I've been on a soap making frenzy this past week. I've got to make another basic soap batch again on Monday, just to keep up with orders. Such fun - I experimented with using oxide powders to colour the soaps - I entered my first attempt at kaleidoscope buttermilk soap won 2nd place at a supply company here in Peterborough! Wowie!
Other bars I need someone to trial for me (any volunteers?) are Avocado-Buttermilk; Bananarama (banana, pineapple and papaya and yogurt); Lemon-Ginger; Himalayan Salt-Crust Clove; Strawberry Cream (thanks to California's strawberry growers!); Minty Carrot and Patchouli.

Avocado-Buttermilk. Using the basic handmilled recipe, replace the water content with buttermilk. Avocado oil and 1/2 mashed avocado are added during the melting process, and 1tsp. borax (which helps keep the fresh ingredients from spoiling before the soap is properly dried.) I kept the fragrance simple with just vanilla.

All of these new soaps are built around the basic handmilled process. I had so much fun experimenting with different ingredients. What is more, my customers at the Farmer's Market loved them too! If anybody wants the ingredients to make any of the others, just say so.

Loamy, you know I am a guinea pig for your mad scientist experiments...LOL! :^O But seriously. I will be an experimentee...If that is even a word...But I can't make them. My mom will KILL me if I destroy her precious stove...(and I mean that.)

I'll be a guinea pig! Avocado-buttermilk, please! (No alfalfa pellets, thank-you.) Lemon-ginger sounds good, too. And vanilla fragrance soap is something I could add to my collection -- real vanilla extract, or artificial?

My mom visited last weekend, and was impressed with your soaps (have one in every dish in the house), so I'm going to officially order a collection of decoratives as a gift to her. I expect you to take money for it! X-( I don't send out gifts to my family at gift-giving occasions, so when they discover something they like, I enjoy catching up. She liked the "textured" ones with the chunky ingredients, because they stimulated her hands whenever she used the sink. (You still do the cornmeal soap?)

I'm going to request non-lake soaps, however: those made with aluminum oxide powder to colour them. Those make just about every product from the bath product store Lush quite irritating to my skin. (It was a big let-down after the challenge of making it through the purchase of product in their preposterously perfumed premises!) I like the natural colours the best, anyway.

For more vegetable ingredients: have you considered attempting to get in on a "second harvest", where you go into a farmer's field and take the produce that he can't sell because it's got a couple of blemishes, or isn't the right shape? You'd probably get usable produce that even the second harvest pickers have to pass over.

Message was edited by: Elfie Elfie to add: CONGRATULATIONS on the prize! Prestige looks good on you.

No harm is done to the stove. I've got a brand new Whirlpool gas stove in my regular kitchen and I do not hestitate to make soap on it. Actually, the mess entailed really cleans the stove up nicely.
Potassium hydroxide, the liquid soap method, I would recommend using an electric stove, for safety's sake. I remember only too well getting flash fried. But even a ball of ignited alcohol vapours do no damage to the stove.

The vanilla is neither artificial or real extract, Elfie. It is three vanilla beans, chopped and stewed for four hours in 2 cups of jojoba oil. Ain't nothin' like the real thing, baby!
No lakes used, Elfie. Avocado was made marbled green with avocado peel and green mica. Powdered rock dust.
I used to be a big Lush fan myself, until I took their 'newspaper' and researched the ingredients. Propylene glycol, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, parabens. Their soap was most disappointing. It is not natural in any sense of the term.
Yes, Workhand soap is still being made here. It's DH's favourite for hand washing, tar and grease removal from both skin and dryer (he actually put a pair of tar-plastered sneakers in my brand new Maytag!) and cleans his tools and marked floor with it. I don't tell most customers all the uses he's done with it.
And yes, I have sourced alot of material from my fellow vendors at the Farmer's Market. Minty-Carrot, Maple Cream and my sunburn spray are current products. Since the Tomato soap has proved to be popular, I will have to get them from the Market, as I am not going to grow my tomatoes for soap exclusively!

Ya live and learn, as they say...

I learned something on the Avocado soap: don't place half-cured soaps on a rack outside when it is 33 degrees Celsius in the shade. They explode! No big bang, but the bottoms collapsed and the interior oozed out.
Solution: re-batch the soap, adding more basic Castile, and keep it indoors while curing!

I volunteer! And you can choose which to send if you decide to use me. (And I hope you do! Use me I mean! )

I love the sound of all the described combinations, so whatever you need tried, I'm game! e-mail me if interested!

I want to keep this up... I may want to try my hand at soap making now that I'm retiring!

You know, it may help to cure the soap in a small room that has a dehumidifier running. The soap in my basement bathroom is comfortably hard, but the soaps you made that are sitting in my kitchen, main floor bathroom, upstairs kids' bathroom, and my bathroom (FOUR FREAKING BATHROOMS in a tiny 1600sqft house!!! X-() are always soft.

Yet we have a problem with dampness in the basement, hence the dehumidifier.

And... you could probably use the very soft water collected in the next batch of soap. Or at the very least, to water your garden when a watering ban hits. B-)

Hey! This thread is back!

Yay! It once was lost, but now it's found. --J--

Bumping up for d in dixie to see.

