Today I made 3 slabs of Rosemary Mint handmade soap which incorporates ground peppermint leaves for color and texture. You can get a “green” color in your soap by adding herbs like peppermint, spearmint, parsley and dill to your soap pot but these herbs will tend to grow a orange halo around them in the finished soap and will also turn a brownish tan color instead of a nice natural green. Not so cool looking to me. As a matter of fact I think it is down right ugly. I’d like to share a tip. Add Vitamin E T-50 to your soap pot prior to adding your herbs. It will keep your herbs looking good in the final soap. I promise.
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I use shea butter in almost every product I make from natural bath and body care products to handmade soap. It has excellent skin care properties and I would not know what to do with myself if I couldn’t use it. When I first started making natural skin care products I did not know that there were different grades of butter. From unrefined, refined to ultra refined. Of course the more refining you do the less of the “goodies” are left in the butter. I, in my newbie ignorance and enthusiasm just bought “shea butter”. I didn’t realize I was buying an ultra refined product. This butter was pure white and I had to cut it with a knife. On accident I ended up ordering some shea butter from another supplier and this butter came to me creamy beige and soft enough that you could scoop it with a spoon. It also had a slight nutty odor. Thinking there was something “wrong” with this shea butter I started asking questions. It was from this experience that I learned that there were actually different grades and quality of shea butter out there. A couple of my favorite shea butter suppliers are Oils by Nature and Agbanga Karite. I must say too that if shipping wouldn’t kill me I’d love to get my hands on some of the shea butter sold by Shea Radiance.
Popularity: 32% [?]
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When making handmade soap one of the first things we learn as soapmakers is how to combine the properties of different oils we use in the soap making process to give a particular recipe it’s unique quality in the finished soap. It’s like participating in a chemistry experiment on finding the perfect bar of soap. Here is a list of soap characteristics contributed by the more common fatty acids.
Lauric Acid - Hard Bar, Cleansing, Fluffy Lather
Lenoleic Acid – Conditioning
Myristic Acid – Hard Bar, Cleansing, Fluffy Lather
Oleic Acid – Conditioning
Palmitic Acid – Hard Bar, Stable Lather
Ricinoleic Acid – Fluffy Lather, Conditioning, Stable Lather
Each oil we use has it’s own particular fatty acid profile and no one fat or oil has all the characteristics we soapmakers find advantageous. One of the tools I use when designing a recipe can be found here.
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