Organic Bar Soap

You can save a lot of money by learning how to make your own organic bar soap. Organic bar soap naturally costs more than conventional soap because more care is taken with the organic ingredients. Hence, organic ingredients generally cost more. The only difference between making your own handmade soap and organic bar soap is finding your organic ingredients.

What benefits are there to making organic soap?
First, it is better for your health. You know that there were no nasty chemicals applied to any of the ingredients, so they do not end up in your soap.
Second, you are supporting the efforts of those individuals who grow and harvest organic materials.
Third, it is better for the environment.

One of my favorite places to shop for soap base oils is Soapers Choice. They carry all the organic oils you would need to make a good quality organic soap.

If you are not sure how to make soap you can check out my website at How to Make Soap

Which Laundry Detergent Works Best on Stains

It has been about a year since I first began experiementing with making my own laundry detergent. I have found a couple recipes and have tried various bar soaps in the recipe. I am very happy with the home made detergent, but have found that I really need to pre-treat stains (just as I did when I used commercially made detergent).
So when asked which laundry detergent works best on stains, I would answer that none of them really do. But I have found a GREAT stain treater and that would be a bar of Fels Naptha detergent. It takes very little of this to treat stains. I apply it directly to the stain and scrub the stain with a brush or with my hands in the fabric. If you can let it sit a bit that usually helps as well. This one bar will last you many many months!!
I have been able to remove grass stains from my sons' grass stained pants (even the stains that I previously couldn't remove) with the Fels Naptha.
So my recommendation would be to use an economical detergent and use the Fels Naptha to treat the stains. I will post my recipe and variations of the recipe in another post. If you are interested in making your own laundry soap and want to make it even more economical, then learn how to make a basic bar soap that you can use in the laundry soap (it's also great for your family's skin). You can get information about soap making at How to Make Soap.

Shea Butter Refined vs Unrefined

Shea butter is a great ingredient to add to your handcrafted soap. But I am occassionally asked what kind of shea butter should I use in my soap -- shea butter refined vs. unrefined. Shea butter comes from the tropics of Africa and is extracted from the nuts of the Shea-Karite tree.

Pure Shea Butter can be found in three types of extractions.
Raw or unrefined- extracted using water. The color ranges from like cream (similar to whipped butter) to grayish yellow. This is the original form of Shea Butter.
Refined is more processed and has many of its natural components still intact.
Highly refined - the color is pure white.
You can use any of these types of shea butter in your soap making. My personal philoposhy is that that the less processed something is, the more it retains its beneficial qualities.
I haven't used the raw shea butter primarily because it wasn't offered from the sources I purchase my ingredients from. More and more companies are offering this product though and I think it would be great to use in soap making.
As a result, I have used refined shea butter. I find that my products have more of a white color to them (or if I am coloring them, the color is more true) and I have been very happy with the results. I have used this refined shea butter in lip balms and whipped body butters as well. I think it is just iimportant to avoid using the highly refined shea butter where nasty chemicals are used to get it pure white. The chemicals can change the quality of the butter and destroy many of the beneficial properties that make shea butter so unique.
So if you are wondering which shea butter: refined vs. unrefined, I would tend to go with the least refined you can get for soap making.
Please visit my website at How to Make Soap

How to Sell Homemade Soap

Have you made your first batch of soap? Did all of your friends and family oooh and aaah over it? If your friends and family were like mine, they had never tried any homemade soap before. And they instantly fell in love with it. So now you are thinking about how to sell homemade soap. Well, it couldn't be any easier than just what you have already done. Give some free samples away and let people try it. The good news about soap is that it is consumable. So when they run out, they will be back for more.

You can begin to sell soap by starting a customer list of people who already like your product. Next, brainstorm who else you can give a sample to. When you give out a sample ask them if you can follow up with them so see what they think of the soap. You can prepare a few general questions about the soap and how their skin felt. Be sure to ask them if they would purchase your soap as you are building a customer base. Get their permission to add them to your customer base and email list. I like email because it is cheap and efficient. You can offer them a special introductory price as a new customer.

You can also sell your soap at craft shows. Again, try to build your customer base. When you are able to build a relationship with your customers, they will become repeat customers. That will make you very happy. Then you will have people calling you for more soap and you will build your sales each month.

You can ask your customers for referrals as well. You can give a free sample to the referred person and again, ask if you can follow up with them to get their opinion about your soap. You will be surprised how, with effort, you can build a good customer base in a short period of time.

If you are thinking about how to sell homemade soap, but haven't made your first batch yet, please check out my website at How to Make Soap

Benefits of Using Herbs

There are many benefits of using herbs in your soaps. How do you use herbs in your soap you may ask? Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel and list all the information about herbs right here, I am going to redirect you to a beautiful website I have found that does a good juob listing herbs, and benefits. You can click HERE to read more about using herbs in your soap and the benefits of the herbs.

Personally, I have taken the time to infuse olive oil with different herbs. This is time consuming and can add expense to your soap if you are not growing your herbs yourself (which I recommend that you do, because then they are inexpensive and you know the quality of the product).
Infused oils add more benefit to the soap you are selling and I can guarantee that not many people are doing this -- primarily because of expense and time. However, the small production, home based soap maker generally can add this quality to their product, which is why a small time soap maker can create a loyal customer base.

Please take the time to read about the benefits of using herbs. I would even recommend purchasing a bar or two of these soaps to see what they are like. Enjoy!
If you would like more detailed iinformation about How to Make Soap please check out my website at Soap Making Information.

Goat Milk Products "How To"

Spring is coming. That generally means that animals will be having their off-spring and the mamas will have milk. So if you raise goats, that means that soon you will have an abundance of goat milk. If you are like most people who raise goats, you will not be able to use all your goat milk each day as you milk your goats -- there is only so much time in a day. So what to do? Of course we will freeze that creamy goat milk until you have the time to process it into one of many goat milk products.

How to freeze the milk for soap making is easy. Start saving small yogurt or sour cream containers (have others help in this endeavor). Each day you can measure your milk by weight into these cartons. I like to freeze uniform weights so there is no guess work or need to re-weigh your milk at soap making time. Then when you are making soap, you take out how many frozen milk cubes you need for your batch of soap and you are ready to go.

If you do not raise goats, it would be a good idea to find someone in your area who does! I know that many goat milkers are happy to sell some of their surplus. How nice it would be to tell your friends and customers who buy or use your soap that their goat milk soap has milk from the neighborhood goat farm in it. Besides soap, there are other goat milk products. How to keep goat milk surplus for those projects is no different than that of soap making. Go ahead-- FREEZE THAT MILK!

Check out my website at How to Make Soap.