Regarding base soap to water ratio when making handmilled bars:
340 grams (3/4 lbs.) grated soap to 255 grams (9 oz.)water.
453 grams (1 lb.) grated soap to 340 grams (12 oz.) water
680 grams (1-1/2 lbs.) grated soap to 510 grams (18 oz.) water
907 grams (2 lbs.) grated soap to 680 grams (24 oz.)
1.4 kilograms (3 lbs.) grated soap to 1 kilogram (36 oz.) water.
**Measure by weight, not by volume. A digital scale is most accurate.

You do not have to stick to plain water - use infusions (teas) of different botanicals to make different effects. However, if you plan to use say, cucumber pulp in your soap, count it as your water portion. When adding a liquid oil to your recipe, again, count it as the water portion. Solid oils, like cocoa, shea, mango butters are extra additives 2-3 tablespoons in the 340 gram soap mix is sufficient, to give a starting point.
Remember, too, that if you are adding DRY botanicals, they will absorb the water, so you want to have an extra bit of water ready.

MILK-BASE SOAP RECIPE:

You will need all soapmaking equipment, including a primary mold. This is a cold-process method.
Your milk must be forzen solid, then thawed completely to prepare it for soapmaking. Doing this will prevent the milk from clotting when it mixes with the lye. Failure to do this will result in ruined soap!
Use full-fat milk, not skimmed.

3lbs. (1.36 kg) pure vegetable shortening.
17 oz. (482 g) extra-light olive oil
12 oz. (341 g) safflower oil
8 oz. (227 g) canola oil
3 lbs. (1.36 kg) cold milk, prepared
12 oz. (312 g) pure sodium hydroxide - Lye
1 oz. (28.4 g) borax (borax keeps the milk from going sour during the curing time and makes for a harder finished bar)
1/2 oz. (7.1 g) white sugar
1/2 oz. (7.1 g) glycerin (found in pharmacies, health food stores and most craft suppliers)

Makes 32 4-Ounce bars.

Melt the shortening over an 8-quart saucepan, small canner, etc. Depth of the pot is more important than width. Keep heat on Low.

Add liquid oils to the melting shortening and continue to heat on low until everything is melted. Stir continuously to keep things from scorching. Remove from heat and set aside.

Prepare an ice-water bath by filling your sink with cold water and adding ice.
Place the prepared milk into a 4 quart saucepan (stainless is good). Put the pan with the milk in it into the sink bath and adjust water and ice level. Use filled cups and glasses around the pot to keep it from capsizing in the sink.

Wearing your safety glasses and gloves, weigh out the lye into a 16 oz. glass measuring cup.
Very slowly and steadily, pour the lye into the milk. Since you cannot see the crystals dissoliving, add small amounts of lye and stir very well before adding more. Dumping the whole lot of lye will super-heat the milk very quickly, and will burn it, so slow and through is the key here. The milk will change colour when the lye gets into it. Don't be alarmed if you get bright oranges and yellows! This is part of the chemical reaction, the saponification process and your finished soap will not be day-glo. This colour is actually a good sign - it means the lye and milk have successfully combined.
Use your candy thermometer to make sure the temperature of the milk-lye mix does not go below 80 degrees Farenheit (27 degrees Celsius). Keep stirring! The idea is to keep the milk cool enough not to scorch, but warm and mobile enough to keep it from turning into soap too soon. If things are getting too cool, lift the pot out of the water bath.

Put your pot of oils back on low heat and simmer until the thermometer reads 125 F (52 C). Turn off the heat when this temp is reached.
While stirring continuously, flowly pour the lye/milk mix into the oils.

Add the borax, sugar and glycerin now, still stirring. The mix may want to keep seperating on you, but keep the faith and keep stirring. An electric stick blender, with an all-metal shaft and assembly makes quick work out of this step.
Those without a stick blender can use a blender, speed-blending small amounts in it until all of the mixture has been through the thorough combining process. A mixmaster may be useful, but the level of soap must be well below the power unit (in this case, you'd be better off with a wide, shallow pot over the deep one).
The mixture will thicken to something like pudding, and the colour will be an off-white to light beige.
Pour in your primary mold and insulate it with old blankets and towels. Check the contents often during the curing process. If the mix is seperating, stir more. You may end up having to re-warm it on the stove and blend more if simple whisking doesn't do the trick.
When the soap is no longer warm and is solid, she's ready to unmold and shaped into bars, or used as the base soap in handmilled bars.

Any milk will do for this recipe. Cow is easiest to find, of course, but goat milk is popular too. Horse, camel, (maybe even dog milk!) can be used. Fat content is very important.
Raw milk, that is, unpasteurized, is preferable for soap making. Raw milk has a higher fat content.
It doesn't matter if the milk is homogenized or not. non-homogenized milk will have visible lumps of milk fat floating on the top. In goat milk, you won't see the fat so much as it has naturally small fat bits.
Whipping cream, Half and half, can replace some or all of the milk used in the recipe. Keep in mind that this knocks the milk-to-lye proportion out of whack and thus the combining stage. You may add extra lye if your math skills are up to snuff, or be prepared to skim off the un-used cream in the primary mold (throw this removed liquid out!).
Also, Canadian milk products are slightly richer than American dairy. So Cannucks should use less cream or get their calculators out to re-adjust the lye amount.
Powdered milk doesn't cut it at all.

BUMP. Remember this?

Bump from me too