  I wasn't at all sure that it would produce any color at all since the oil had only taken on a little color.  With this light yellow oil I was excited to see what would happen.  I made this soap with the usual amount of Rumex oil, about 3% (20 g. to 700 g.)

It turned this lovely light pink.  There is alway a bit of yellow in it where it gells, but the color tends to veer towards pink as it gets exposed to air.  It is pretty amazing to me that the small brown balls and the soap and pink hearts are made with the same material, rumex oil, but just different batches.

I think the conclusion has to be that fresh oil will produce pink, but as it gets older the color will get darker and eventually turn brown.  It doesn't take a lot of oil to color the soap.  I've usually used 15-20 grams in one recipe of 500-700 grams, which is less than 5% of the Rumex oil to the amount of other oils used.  That is very different from the amount of oil that I use when I've used Alkanet oil.  But I really need to try to make soap using less of that.  Could be the next project.  There is always demand for Lavender soap.

For decoration, I used Heather (Calluna) and Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) on top.  Those two are actually very well suited as a decoration on top of soaps because they keep their color well and don't turn brown easily since they sit on top of the soap and don't really get wet.  It actually turned into a very pretty and girly soap.

Now I need to make yet another one, using this very Rumex oil, except it has now been infusing for something like 8-10 weeks.  In fact I just poured it into a jar to discard the Rumex root.  The oil is a lovely, lovely bright golden yellow and it smells lovely.  I have been using it on my face at night and I swear that it does make my skin feel and look better.  Of course my face looks a bit yellow.  The oil must be chock full of antioxidants.  But since my darling husband hasn't even commented yet (other than to tell me I'm beautiful) I'll keep using it.  And btw I'm almost up to 100 grams of cleaned Eiderdown.  Only 900 to go.

The mysterious affair of the brown Rumex soap...

Puzzled by my brown soap, I thought that maybe I hadn't used enough Rumex oil.  I generally use about 15-20 grams (0.5 -0.7 oz) of the infused oil in one recipe.  My recipes are small, either 500g or more usually 700 g (about 25 oz.)  The obvious solution was to use more oil, maybe double it, and see if that would change the color to pink.

So I did.  But it didn't.  Still stuck in the thinking that yellow and pink somehow go together I threw on some dried calendula and calluna, with a bit of yarrow.  It probably looks better on the brown background than it would on the intended pink,  but I will not be repeating that combination any time soon.  I scented it with Bensoin, Sweet Orange and Geranium.  Tha was a nice combination, which I might repeat.  The Soap was Olive oil, Coconut oil, Soy bean oil and Cocoa Butter.

I love the brown color though.  It's just really nice.  I sometimes forget how nice brown can be, I tend to think of it as a dull color, but it is so useful.  And lots of things that I like are brown.  Linnen is mostly brown.  Most of the eyeshadows that I can use without looking ridiculous are brown and eiderdown id brown.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  I saw somewhere that the way to recognize Eiderdown is that it is always white.  That is nonsense.  The female Eiderducks are brown and therefore the down can only be brown.

I've been cleaning the Eiderdown myself.  I found out that if I have it cleaned by machine I will only get about 20% out of it.  That is an average number and it could be more or it could be less.  But I think that the process the down goes through in the machines is bound to waste some down.  It basically means that my 3 kilos would only yield 600 grams, and that isn't enough for a duvet for me.  I was hoping to get 40% by hand cleaning, but I think that is a bit optimistic.  I have now cleaned just over 70 grams.  So 7% of the duvet done.  Oh, well.  Some things are worth waiting for.

Happy mistakes

One of the Christmas soaps this year had a different look, quite by mistake.  Vanilla for scent and charcoal for the colour, just like the black special blend, but this one has no frou frou look about it.

For some reason the soap didn't mix all that well.  I didn't notice that anything was different until a few days after I cut it and the colour started to develop.  The look was just like Granite rock.  So that was the name it got.

The scent is only vanilla and it smells sweet and innocent, although it looks rather wicked.  I made another batch, to try and duplicate it, but that ended up in a very badly lined soap form so I couldn't get it out.  It was just stuck in there and I had to spoon it out.  It was still quite soft so I thought I'd make small balls out of it to use as decoration or something.  The balls didn't want to form nicely so I ended up with really uneven looking balls.  The next day when I took a second look I realized that they looked just like pebbles on a beach (yes, the beaches here are black, sand and rocks.  White beaches are just an exotic foreign thing to me).

But this mistake again turned out great, because I've had two people enthuse about my pebbles already.  Funnily enough, both have a hard time saying nice things about my flower decorated soaps.  It's funny how tastes are different, but I can quite see the appeal of the rock look.  So I'm going to polish them a bit once they are properly hard and put a few into a bag or on a dish and present them to their admirers for Christmas.

This recipe is a very basic one.

Olive oil      40%   - 280g / 10oz
Coconut oil     35%  - 245g / 8.6oz
Rapeseed oil     15%  - 105g / 3.7oz
Soybean oil     10%  - 70g / 2.5oz

Medical charcoal for colour, vanilla for scent and sugar crystals for a touch of glamour.  I love it when something that seems to be a failure turns out to be something that I would never have thought of doing myself.

The Eggsperiment

My plastic eggs, from a few weeks ago.  Well I learned a lot!  So here it goes.

Small plastic items are very difficult to use as molds for soap.  And those eggs were really hard to keep steady.  I did try to put the halves together, but that was just a mess.  So I ended up pouring soap into the halves separately and tried to get those to sit somewhere without toppling over.  Of, course I hadn't really prepared anything, just jumped right in and then had all these halves of eggs, full of soap and nowhere to put them!  I'm pretty sure that the whole thing could be executed more successfully by somone with a bit more patience and forethought.

But the fun part about this was making all the different colours and scents and I did have some surprises there.  I made 7 different colours:

1.  The blue.  I made a lovely blue colour using indigo.  I love that colour to bits and I will absolutely make blue soap again.  The perfect scent had to be Peppermint.

2.  The pink.  I used Rumex oil for this and added Neroli essential oil.  The colour didn't turn out pink at all.  Just a beige.  So either I used too much Rumex oil or it doesn't work as well when added to traced soap.  This I need to try out again and find out for sure.

3.  The yellow.  Annatto oil, naturally, with Sweet Orange and Palmarosa scents.  I could have used Sea Buckthorn oil or possibly unrefined Palm oil.  The Annatto came out a slightly orange yellow, but has faded to a nice lighter one.  I'm not a fan of orange yellow.  So quite nice.  I've used Annatto before and I like that yellow and find that it keeps it's colour for at least 6 months (I used the soap up in that time).

4.  The green.  I used dried Parsley and Rosemary for this one.  I should have used a bit more Parsley since the colour was a little light, a yellow green.  I used the dried herb and added it to the traced soap.  I need to try to use it as a tea and see what colour it produces.  I pretty sure that Cocobong uses tea when she uses Nettles for green and she has great results.

5.  The lavender.  Well, no prices for guessing Alkanet infused oil and Lavender scent.  But the Alkanet failed to turn lavender.  It is a very strange shade of light brownish Aubergine.  I have no idea why, except to venture a guess that Alkanet probably wants to be in the oil mix when the lye is added.  So another thing to test.

6.  The orange.  Hah, I'm so stupid!  Just because I could get a lovely orange by adding Annatto and Alkanet to oils, it doesn't work when lye is in the mixture.  I knew that! Silly me!  I'm really quite ashamed.  But I added Lemongras and Ylang ylang to this tan colour.

7.  Uncoloured.  At the last minute I decided to leave the soap uncoloured and add Benzoin for scent.  That colour is just slightly beige and smells lovely.

I could have used vanilla and gotten more brown colours.  But I didn't use Madder root since I would have had to make a special batch of it because it needs to go into the lye.  Nor did I make a black egg, but charcoal soap is quite neat and aniseed would be perfect since it smells a bit like licorice.  So there were quite a few possibilities.  I wanted a bit more colour although I hadn't expected to get really bright colours.  I have to admit that really wanted a bit of pink in there.  Oh, well.  Next time.

But I had an adventure when trying to put the two halves together.  I had thought that it would be easy to just rebatch and whip some soap and use it with a cake decorating thingy (which I bought for use with soap).  Well, I was wrong.  It would probably have been easier with regular whipped soap because it has a stiffer consistency.  This was a fiasko on par with the original chaotic "making-of-the-eggs".  The halves were not even, so I had the hardest time putting them together.  And as is patently obvious from the photo, I've won no prizes for cake decorating.

But it was fun.  I really had a blast.  It's probably unnatural to enjoy ones own company so much, but I have to be honest.  I did.
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Parsley for the fresh green of spring.

The clay plaque is by my little one and it hangs in the
kitchen. I completely fell for the measuring cups I saw
in the MOMA store, especially the colours. I like green.

My body is screaming for spring but unfortunately it is a long way off.  The true season to start to be in the garden isn't really till late May up here in the north.  But I have started to plan my vegetable allotment garden and this weekend I will sow the first plant.  I have been making pots from newspaper.  I did that last year as well and it worked pretty well.  I have to admit that I also just like the way it looks all green, sustainable and kinda cool.

I finally made my green soap.  I have been meaning to use Parsley for ages.  The reason is that Parsley has a lot of Chlorophyll and therefore it should give a good green colour.  Chlorophyll, of course, is what makes Parsley such a good breath freshener after eating garlic.  It's also a great antiseptic, by the way, as well as chock full of vitamins and minerals.  Apparently chlorophyl is available as a colouring substance, but I haven't seen it anywhere myself.  I just dried some parsley that I've had growing in a pot.  I use it in cooking too, not just as garnish, I like it and actually eat it.  Dried Parsley is not oil soluble.  I tried to put some fresh Parsley into oil and even used a stick blender to try to disperse it into the oil.  That did not work at all.  So this I time I crumbled dried Parsley and used 2 tsp which I blended with the EO's into a recipe of 500 g. (about a pound) of oil.  I could have made tea and probably should have, but I wanted to have a part of the soap without colour to play with it.  I'm getting a bit bored with one colour soaps.  But the white part got pretty stiff so I ended up with white lumps in the soap rather than swirls of any kind.  Oh, well!

The recipe I used is a little bit different than last time, but that is only because I ran out of some ingredients.

36% Olive oil
30% Coconut oil
25% Rape seed oil
5% Castor oil
4% Cocoa butter

Water 33%
5% superfat.

I  used a combination of Rosemary, Peppermint and Ginger essential oils for fragrance and the result is a fresh and green scent that almost clears the sinuses.

The soap is very, very soft.  I cut it after a week, but that was difficult.  I don't know if that is the rapeseed oil or not.  I probably should only use 15% of that.  It produces soft soap.  But the colour is still a pretty green although it doesn't really look very green in the photo.  But I have a feeling that it may turn to olive with time.  I'll add that info to this post at a later stage.

Tooth Soap - or perhaps I just need a vacation

And did I mention that I love old tools? They just don't make
them like they used to.  Those toothbrushes have real boar
bristles, but they are way too big and scratchy to be used for
anything other than cleaning. And, yes, I use them for that.

I made tooth soap, oh! probably about a year ago.  I actually got quite absorbed by the subject and experimented with different recipes and forms.  I made one that actually (quite by accident) had the consistency of toothpaste and I really liked it.  It had a mild and nice taste and a lovely green colour but it oxidized very quickly and turned an ugly brown colour.  I used it for the longest time by wiping off the oxidized surface and using the fresh lovely green paste, but in the end I gave up and threw it out.  My current tooth soap is a white bar soap.

My interest in tooth soap started a few years ago when I started to look at toothpaste in the "natural" section of the grocery store.  I had tried Tom's and found that to be quite nice, but then I tried Weleda toothpaste and that had no fluoride.  Now I'm not going to say anything to discourage anyone from using toothpaste with fluoride, but I decided for myself that the health of my gums was a higher priority than cavities.  So I used the red Weleda toothpaste for a while and liked it a lot.  But it started me wondering what toothpaste was anyway.  And after reading labels and researching I discovered that people have used a lot of different stuff to clean their teeth and soap is certainly one of them and modern day toothpaste contains SLS.

Now, I need to say that my dentist hasn't noticed any change in my oral health since I gave up commercial toothpaste, but I would not want to interfere with anyones use of the commercial stuff.  I just gag if I use it after all this time.  Nuclear waste springs to mind.

But I am very interested to hear if anyone has done experiments with tooth soap.  The soap that I have used for the last few months is very simple and I have to admit that it has a horrible taste.  But only in the beginning, you get used to it.  It's a basic 70% olive and 30% coconut.  To that I added calcium and magnesium tablets that I crushed and some bicarbonate as well.  The bicarb is what gives it an unpleasant taste.  In an effort to counteract that I added some Xylitol, but I cant's say that I taste any sweetness.

If I were to do another one (which I will eventually although tooth soap seems to lasts forever) I would probably try to dig up the recipe for the green paste and use some parts of that and use 100% olive oil.  Suds really are unnecessary.  But I have to say that my favorite recipe is the one that I read that Benjamin Franklin used. It was honey and charcoal.  My son-in-law agreed to try it out with me and I think I have to hold him to it.

But, having confessed to this strangeness, I also have to admit that I just really need a vacation.  I think I have mentioned once or twice that I don't like cold weather at all.  So even if we have had a fairly mild winter so far I am jumping ship and heading for the southern seas to bask in sunshine for two weeks.
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Silk and Sorrel shampoo bar

Another weakness is glass. I found this carafe dirty
and full of spiders.  The candlesticks were favorites,
but I wasn't careful with the candle and one of them
broke when the candle burned down. I should throw
out, I know, but I can't bear to just yet.

Finally I made a shampoo bar with silk.  I've wanted to do one ever since Strenua Inertia gave me a tip to add silk to the lye.  That soap turned out really nice.  I liked it so much that I used it on my hair with very good results.  So I had to do a shampoo bar with it.  And since I really like Njóli oil, I decided to use the infused oil of it's close cousin Rumex acetosa (Sorrel) or as we here call it, Hundasúra.  I have had this one root infusing in oil since last fall when I pulled it from the garden where it had enjoyed a lovely summer.  The root of it just looked so jummy that I cleaned it and cut it up into oil.  The colour of the oil is a nice yellow with a slight orange tinge.  It's not quite the same colour as my previous Rumex oil (which is from the species longifolius) so I have been very curious to try it in soap and see what colour it gives.

So I did and obtained a beautiful, but rather strange colour.  At first it turned a pretty pink, but when I added the EO's they imparted a very yellow colour that changed the soap to a lovely peachy orange.  Now that I've cut it, I think it is perhaps a bit like is in vogue right now - those pale fleshy beige tones.  I'm used to Rumex oil changing overnight from beige to dusky pink.  But this one didn't.  It started out a fairly warm pink and turned into a salmon colour.  That may be because of the EO's that I used.  For scent I used a combination of Lavender, Sweet Orange and Vetiver.  It smells green and fresh.  It is the start of my blending experiments.

Olive oil 40% 240g / 8.5oz (out of this 15g was sorrel root infused)
Coconut oil 25% 150g / 5.3oz
Soybean oil 20% 120g / 4.2oz
Cocoa butter 10% 60g / 2.1oz
Castor oil 5% 30g / 1 oz

Water 30% 210g / 7.4 oz
Lye 99g / 3.5 oz

I used both sugar and silk in the lye water hoping to make the soap that lathers nicely and leaves my hair very silky.  Even if it hasn't cured long enough I did try it out and I think I achieved that.  It lathered exceptionally well and my hair felt very, very silky.
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Bombs away! - Happy New Year :D

The little hens were a present from my daughter. She found
them in the Good S. but they are more my thing. The
heartshaped candle holders are Danish and were still in
the box. I like this type of simple Christmas decoration.

I finally made bath bombs.  I've wanted to do them for the longest time, but somehow it seemed too complicated.  It isn't.  It's really easy.  In fact it's almost too easy.  I used a very simple recipe from The Excellent Living Guide.  There are many guides and tutorials on the Internet and most of them are good.  Now I am not the greatest bath bomb fan, but my sisters really like them, so I thought I'd have a go at making them as presents.

I had managed to get myself some Citric acid and I found that to be the hardest part of the whole thing.  I am now the proud owner of 25 kilos of the stuff, so I can make them for years to come.  The most wonderful thing about the bath bombs is that they don't swallow up all my EO's.  The recipe that I used is:
1 cup Citric acid
2 cups Baking soda
2 tsp. oil (like Olive or Grapeseed)
1 tsp. EO

The real trick to this is to blend the oils with the dry ingredients and then have some water in a spray bottle and carefully spray a bit of water and stir well with a wire whisk.  It doesn't take much to moisten the mixture enough to be able to make the bombs.  And that is fairly easy.  Just scoop a lot of mixture into both parts of the mold, squeeze together very hard and gently release the bomb from the mold.  Tapping the mold can help with this.  Let dry for about a day.  Store in a dry place and use.  I read that they don't keep very well.

Now I have one of those plastic Christmas ornament types that I've seen used as a mold and I tried that.  I didn't like it.  Firstly it makes a very large bath bomb.  Some may like that, but I don't.  So I came up with using some plastic packaging from a type of coffee.  I don't use it myself (strictly Nescafé in this household) but my cousin has been collecting these as small soap molds, for which they also work well.  The resulting bombs are smaller than those traditional ones and they look a lot like the French Macarones that I like so much.

From this recipe I can make 8-9 bombs of that size.  I made a few batches, one with Lemongras and Annatto infused oil, one with Lavender and Alkanet infused oil, one with uncoloured oil and Peppermint EO.  The fourth was my failure, it had Palmarosa EO and a mix of Annatto and Njoli oil.  The mixture was a bit too wet, so that the bombs had sort of semi-fizzed after a day.  I haven't tried them in the bath yet, I think they'll work for me at home, but they are not pretty.

I threw in a bit of corn starch, maybe half a cup, into one recipe.  It can apparently aggravate yeast infections, so beware of that.  I have also read that milk powder can be used and I have that somewhere so I may try it one of these days.  In another batch I used about the same amount of Epsom salt which is good for sore muscles.

Those candleholders are very typically Danish and
are most likely from the 40's or 50's judging from
the box. I don't dare to have living lights on the tree
so I decided to hang them up on a thin wire circle and
hang them in the window. 

I thought it appropriate to end this year with a bang.  We do that here in this country.  On New Years Eve the population goes completely insane.  Everyone can buy fireworks and almost everyone does.  There are  several tons of fireworks fired up around midnight.  The noise is unbelievable, there are fireworks absolutely everywhere and finally a thick smoke envelops the city.  We have a fantastic view over the city, so we prefer to participate in the madness only as spectators with our closest relatives.

I wish everyone a happy New Year.  I am thankful for the year that is almost at an end and I thank you all for a most wonderful year of getting to know you, so many people all over the world who share an interest in making soaps.
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Milkmint - A milky white and minty soap

One of my friends is and artist and I just love the colours
she uses. I don't wear much lace, but have a hard time
resisting buying it and this scarf made it home with me.

I am so proud of this one.  I think I wrote somewhere rather nonchalantly that some soapmakers try to get their milk soaps very white.  My attitude was rather like: "As if that matters".  But I had to try.  But midway through the experiment I decided to cheat and put a little bit of Titanium dioxide in there.  I didn't quite trust the soap that I painstakingly made to be as white as I wanted.  But I am pretty sure that I wouldn't have gotten it this white if the bases hadn't been very white...Or would I?  Well I'll never know.  But I don't care.  I think this is my all time favorite soap.  At least right now.  I tend to love best the latest soaps.

I had read somewhere, probably in the book I have about making milk soaps, that the trick is to dissolve the lye very, very slowly in the frozen milk and not let the soap heat up too much.  So I did that.  I half froze the milk and put a bit of the lye into it and stirred until the milk was almost completely thawed and then I put it back in the freezer.  I waited for it to freeze again and then I put a bit of the lye into it ...  Repeated this many, many times until all the lye was dissolved.  Obviously the last time the lye/milk solution should be at about room temperature and so should the oils.  I combined the two and the soap came together perfectly.  I added some TD and Peppermint EO.

I got the brilliant idea to crumble some dried mint on top.  I had the last mint of the summer that had gone to flower and I had dried that even if they say that it should be picked before flowering.  I think it's my German genes that make me ignore advise like that.  So I put it on top of the soap.  It was so pretty.  But I made one mistake.  I put the soap in the freezer and I think that resulted in the pretty green and purple herbs on top turning brown.  OR, it could have been that I wrapped it too soon.  Oh, I could have cried!  But not for long.  Chuck it up to experience.  I'm going to make that again and this time not put it in the freezer and absolutely not wrap it too soon.  But the smell is lovely.  I really like peppermint essential oil.  It is nothing like artificial scent.  Just pure and fresh.
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Sugar scrub cubes (or dollops) - A new way to rebatch

I love the enameled electric stove that I picked up for a
song.  I can use it for dyeing. The tablecloth is a simple
cross stitch that I loved and for some reason I started to
buy the milk glass. Nobody seems to want it. 

I've been intrigued by Sugar scrub cubes since I first saw them, but my distaste for Melt and Pour bases (at least the ones that are sold here) has precluded me from making them.  Apparently they could only be made using that.  Oh, the hardship of being a fanatic!  But I had been thinking that since I melt soap to rebatch soap, surely regular handmade soap could be used for those.  Not wanting to reinvent the wheel I started to search the Internet and found the answer on Mayren Abashed's blog: Mayren's Sugar Scrub Cubes using CP/HP Soap shreds the 1-2-3's Method.

She, somewhat ingeniously, had come up with a simple recipe that I had to try.  Her sugar cubes are actually cubes, they look great and she makes them in wonderful colours and adds scent to them.   Me, being the way I am (and not having a cube mold also), made ... well I decided to call them dollops rather than blobs, although that would describe them too.   And I make them scent free also, since I just wanted to try out the recipe to see if I could make them (and I was getting low on EO's).

It is actually quite simple, like the 1-2-3 name suggests:

1 tbsp oils/butters
2 tbsp soap shreds (I grated some of my natural homemade soap)
3 tbsp sugar

I grated some of my soap finely and used that.  I used Olive oil and Cocoa butter and put those into a bowl with the soap shreds and put this into the microwave.  This I then heated in short bursts and stirred regularly.  When everything had melted I took it out and let it cool just a bit and then stirred in the sugar.  Mayren suggests 3 tbsp when using 50/50 hard and soft oils, 4 tbsp when using all liquid.  The sugar mix quickly turned into something like a dough ball, which is what should happen and it was really hot.  This is the stage to add scent but I skipped that.  I guess the colours could go into the oils before the sugar.  Now, since I don't have any small silicone molds, I used a teaspoon to make my dollops and tried to shape them as best I could (hot, hot, hot) and then I rolled them in sugar.  That improved their appearance a lot!

Now, I tried this in the shower and found that I used up the one although it could have been a bit smaller.  I liked this shape a lot as it fits nicely in the palm without me dropping it.  I liked the combination of soap and sugar and the great thing about sugar is that it does dissolve and doesn't end up in the sea doing harm to sea creatures.  I have read that these sugar cube scrubs will leave the tub slippery, but I didn't find that mine did.  But I'm sure they may do so the next time.  Probably depends on the oils and soap used.

I think these could make great Christmas presents, especially if coloured and/or scented.  I need to see if I can come up with some natural colours that are oil soluble.  I can think of Alkanet root and Annatto, so red and yellow.  I wonder if there is a green possibility?  Maybe clay?

Update:  With the addition of a few drops of essential oils and some colour infused oils, these can be made into the most lovely gifts.  Ice cube trays are very easy to use and much quicker than using a spoon.  Just fill up the cavities and pop the ice cube tray in the freezer for a few minutes and the sugar scrub cubes will  easily pop out.

To make the best of a bad thing - Rebatched Sea Buckthorn soap

Last chance in the garden.  Everything has pretty much
died down, except the Hollyhocks which are blooming
like crazy. This lovely cream colour is just lovely. 

I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that winter is here.  Today is the "First day of winter"  according to the traditional Icelandic almanack.  We have had the most wonderfully mild weather this fall and I've enjoyed that so much.  Almost for the first time that I can remember we have had all the leaves on the trees and bushes turn their beautiful red, orange and yellow colours.  Usually they are blown away be strong winds before we get to see their glory.  I have also enjoyed the last few flowers in the garden that have continued to bloom all the way into the first frosts, among them are some Hollyhocks that are in bloom for the first time.

I made a soap quite some time ago that included a some Sea Buckthorn oil and a lot of other goodies.  It was a great soap (I think) except it was so soft as to be almost mushy.  I waited  and waited for it to harden up, but finally gave up and decided to rebatch it.

It has now been curing and has turned into a very nice yellow soap.  The colour is quite a bit lighter since I mixed this with some whipped soap that was mostly white hard oils, but hadn't turned out the way I wanted.  So that was a lot of hard oils that I combined with all the soft ones.   I've been meaning to post about his rebatch except I lost my notebook so I couldn't find the recipe.  When I found the notebook I discovered that I hadn't written it down in the notebook at all.  So I searched for it on my little computer and I found it.

The combined recipe for this rebatch turned out to be:

Lard                  34%
Olive oil            24%
Coconut oil       22%
Jojoba oil          10%
Cocoa butter       8%
Wheat germ oil   1.5%

The water was 1/3 water and 2/3 a combination of Oat meal tea and Aloe vera.  The additions to the yellow soap were Sea Buckthorn and St. Johns Wort oils along with about a tablespoon of honey.  When I rebatched this I used yoghurt as a liquid.  The precise recipe is hard to figure out, but I like this soap as a gentle bath soap.  The lather is very soft and creamy.
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Orange dog soap

The old books were used as props for the wedding. They were
stacked here and there in the house. We got them for free at the
Good S. Those fall colours we had this year were fantastic.

I thought I would do an orange soap to keep Jennifer at Jenora soaps company. One of the reasons is that I saw unrefined Palm oil in an asian food store the other day and I just had to have it. I have never used Palm oil because it isn't sold here. I know that there is a lot of controversy surrounding Palm oil and I respect that. But I wouldn't be human if I didn't succumb to trying out a new oil!

I decided for some reason that this would be a good dog soap and that it should go into a tube. I had intended to cut it into long half rounds since I thought that would be a good shape to fit nicely into the palm as I wash the dogs. I did cut a few that way, but some I cut smaller. I have no idea why, but ever since I have been thinking of trying to do a landscape, using this as a setting sun. That would be very patriotic.

The soap is without scent, but with some herbal oils because Bichons have a tendency to have skin problems and I thought it would be nice for my bitches to have nice skin conditioning ingredients.

Recipe:

Coconut oil               25% 125 g / 4.4 oz
Palm oil                     25% 125 g / 4.4 oz
Olive oil                    25% 125 g / 4.4 oz
Soybean oil               20% 100 g / 3.5 oz
Castor oil                     5%   25 g / 3.5 oz

Water                        38%  190g / 6.8 oz
Lye                                       71g / 2.5 oz

In addition to this I added 1 tsp. of Comfrey infused oil and 1 tsp. of Yarrow infused oil, both infused in olive oil. So the SF is a bit more than the 5% that the recipe reports.

But the soap traced very, very fast and I had quite a time getting it into the tube. I was therefore a bit surprised that the soap was quite soft when I took it out of the mould. The colour is a very strong orange-yellow. It is a little bit too saturated for my taste.  The colour is not dissimilar to the Sea Buckthorn soaps that I did some time ago but it is more orange, so not a bad try for an orange soap.  But maybe I'll try to use more socially acceptable colourants next time.
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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.
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Mock orange / Philadephus coronarius - oil infusion

My mother gave me that colander and I use it for all sorts of
things. It's perfect to separate the stamens from the petals.

I have two Philadelphus bushes in my garden.  They are on either side so when I walk into the garden when they are in bloom, the air is filled with this magical fragrance that is so different from any other.  To me it is like the scent of oxygen, if it had any.  Just so refreshing and light and a hint of vanilla.  I have often thought about trying to capture the fragrance somehow and the scent is so unusual.  So this year I decided to collect the flowers and pour oil over them to see what happened.  I have done this with roses and viola, but one of the dogs got into that jar and licked it up!

It is time consuming to collect enough quantity, but I was in the company of eager bees and it was nice and sunny.  The bushes were absolutely covered in flowers so they still looked pretty after I had raided them.  I then tried to isolate the petals from the stamens (the things in the middle of the flowers) and was successful using the old Swedish colander that my mum gave me and shaking it.  Then I put the petals in a jar and poured oil over.  This I let sit for only 24 hours during which I try to poke the petals into the oil.  They tend to float up.  I find that longer time does not work well with Philadelphus petals, they wilt quickly and start to look bad.  When that happens there is no fragrance left in them.  So I strain them out and let the oil sit for a bit.  There are always some impurities and bits that gather at the bottom.  These are water based and and heavier than the oil so they sink to the bottom.  When the oil looks completely clear I pour it into another container.  A turkey baster also works well.

I managed to make two infusions, one with Apricot kernel oil and one with almond oil.  I infused the first 3 times and the second 2 times.  The fragrance that was left in the oil smelled surprisingly of pinapple to me.  It's not the same as the fresh scent of the flowers, especially when I sniff the oil directly.  But when I put it on my skin it smells heavenly.  I intend to make this into a body lotion.  I know that this would never survive a lye bath.

I looked for medicinal uses for Mock orange and found some described for P. lewisii which is the American variety.  I haven't found anything about it's European cousin, P. coronaria, and don't know if they are similar in this respect or not.  But the American mock orange is described as used by native Americans as anti-hemorrhoidal and anti-rheumatic, used as a poultice or in oil.  Apparently the leaves are very high in saponins and can therefore be used instead of soap.  I found that a bit amusing.
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Shaving soap - for my barber friend

I love the old fashioned look that this colour gives. The razor
and the leather strop came in a cabinet that I bought that
had a small sink and a mirror perfect for bachelors to shave.

This one had better be good.  I wrote about my encounter with the barber before last Christmas a few posts ago.  I guess that one of the reasons that I never went back to him with a shaving soap that he could try is because I wasn't really sure that it was any good.  But that would of course be the whole point of having him try it.  To tell me if it was any good.

So I decided to make another shaving soap and this time I thought a lot about the ingredients.  The first one I basically did a soap recipe and added some clay to it.  It was pretty early in my soap making days and I just thought it was cool that adding clay would make the soap into shaving soap.  And, don't get me wrong,  it was a fine shaving soap, but I always thought I could improve it.  So I sat down and thought long and hard and this is what I came up with:

I need good lather, not because that's so important for a good shave, but because most men think it is.  So this one will be with a good percentage of Coconut oil.  To make up for the rather drying qualities of the Coconut oil I have to have some Olive oil because that is really conditioning and and it makes the lather stable.  The same goes for lard, which I included because it's macho... well... and conditioning and makes a good stable lather as well.  And of course I also had to include Castor oil which has such nice lather and conditioning, but makes a soft soap.  So I added some Cocoa Butter for it's moisturizing and hardening.  So that was all my oils.  Except I thought that Njóli oil (Rumex) would be very good in a shaving soap since it is so good for skin disorder and some men experience a rash from shaving.   So that added a bit of Sunflower oil as I had infused the Rumex root in that.  And for the water I did a tea from Shepherd's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris).  And then I added the clay.

I made the soap in the traditional way and I had intended to use 15 g. of Njóli oil, but as I was pouring it into the soap at trace I kind of lost control and ended up with a lot more than that.  Luckily I had placed the bowl on the scale so I just adjusted the recipe.  This means that I will be making another soap with 15 g of the oil because I need to see what the colour will look like.  I was a bit concerned that the soap would look too pink and that wouldn't be macho enough, but then I thought that maybe the green colour of the weed tea should make it a bit more brown.  I'll have to see what my barber friend says about the colour, but here is the recipe (always run it through a calculator, the oz. are approx.):

Coconut oil       33% 175 g / 6.2 oz
Olive oil            24% 125 g / 4.4 oz
Lard                   23% 120 g / 4.2 oz
Castor oil         9%      50 g / 1.8 oz
Sunflower oil    5%    26 g /  0.9 oz  (Rumex longifolius infused)
Cocoa butter      5%     5 g / 0.8 oz
Bentonite clay    1.5 tbs


Shepherds purse tea         38%  208g / 7.4 oz
Lye                                                     75g / 2.6 oz
6% SF.

I poured this into a tube and used silicone baking sheets to make sure I could get it out again.  That worked really well, except that I got a "seam" along the soap tube.  But I got it out really easily.

Now, I don't think I should be the judge of how this turned out.  I will simply take this to my barber friend along with my first shaving soap (which I have in a very macho brown coffee cup) and see what he has to say about them.  I'll be posting the result.

Alkanet and eggshell

I love that little dish. It's not silver, I don't even know if it's
silver plated, but the design is just lovely. It's another one
dollar find at the Good S...

I used Alkenet in a soap the other day.  I have used it before with no great results.  It has turned beautifully blue as I add the lye to the oils, but during curing it has all but disappeared.  I now know that I need to use more of it than I have been doing.  I think I have only been putting a tablespoon or two into a batch of 5-800 g. / 17-28 oz which is my usual batch size, but I am not quite sure.  So this time I was careful to measure everything.

This time I figured that if I used yoghurt I should get a nice colour, since it is acid.  But just to make sure I had some lemon on hand to add to the soap as well.  The experience was really strange and I thought I was losing it when the whole thing turned a greeny-yellow with a blue frame around it.  I didn't take photo's of that because:

1. I thought it looked really, really ugly  - and 
2. I  was convinced that the soap would stay that way and I would get a chance to snap a photo should I develop a desire to do so.  

But instead it changed colour and first turned gray and then it started to turn lavender.  Not a strong purply lavender, but a soft shadowy kind.  So I haven't cracked the Alkanet mystery yet althought I like this soap.

The colour isn't perfect, in fact it looks better in the photo than it really is.  The white flecks in it are egg shell.  I read about that and had to try it.  I amassed a large quality of egg shells when I was baking for the wedding.  As I used the eggs I washed the shells out and let them dry.  Then I put them into a mortal and pounded with a pestle.  It was quite hard work to get them to be very small, but I got there in the end.  Now the thing that I read said that the egg shells would sink to the bottom and make a layer on the bottom, which I thought was quite a good idea.  But in this soap it didn't do that but is dispersed throughout the soap.  I think I will try this again and add the egg shell to a very thin soap to see if I can get it to sink to the bottom.  I think that is quite cool.

The recipe is for 500 g. of oils / 17.6 oz (the oz are approximate):

Olive oil            30% 150g / 5.3 oz
Coconut oil       25% 125g / 4.4 oz
Lard                  25% 125g / 4.4 oz
Sunflower oil    15%  75g /  0.9 oz  (60 g of this was Alkanet infused oil - I didn't have any more)
Cocoa butter      5%   25g / 2.4 oz

Yoghurt            38%  190g / 6.7 oz
Lye                              71g / 2.5 oz
5% SF.

I used frozen yoghurt for the water.  I dissolved the lye VERY slowly since I didn't want to burn the milk proteins in the heat.  The liquid turned a pretty yellow once I had dissolved the lye.  When I had added the liquid to the oils the whole thing turned a gray colour with blue around the edges and as I stirred the thing it turned this greeny-yellow.  At that point I added 2 tbs. of crushed egg shells and some lavender and bergamot EO.  I also added 1 tbsp. corn starch to see if I can get the scent to stay a little longer than usual.  I have just tried out the off cuts, a bit early, but it produced a nice lather and the egg shells were great for exfoliation.  But then again I can never find bath brushes that are scratchy enough, but it may not be to everyones liking.
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Shaving soap

I made shaving sope for the first time quite some time ago.  I was really excited by shaving soaps when I first read about them.   The way I understood it, shaving soap is basically soap with the addition of some clay.  The clay improves the slip.  Slip, apparently, has to do with the way the blade glides over the skin.  So I made shaving soap and started to use it.  It was nice enough, but I have to admit that I use all my soaps as shaving soaps and I don't really notice much of a difference between them.  Even the salt soap works really well!  So I've been thinking that I should reformulate my shaving soap and see if I can come up with something fantastic.

One of the reasons is that I went into a barber's shop just before last Christmas to buy an old fashioned razor for my son in law.  The barber specializes in quality shaves and sells all the paraphernalia.  He showed me his collection of old shaving things and we chatted quite a bit and I told him that I had made shaving soap.  After I had made my purchase, left the store and was about to step into the car, the barber came out of the shop and said that he would be interested in trying my shaving soap.  He warned me that he would be ruthlessly honest in telling me if it was any good.   And I told him that I would love that and he said he was interested in selling locally made shaving soap, provided it gave a good shave.  Since I'm no expert I was really happy about that and told him that I would get some shaving soap to him.  But I never got round to it.

The shaving soap that I made was pretty basic and there are many ways to make it more special.  I guess that is one of the reasons that I haven't seen my barber friend again.  I always intended to do another batch and add more clay and even some extra special oils.  So I think now is the right time to make some new shaving soaps.  Some time ago I did order more types of clay, admittedly in small quantities, but it doesn't take much.

I have been thinking that I could use some Jojoba or Castor oil and some infused oils like Calendula and even Shepherds purse, Capsella bursa-pastoralis.  It is one of the much overlooked weeds that have amazing qualities.  It is an astringent and antiseptic plant that is well known to treat urinary tract infections and stop bleeding, internally and externally.  It is the styptic qualities that I find interesting in a shaving soap.  I think it is best used as a tea for the water phase.  I might also include some yellow dock for it's skin benefits.

I had intended to post my original shaving soap recipe here, but I have looked everywhere for it and I just can't find it.  Another recipe that I thought I would remember for sure!
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Pink shampoo bar - Yellow dock for itchy and flaky scalp

I really like the colour that Yellow Dock - Rumex crispus gives to soaps and I liked the dark raspberry colour of the soap that I recently made.  However I knew that I would want to use a bit less in another soap to see what type of light pink I would get.  I don't really use Yellow Dock, it doesn't grow here, but rather a local plant that is closely related to it, commonly called Njóli here,  but Northern Dock in English.

The benefits of the root of this plant has been known for centuries and it just seemed logical to me to make a soap that might carry some of the benefits.  As Yellow Dock (and Njóli) are known to be very good for skin troubles like eczema, psoriasis and itchy skin I thought it could make a great shampoo bar for people with dry scalp AND it would look pretty as a pink bar.  Since I wanted to get as many of the benefits of the herb as possible, I decided to use the infused oil at trace.  There is always some discussion going on about weather the benefits of the ingredients survive the lye and some say that the stuff that is added at trace is more likely to be the oils that are left over as superfat in the soap.  Well I can't say for sure, but I figured it was worth the try.

I made a shampoo recipe that has less castor oil than my previous shampoo bars.  I didn't have any olive oil so I used Sunflower oil which I like.  It's rather neutral in my mind.  To give the shampoo bar hardness I added some Cocoa Butter.  The resulting soap seems to have an acceptable hardness and still be quite moisturizing.

The recipe is for 500 g. of oils / 17.6 oz (the oz are approximate):

Sunflower oil    50% 250g / 8.8 oz
Coconut oil       25% 210g / 4.4 oz
Castor oil          13%  65g / 2.3 oz
Cocoa butter     10%  50g / 1.8 oz

Water 38% 190g / 6.7 oz
Lye 70g / 2.5 oz

5% SF.

Rumex infused olive oil     2%  10g / 0.4 oz.  Added at trace

I added the infused oil at trace and the soap turned a beige colour, although it really looked like it desperately wanted to be pink.  I was rather disappointed, but since I had used half the amount that I used before I kind of wasn't surprised.  But the next morning I looked at this lovely soft pink colour!  It resembles the other Rumex soap in that the center is a bit more yellow in colour so I might put them in the freezer next to stop gelling.  But I am very happy with the colour.  Now I just need to make a third soap with 15 g. of the infused oil and see what that looks like.

I can't wait to try this shampoo in a few weeks.  It should be good for hair that isn't particularly dry and hopefully the nice qualities of Rumex will sooth a dry, flaky and itchy scalp.
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Raspberry pink soap - Yellow Dock

We had a weed clearing day at the allotment the other day.  The target was "Njóli" a tall perennial weed that was growing in the periphery of the area in great quantities.  As I was pulling out the weeds which another woman had dug up with a shovel, I said to her:  "I just know I'm going to find a great use for this stuff as soon as we've hauled it all to the dump".  Well, guess what!

A few day later I was surfing the Internet and saw a chat thread that talked about colouring soap with the root of Yellow Dock.  Oh, another exotic plant, I thought, but I Googled it anyway, clicked "images" and... saw: Njóli!  I had to laugh.  See, this is why I hate to throw things out!  You just always find uses for stuff when you've given up on it.

Anyway, I put on my Wellies and headed down to the allotment armed with a shovel to find the few remaining plants.  I found quite a few and dug them up.  I cut the roots off and headed home.  Once there, I washed the roots, grated them in the food processor and chopped up the bits that had stubbornly refused the treatment.  Then I put the yellowish mush into a jar and poured Olive oil over it, careful to cover the whole lot in oil.  This is then shaken or stirred every day to make sure that it all stays covered and doesn't develop mold.

After a short time the oil takes on a lime green tinge.  I looked at that thought: Huh! pink, eh!  I had to try, so the other night I went ahead.  The recipe is a fairly regular one.  It is small only half a kilo, about a pound.  The oz. are approximate, I use metric measurements, so always check in a Soapcalculator:

Rumex soap:

30%  Coconut oil  -  150 g / 5.3 oz
20%  Olive oil  - 100 g / 3.5 oz
20%  Lard  -  100 g / 3.5 oz
10%   Sunflower oil  -  50 g / 1.8 oz
10%  Soybean oil   -  50 g / 1.8 oz
10%  Cocoa butter  - 10 g / 0.35 oz

72 g / 2.5 oz of lye.

175 g / 6.2 oz water

I measured 20 g / 0.7 oz of the Njóli oil.

When I added the lye water it turned orange-y, muddy kind of red or pink.  Quite a strong colour.  I was a bit disappointed because I had wanted a Raspberry colour that someone had talked about.  However I thought this was too good to be without a scent so I hastily added Orange and Clary Sage EO to it.  Smells nice and I hope it lasts.

But the colour was to surprise me.  After sitting for a few days it had turned this blue-ish Raspberry red.  The cut surfaces are a warmer tone which I suspect will turn the same as the surface.  I really, really like the colour, but next time I think I'll use half the amount of coloured oil to get a lighter pink colour, just to experiment a bit.  But what remains to be seen is how the colour holds up while curing.  I have witnessed many pretty soap colours turn to nothing while curing.  So I'll make sure that I post additional info.  I'm also waiting to hear about The Soap Sister's trial with Yellow Dock root and Jenora's Alkanet experiments.

The funny thing is that as it turns out, Yellow Dock isn't Njóli.  They look the same in photos, but this is where Latin names come in handy.  Yellow Dock is Rumex crispus, while my Njóli is Rumex longifolious or Dooryard Dock/Northern Dock.  These plants are closely related and Njóli has been used here as a medicinal plant for ages as has Yellow Dock where it grows.  But the roots of both are yellow and both work as a soap colourant.  I read somewhere that there is more colour in the roots of the plant if it is growing in poor soil.  So pick it where it is growing in sand and gravel rather than a grassy meadow if you have a choose.

The photo: This is the best colour I have gotten with the Rumex oil. And it lasts well. One of the cake dishes I picked up for the wedding. This one a bit retro with a 60's flower pattern. 

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