Lavender Cream Soap Recipe - Cold Process
4 oz. olive oil
2.5 oz. coconut oil
1.5 oz. palm oil
1.12 oz. Lye
2.5 oz. lavender infused water
1 oz. half-n-half
1/4 fl. oz. lavender essential oil
1/4 tsp. freesia fragrance oil
Add the half-n-half to the lye water after it has disolved. Make as normal. The lavender water should have the flowers removed before using. All ingredients are by weight unless otherwise noted.
16 oz. pure olive oil
2 oz. Lye
6 oz. water
Heat oil to 150° and add the lye to the water slowly while stirring with a wooden spoon.Mix lye solution and oils when the oil is at 120-130° and the lye between 90-100°. Mix them together until it comes to a trace. Pour it into a mold and let set 72 hours before unmolding. You can add scents, colors, herbs, etc. at trace.
24 ounces of Olive Oil (Pomace or other inexpensive olive oil)
24 ounces of Coconut Oil
38 ounces of Lard
12 ounces of Lye
32 ounces of Water
1.6 ounces of Soap Crafters Cold Process Soap Fragrance
Tracing will happen in about 1 hour.
3 lbs. Crisco (1 can)
6 oz. Lye
12 oz. water
Melt/heat the Crisco in a enamel pan and place on stove to melt and heat.
Place cold water in a glass bowl and slowly add lye while stirring with a wooden. Stir until water is clear if you can.
When the Crisco and lye are warm to the touch, pour lye into Crisco while stirring. Keep stirring until you get trace.
Trace is when it thickens to the point where you can drop some of the mix back in to itself and it leaves a trail. At this point use any herbs, scent, or coloring and stir and pour mold(s). This recipe fits nicely in an 8x8 inch container, but other containers, such as pringles cans or specialty soap molds work just fine, too.
Put molds in a warm, insulated place, let set 24 hours and then cut. Place on to rack and let cure for 2-3 weeks.
48 ounces shortening
22 ounces coconut oil
16 ounces olive oil
24 oz. cold water
12 oz. lye crystals
Temperatures: around 100 degrees
After incorporating the lye solution with the oils, add:
12 oz. can evaporated milk, warmed (for lighter colored soap with firmer texture, you can use only 6 oz. evaporated milk and increase the water by 2-4 ounces)
1/4 cup honey, dissolved into milk (for a lighter color and less tendency to separate, you can cut this back to 1 T.)
At light trace, mix in:
3/4 oz. cinnamon oil
1/2 oz. clove oil
The essential oils will accelerate trace, so be prepared to quickly pour the soap when it starts to thicken. The milk will turn color as you watch after being added. Maybe if it had been cooler, it wouldn't have gotten quite so dark, but the color goes well with the spices. In the future, I will not insulate a batch like this until it begins to cool after going through the "gel" stage. Rachael had a different method for mixing her milk soap (on the Soaps Using Animal Fats page) and you might prefer to do it that way. Other people have used this method and it has worked fine...not sure what I did, but glad to be able to use the soap in the end. It will take longer to cure than some of the other batches, partly because of the extra water added during remelt and because of the milk content.
37 ounces soybean oil
24 ounces coconut oil
16 ounces olive oil
8 ounces avocado oil
12 ounces lye crystals
24 ounces cold water
Temperatures between 90 and 100 degrees.
Add at light trace:
1 oz. spearmint essential oil (2 T.)
1/2 oz. peppermint essential oil (1 T.)
1/4 oz. eucalyptus essential oil (1/2 T.)
After mixing in the essential oils at light trace and while the soap is thickening, but still rather pourable pour most of the soap into your large mold (this recipe didn't trace overly quick with the stick blender like some have). Leave about 1/8 or 1/10th of it in the pan.
To this, I added these, which were being kept warm and melted in a small measuring cup on the stove:
1/2 blue/green Crayola crayon
1/2 forest green Crayola crayon
A little bit of the original oils
Mix the coloring in thoroughly and well (I got a few bubbles in the soap while doing this with the blender) and drizzle this soap over the white soap in the mold, distributing it evenly over the top in back and forth motions. Then, take your spatula or a knife and run it back and forth through the soap, first one direction and then either in an opposite direction or on a diagonal. Try to reach the bottom and sides of your mold while doing this.
19.2 ounces Coconut oil
9.6 ounces Flax Seed oil
22.4 ounces Olive Oil
12.8 ounces Palm Oil
9.6 ounces Sodium Hydroxide
23 ounces water
10 tsp essential oil
Dissolve Sodium Hydroxide in water and allow to cool in safe place. Warm oils in large non-reactive pot,until solids are melted. When both mixtures have cooled to 95'carefully combine in large pot. Stir to trace. Stir in essential oil. Pour in large mold. I use a 13" square wooden wine box with a lid. Allow to sit undisturbed in warm area for 24 hours. Cut into bars place in cool, dry area for at least 3 weeks, turn bars over every few days for even drying. This recipe makes 4lbs of soap. I cut it into 24 bars.
12 oz. Lard
1.5 lbs. coconut oil
1.5 lbs. avocado oil
11 oz. Water
10 oz. Lye
10 oz. goats milk
1 tablespoon dill weed-finely chopped
1 tablespoon anise e.o.
3 tablespoons fennel e.o.
1 1/2 teaspoons grapefruit seed extract
Measure all ingredients. Melt lard and coconut oil. Set aside. Add lye to water. Add avocado oil to melted lard/coconut oil. Cool both the lye and the oils to 95 degrees. Warm the goats milk to 95 degrees. When all temperatures match add the goats milk to the lye water and stir slightly, add milk/lye mixture to oils, stir with a stick blender until trace. Quickly add dill weed, essential ois and grapefruit seed extract. Mix slighly with stick blender. Pour into prepared molds. This recipe makes almost 6 pounds.*This soap is naturally antibacterial because of the anise and fennel essential oils.
20.5 oz Coconut Oil
22.4 oz. Olive Oil
18 oz. Palm Oil
4 oz. Shea Butter
9.5 oz. Lye
16 oz. Water
8 oz. canned pumpkin
16 gm. grapefruit seed extract
4-6 oz. pumpkin pie fragrance oil
Disolve lye in water and set aside to cool(be sure to stir well - it's a dense solution). Warm the coconut, olive and palm oils and shea butter until melted. When both liquids have cooled to about 100 degrees carefully combine together. Add GSE and stir to light trace. Add the canned pumpkin and fragrance oil. Pour into a mold and allow to cure for 6 weeks.
Due to the addition of extra moisture it traces really fast. The final soap is closer in color to butternut squash than pumpkin. The shea butter makes it a very creamy soap.
14 oz tepid water
5.8 oz Lye
18 oz Coconut Oil
6 oz Palm Oil
12 oz Olive Oil
4 oz Jojoba Oil
1 oz Basil EO
1 oz dry-packed sun dried tomatoes finally chopped
2 TBS finely chopped basil leaves
1. Prepare Mold
2. Blend Water and Lye set aside to cool to 100 F
3. Melt Coconut and Palm Oils. Blend in Olive Oil and Jojoba Oil and either heat or cool so it reaches 100 F
4. Once Lye solution and Oil solutions are both 100 F, blend the lye solution into the oil solution.
5. Stire until it begins to trace and then add Basil EO, sun dried tomatoes and basil leaves. Stir thoroughly and pour into mold.
6. Set 12-18 hrs before cutting and cure 2-4 weeks
20 oz palm kernal oil
20 oz coconut oil
40 oz olive oil
30 oz buttermilk
11 oz lye
3 heaping Tbls bentonite clay
Heat oils to 100. Partially freeze buttermilk. Slowly add lye to milk, don't let it go over 100. Combine.
At trace: add 3.5 oz lavender eo, 3 Tbsp castor oil & 2 Tbsp sweet almond oil.
Coconut oil
Olive oil
Macadamia oil
Rice bran oil
Lye
water
At trace:
Caster oil
Calendula infused olive oil
Calendula petals
Blend of Bitter Orange, Sweet Orange and Bergamot EO
8 oz soft water
3 oz lye
7 oz crisco, palm oil or tallow
7 oz coconut oil
6 oz olive oil
1 oz jojoba oil
1 oz Bubble gum fragrance oil
Imperial Red Mica to color
Mix water and lye together. Let cool to 100 degrees. Blend oils together over a double boiler all except the essential/fragrance oil. Melt and cool to 100 degrees. Blend the lye mixture and oils together slowly and stir till it traces. Add the mica mixed with the fragrance oil so there are no clumps of mica. Pour in mold and wrap in blanket to keep temp at an even 100 degrees then insert thermometer to keep track. When it gets to 80 degrees it's ready to unmold, cut and let rest for 2 weeks to cure.
4.8 oz olive oil
4.8 oz coconut oil
3.2 oz shea butter
3.2 oz palm oil
6oz distilled water
2.2oz of lye
.8oz essential oil
Follow your basic soap recipe. I melt the Shea Butter in the microwave for about 20 seconds or so it doesn't take long. and I add it along with the other oils.
This recipe will produce 4-6 bars depending on the size of your molds. I think these bars are simliar to the lquid soap they sell at bath and body works that has the shea butter in it.
24 hours in Advance: 1/2 tsp. Tea Tree Essential Oil 1/4 tsp. Rosemary Essential Oil ¼ tsp. Lime Essential Oil
6.4 oz. Goats milk - Put in freezer till slushy.
2.4 oz. Lye
Place lye solution in ice water bath and stir till dissolved...keep in there, adding more ice if necessary.
4.8 oz. Coconut Oil
1.6 oz. Palm Oil
9.6 oz. Olive Oil
Mix together when temps are 95*
1/8 tsp. Olive Green Powdered Colorant (mixed with 1 tsp. water)
Kelp would be nice...
2 tsp. Dried and Crushed Spearmint (Or substitute with other variety of mint if you like)
Animalistic
Ingredients: Allspice FO, Patchouli FO, Spiced Bay FO, Woodsmoke FO, Hazelnut FO, Vetivert EO, Cypress EO, Clary Sage EO, Cedar EO, opaque white melt and pour soap base, ground nutmeg, soap colorants, cooking spray. Lightly spray the soap mold with cooking spray and wipe with paper towel to remove the excess.
Instructions:
1. Mix a blend of fragrance oils in the following proportions: 1 part Allspice FO, 1 part Patchouli FO, 1 part Spiced Bay FO, 8 parts Woodsmoke FO and 16 parts Hazelnut FO. Mix another blend of essential oils in the following proportions: 1 part Vetivert, 1 part Cypress, 2 parts Clary Sage, and 2 parts Cedarwood.
2. Melt 1 1/2 cups (quantity is after melting) of opaque white melt and pour soap base in one microwaveable glass measuring cup, and melt the same amount in another microwaveable glass measuring cup. Color one batch ochre yellow and one light brown. Add 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg to each batch. Add 30 drops of the first fragrance blend to one, and 20 drops to the other.
3. Try to keep both cups close to the same temperature, but they don't have to be exact. When a skin starts to form on top, pour both colors simultaneously into each mold cavity. Swirl a stick once in each cavity to mix colors slightly.
4. Unmold bars and repeat until you have used all the soap you mixed up.
Dog Soap Bar
Flea-repelling soap with a cute dog bone suspended in clear soap base. Safe for human use too as an antibacterial and insect-repelling soap bar. NOT FOR USE ON CATS.
Ingredients: Clear melt and pour soap base, opaque white and off-white melt and pour soap base, Desert Essence Tea Tree Oil, Peppermint essential oil, cooking spray for mold release, 70% isopropyl alcohol in a spray bottle.
Instructions:
1. Line a glass baking dish with aluminum foil. Fill to a depth of about 1" with small pieces of white and off-white opaque soap base.
2. Turn your oven on it's lowest setting. Put the baking dish full of soap pieces in, and check it about every five minutes until the soap melts enough to slump into a flat mass, melted just enough to be mostly flat, but not melted so much that the interesting confetti effect disappears. In my oven this took about 10 minutes.
3. Carefully remove the baking dish and allow to cool until the soap has cooled and hardened.
4. Turn the baking dish over onto a clean cutting board to let the contents fall out, and peel the foil away. Now you have a flat slab of soap that is ready to be cut into inserts. Decide whether the top or bottom is the most interesting (I find it's usually the top) and lay the slab on the cutting board with the interesting side up.
5. With the medium sized cutter from the Fox Run Dog Bone Cookie Cutter Set, cut shapes out of the slab and set aside.
6. Select a soap mold that you like to use for clear bars with inserts - usually one with individual bar cavities and a plain smooth surface. I used an oval mold for my bars.
7. Lightly spray the insides of the cavities of your mold with cooking spray. Wipe out the excess cooking spray with a paper towel. If your mold does not sit flat and level on the work surface, balance the mold on the bottoms of four identical upturned shot glasses (or any four small objects with flat bottoms of identical height) to keep the mold as stable and level as possible. It will make the pouring a lot easier.
8. Melt some clear soap base and add Peppermint and Tea Tree essential oils in amounts recommended by the manufacturer.
9. When the soap starts to form a skin on top, remove the skin then fill one of the bar cavities 1/3 full of the clear mixture. Spray with alcohol or Bubble Buster to break any bubbles that might be on the surface. Add a soap bone and push down into the clear if one end floats up. Repeat for each cavity. Let bars sit until the first pour layer is solid.
10. To add another layer and finish up the bars, spritz with the alcohol or Bubble Buster, and add more clear.
11. Let the mold sit undisturbed until the soap is hard. To be safe wait until the soap has cooled off completely and then wait some more. It will be worth the wait!
12. Pop the bars out of the mold and enjoy!
Bayberry and Vanilla Soap Bar
A simple technique that does not take away from the detailed mold, with a scent that is particularly nice at Christmas time.
Ingredients: Clear melt and pour soap base, opaque white melt and pour soap base, bayberry fragrance, vanilla fragrance, soap colorants, cooking spray for mold release.
Instructions:
1. Choose a fairly detailed soap mold and lightly spray with cooking spray. I used a geometric candy mold for this example. Wipe away the excess oil with a paper towel.
2. Mix two batches of soap base - one lime green and one a darker grass green. Adding some clear with the opaque makes a pleasant translucent effect. My lime green mix was about 1/4 clear and my darker green mix 1/2 clear.
3. In amounts recommended by the manufacturer, add bayberry fragrance to one color and vanilla to the other.
4. Simultaneously pour both colors into the mold cavities.
5. Let the mold sit undisturbed until the soap is hard. To be safe wait until the soap has cooled off completely and then wait some more. It will be worth the wait!
6. Pop the bars out of the mold and enjoy!
Antibacterial Soap Bar
Ingredients: Clear melt and pour soap base, opaque melt and pour soap base, green coloring, dried eucalyptus leaves, Polysorbate 20, Goat Milk Powder, Stearic Acid, Eucalyptus essential oil, Desert Essence Tea Tree Oil.
Instructions:
1. To make the green batch, put a small handful of eucalyptus leaves into a spice grinder and grind into a powder.
2. Melt some clear melt and pour soap base, and add green coloring and the eucalyptus powder. Set aside.
3. To make the white batch melt some opaque melt and pour soap base, and add, in amounts recommended by the manufacturer, Polysorbate 20, Goat Milk Powder, Stearic Acid, Eucalyptus essential oil, and tea tree essential oil.
4. Remelt the green batch and try to get the green and white batches ready to pour and roughly the same temperature. They don't have to be exactly the same temperature, just liquid and pourable.
5. Pour both colors simultaneously into a rectangular loaf mold.
6. Let the mold sit undisturbed until the soap is hard. To be safe wait until the soap has cooled off completely and then wait some more. It will be worth the wait!
7. Pop the bars out of the loaf mold and slice with a serrated cutter. Enjoy!
Embedded Confetti Flowers Soap Bar
Here is a slightly different take on making inserts for clear melt and pour soap. If you've been making soap for awhile, particularly if you mix up batches of colors for loaf soap inserts, you probably have odds and ends of colors left over.
Ingredients: Clear melt and pour soap base, opaque melt and pour soap base, leftover chunks of colored soap from previous projects, Lavender Fragrance Oil, Vanilla Lavender Fragrance Oil, cooking spray for mold release, 70% isopropyl alcohol in a spray bottle or Bubble Buster.
Instructions:
1. Line a glass baking dish with aluminum foil. Fill to a depth of about 1" with pieces of colored soap, both clear and opaque, left over from previous soap projects. If you don't have leftover pieces available, you can mix up three or more batches of color, let harden, then cut them up and put them in the baking dish.
2. Turn your oven on it's lowest setting. Put the baking dish full of soap pieces in, and check it about every five minutes until the soap melts enough to slump into a flat multicolored mass, melted just enough to be mostly flat, but not melted so much that the interesting multicolored confetti effect disappears. In my oven this took about 10 minutes.
3. Carefully remove the baking dish and allow to cool until the soap has cooled and hardened.
4. Turn the baking dish over onto a clean cutting board to let the contents fall out, and peel the foil away. Now you have a flat slab of soap that is ready to be cut into inserts. Decide whether the top or bottom is the most interesting (I find it's usually the top) and lay the slab on the cutting board with the interesting side up.
5. With the metal pastry, canape, or cookie cutters of your choice, cut shapes out of the slab and set aside. Plastic cookie cutters are not sturdy enough to cut the soap without breaking.
6. Select a soap mold that you like to use for clear bars with inserts - usually one with individual bar cavities and a plain smooth surface. Here are links to some examples of suitable molds for this project:
7. Lightly spray the insides of the cavities of your mold with cooking spray. Wipe out the excess cooking spray with a paper towel. If your mold does not sit flat and level on the work surface, balance the mold on the bottoms of four identical upturned shot glasses (or any four small objects with flat bottoms of identical height) to keep the mold as stable and level as possible. It will make the pouring a lot easier.
8. Melt some clear soap base and add fragrances in amounts recommended by the manufacturer. I used one part Lavender and one part Vanilla Lavender.
9. When the soap starts to form a skin on top, remove the skin then fill one of the bar cavities 1/3 full of the clear mixture. Spray with alcohol or Bubble Buster to break any bubbles that might be on the surface. Add some of the cut out insert pieces. Repeat for each cavity. Let bars sit until the first pour layer is solid.
10. To add another layer and finish up the bars, spritz with the alcohol or Bubble Buster, and add a layer of a contrasting color or more clear. I used a pearly white in my sample.
11. Let the mold sit undisturbed until the soap is hard. To be safe wait until the soap has cooled off completely and then wait some more. It will be worth the wait!
12. Pop the bars out of the mold and enjoy!
Wood and Spice Fragrance Pastilles and Car Air Freshener Trees
Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 tsp alum
1/4 cup wallpaper paste
1/4 cup Sage leaves
1 TBSP ground Nutmeg
1 TBSP ground Sage
1 TBSP Orris Root Powder
1 TBSP ground Cinnamon
1 TBSP Cedarwood essential oil
1 TBSP Northwoods fragrance oil
1/4 tsp brown oxide powdered soap colorant
Sandalwood Powder
Instructions:
1. Crumble the dried Sage leaves into a glass microwave-safe measuring cup. Add 1 cup of water, and heat in the microwave for approximately three minutes.
2. Add all the other dry ingredients except for the Sandalwood powder to a large bowl that can withstand having near-boiling water poured into it. Mix well.
3. Remove the measuring cup from the microwave, and strain out the sage pieces while pouring 2/3 of the water in the cup into the bowl of dry ingredients. Mix dough together, adding more of the sage-infused water if it is needed to make the dough workable.
4. Sprinkle some Sandalwood powder on a flat work surface, as you would lay down flour when making cookies or pie crust. Sprinkle more Sandalwood powder on top, and roll dough out with a rolling pin, to somewhere in the vicinity of 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick.
5. Apply more Sandalwood powder to the top of the dough, then stamp randomly with decorative rubber stamps. For my samples, I used these stamps from Carolyn's Stamp Store: Line Drawing with Double Spiral, Line Drawing with Squigglies and Shape Stripes.
6. If you want to make tree-shaped car air fresheners, cut out tree shapes with a cookie cutter. If you want to make fragrance pastilles or fragrant ornaments, cut out shapes of your choice with cookie cutters or canape cutters. Poke a hole toward the top of any shapes that you want to attach a hanging loop too. Place finished cutout shapes on a cookie sheet to dry.
7. When the dough shapes are completely dry, which will probably take several days, brush any excess Sandalwood powder off with a clean paintbrush and store shapes in a plastic zip-lock bag until you're ready to use them.
8. For ornaments or air fresheners, attach a hanging loop with cord. You can embellish the cord with beads if you want to.
9. The fragrance pastilles can be used alone or added to a potpourri mix such as the one below. Make sure they are safely away from anyone who might mistake them for edible cookies!
Basil and Citrus Potpourri
Ingredients: Dried leaves of Rosemary, Lemon Balm, Lime Balm, Korean Hyssop, Red Rubin Basil and Sweet Basil, Rosemary Essential Oil, