We're Going to Uganda

In less than two weeks, my husband and I will be boarding a plane for Uganda.  We are traveling with our pastor and his wife.  We are working with a pastor there who has started and over-sees 130+ churches and feeds over 3,000 orphans each month.  We plan to train Pastors, lead healing and evangelistic crusades and see how we can establish businesses to help support and improve the lives of orphans and struggling families.  One of my endeavors is to create a hand-craft co-operative for women who are interested in hand crafting crocheted cotton washcloths for soap makers (this will probably expand, but it is a starting point).  Cotton is a pretty big industry in Uganda, but the country lacks the "value added" aspect to it's raw products.  Producing yarn and then crocheting an item increases the value of the raw product tremendously.  I am excited about promoting a product in the US which will help impoverished women in Africa.  I am specifically designing a round washcloth that would tie around round soaps (made in PVC pipes) and a retangular washcloths to fit the rectangular size soaps from my soap making video. 

I will also be looking for raw products that can be used in soap making.

If you have any thoughts or ideas before I leave, I'd love your comments!

One Beautiful Botched Batch of Soap

Isn't this a beautiful soap!  This soap is actually a mishap that couldn't have been planned.  The soap has a Rose fragrance and was supposed to be pink/rose colored.  However, the soap seized in the pot and it turned out orange.  The result.....a beautiful mistake.  This soap now sports the name of an orange colored rose, Tuscan Sun and the seizing of the soap has resulted in a very interesting texture in the soap.  This is proof that even when our best plans don't turn out exactly as we would like, the results can still be stunning.

Soap making is certainly creative and always an adventure!

Thanks Shelly for sharing your beautiful photo and good work in creating unique handcrafted soap!

ALL-NATURAL FRAGRANCES

I've recently checked the Sweet Cakes website and see they now have some ALL-NATURAL fragrance offerings! I would be interested to know if anyone has tried any of these to see how they liked them?, did they sell?, does the fragrance last?
It seems as though we have an alternative to the synthetics and essential oils, and since customers are expressing a preference for products with a high percentage of natural ingredients that still smell GREAT, these may be a great "new" product for your soap making product line. Here is a list of the all-natural fragrances that they offer. They sound good enough to eat!

New -- All-Natural Fragrance Blends
* All-Natural Mango Sugar Mint fragrance
* All-Natural Grapefruit Apricot fragrance
* All-Nature Herb Garden fragrance

Creating Soaps that Sell using Essential Oils

When I use Fragrance Oils (which are synthetic) I always choose fragrances that have been researched by big perfumeries as they have spent millions of dollars in research and they have products that sell, sell, sell. When you are selling to the general public, they are most likely going to want these synthetic fragrances. I do love to use natural fragrances, i.e. essential oils, too. They have benefits that synthetics cannot match. But I haven't found much information that I could benefit from as a soap maker by using essential oils. So it is more of a guessing game trying to develop your own essential oil blends.

In order to create soaps that sell using Essential Oils, you should sell the benefits of the essential oils that you use. For instance:

Bug repellent soap could include citronella, bergamot
benefit: natural insect protection that can be used in conjunction with a natural bug repellent.

Common cold soap could include Eucalyptus and Peppermint
benefit: helps open up breathing passages

So you name your soap appropriately and sell the benefits of those essential oils.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. One site that I found on-line that talks more about blending essential oils can be found here. This site addresses top notes, middle notes, and the lower notes of fragrances and gives ideas on how you can create your own custom blend.

I found another site that has essential oil recipes. This would be a good place to start for ideas on blending and the amounts of each oil in the blend. They have a lot of other kinds of recipes too. I haven't tried any of these recipes, so I can't say if they are any good, but they looked interesting.

I normally use 1 oz. of essential oils per 2 pounds of soap, but when I am making soaps with mint in them I normally use about 1/2 the amount (1/2 oz. per 2 pounds of soap or even less). The reason I found to do this is that the essential oil in the soap is irritating to sensitive areas of the body at 1 oz. per 2 pounds of soap.

Another good resource is this list of essential oils.

I hope this gets you started in using natural essential oils in soap. Remember you need to sell the benefit of the essential oils you use. I'd be interested in your comments about oil blends that you have tried, liked, and have thought sold well to the public.

Lavender Essential Oil in Soap

I love to use Lavender Essential Oil in soap. You can read some detailed information about Lavender at this site and some detailed information about the essential oil of lavender here.

Lavender soap, my second or third best selling soap, has universal appeal and is very popular with relaxing spa products as well as baby items. I like to buy my essential oils from Camden Grey. They carry several different Lavender Essential Oils, so you may ask yourself which one should I buy?

Because cold process soap has lye that needs to saponify I always wonder what that lye does to the essential oils/fragrance oils. We know that there are many different chemical reactions because soap many times turns out like you least expect it to. So it is important to read fragrance descriptions very carefully, lest your white soap turn brown or some other mishap. But not being a scientist.....it can become a guessing game. So here is my experience.

I purchase the lavender 40/42. The price is right when compared to the other lavenders, and the description states that most soap makers like this EO because it is more consistently uniform in fragrance (which is pretty important when you develop a clientele), so that is what I buy. I still like this EO and it has consistently been a good seller for me. I use about 1 oz. of EO for every two pounds of soap.

Often I will make an oatmeal and lavender soap. I tend to make this kind of soap without any colors so it looks pure and natural which a lot of people really like.

I have also blended lavender EO and Orange EO in a 50/50 blend. I really like this smell, but it didn't hit the charts when it came to sales so I fazed that one out. Has anyone else got a lavender blend that was an outstanding seller? Care to share?

Please post your suggestions!

Essential Oils and Soap

Boy do I have a lot to post on essential oils.....it's exciting. I have met a certified aromatherapist that I just adore. She has created an incredible line of products and I am so excited about her essential oil blends. Here's why.....

If you have noticed, fragrance oils cost a lot of money and they are synthetic, not natural. But investing the money into many different essential oils and experimenting with blending them just never appealed to me. I blended a few essential oils that I liked, but I had several combinations that smelled horrible. So I still have about 12 essential oils sitting on my shelf that are doing nothing (I can assure you they cost a couple hundred dollars). None of them smells good on their own....what to do?

What do you do with a blend that doesn't smell good? It is a waste of time, money, and product. I know many soapers use those blends anyway so they aren't out money, but I wonder if those soaps sell at all. I smell a lot of soap everywhere I go to see how it smells. There are lots of soaps that smell just awful. Wouldn't it be wonderful to get some beautiful blended oils that would appeal to a large audience of people? And wouldn't it be great to know the benefit of the blend? I'm honestly looking for feedback here!!

Most websites sell pure essential oils, but I really haven't found anyplace that carries blends that I really wanted to use in my soap. So......I am going to work with this aromatherapist to develop blends that are suitable for cold process soap. I think there is a market for this. What do you think?

Anyway, I've always had several essential oil soaps in my line, but also carried Bath & Body Works or Victoria's Secret's fragrances because they always sold well. I plan to experiment with these essential oil blends and will let you know what I think (you never know how the lye will react with anything, but I haven't had too much trouble with essential oils before).

So, I'll keep you posted!!!

Disappointment Turns to Profit

I thought I'd post a picture of a soap I created that I initially believed turned out disappointingly. This soap is a seasonal soap I make for Christmas. It uses the Sweetcakes fragrance oil called Christmas Spice. Not reading the description very well I didn't notice it had vanilla in the fragrance. Vanilla will always turn your soap brown. SO what I had envisioned:

a creamy white soap with a green and red swirl (beautiful for Christmas!)

What I got:

brown soap with a green and red swirl.

Well, I took the soap to market anyway and sold out. In fact it sold so fast that I have never changed the way I make this soap. The green and red are made from pigments that I had originally bought from the pigment lady on-line. She is no longer in business, but I do recommend getting pigments from Brambleberry now. I'm not sure they have the crimson pigment or the jade pigment I used for this soap, but if they get enough requests perhaps they will carry it. Also they may have colors that will get similar results.

To make this soap I took a couple of cups of soap out of the main pot at light trace and mixed the pigment into them (each color needs its own little container to mix in). Then I poured the main soap into the mold. After pouring the soap into the mold I then poured each green and red into the soap and swirled a little with a stainless steel knife. I emphasize a little because if you swirl too much the color gets blended in and I really wanted a more chunky swirl (which is why I didn't pour the color into the pot before pouring into the mold).

This soap sells well in the fall where I live. I live in the north where Christmas time is coooold and people do lots of holiday baking and this soap is reminiscent of delicious baked goods.

Soap Color Dyes

I was recently asked where to find good soap color dyes. I had always bought my dyes from the Pigment Lady, but she has closed her doors. It took some investigating, but I am very pleased with my results. I would recommend buying pigments from Brambleberry. They carry the same products that I used to be able to buy from the Pigment Lady.

First let me say that there are a lot of spices that dye cold-processed soap very naturally and beautifully and I would highly recommend using spices. But if you want a color you cannot achieve with a spice look at Brambleberry's Mica powders. You need to read the fine print (just like with the fragrances) to be sure the item works properly with cold-process soap. If it says it doesn't work, then don't waste your money....it won't work! I like micas because like spices they are natural. Nothing artificial.

Your next choice may be an oxide. Oxides are not my favorite because I don't really care for the artificial look of many of the colors, but some color blends are very pretty. I prefer colors that are softer versus colors that are neon brite!

Brambleberry does have an instruction page linked to the Micas and Pigments page so be sure to read that, but you will have to learn how much dye you like according to some experimenting. I usually use very little for one batch of soap (maybe only 1/4 or 1/2 tsp.) so error on too little if you are experimenting. Just make sure you WRITE everything down. I guarantee you won't remember the next time unless you do (ask me how I know).

I hope this helps get you pointed in a good direction for soap color dyes.

How to Make Soap

I Finally Did It!

I finally got the monumental job of transferring all my information from my old blog at www.homeschoolblogger.com/milksuds to this blog. It is such a relief that I cannot tell you. For a long time now I have been sending people to my old blog to dig up information. The old blog required a pretty extensive knowledge base of html code. All I know about html code is self taught so that is not much information! I didn't know how to properly organize all the information and I felt terrible asking them to dig through the archives. Blogger makes blogging easy with their neat little wigits and gadgets and such! Now everything is labelled -- neat and tidy and information should be easy to find!

Please be sure to subscribe to the blog and also subscribe to my new yahoo group.

Here are the details on Milksuds yahoo group:
Group home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/milksuds
Group email address: milksuds@yahoogroups.com

The yahoo group is only available to individuals who have purchased the on-line/DVD video or my e-book which is soon to be released. This is in an attempt to keep things manageable on my end. I really have thought it would be neat to have a forum for people to share their thoughts, ideas, successes and failures. Don't you think it will be valuable to get input from other soap makers who began just as you did?


On the yahoo group note....make sure you sign up for the individual posts instead of the digest as I don't think (I could be wrong) there will be so many individual emails that it will bombard your inbox.

I certainly hope this organization helps you out!

New Soap Making Book Coming Soon!

I don't really consider myself a procrastinator....only a person who sometimes takes on too many things. I am my happiest when I am busy so taking on many things is a joy to me. The only problem is that sometimes completion can take a long time. And thus is the story on the well intentioned soap making ebook.
I spent a lot of time in December working on this project because I felt I really needed to get it completed before I embarked on another project. I have recenlty been asked to write a few chapters for another book as well, so I really can't dilly around any longer. But.....I have to say another part of my lollygagging was the fact that I didn't really think this book was needed. Boy am I wrong. I spent an hour on the phone yesterday with one of my soap dvd purchasers trying to help her navigate through the world of colorants.
So now I am more convinced than ever that soap makers are a creative lot, but they are also smart and would appreciate a short cut to getting a successful business up and running. This one particular soap maker called me when she encountered another failed batch of soap (out of many in a row). The recipe was awesome, but the color was hideous. So she felt as though she couldn't sell it and make money....thus more wasted money on trial and error. So far she has invested about $1000 and would like to start recouping that investment and make real money.
So with new determination, I am working on finishing up the ebook that gives you an outline on how to shortcut setting up a profitable business. This book is a guide and you can certainly use your own creativity, but when you know for sure you would like to have a profitable business, following my suggestions will at least get you going with sellable products. Then use your creativity for extra soaps or seasonal soaps. So watch for a nearing completion date and special introductory pricing.
Enjoy your day!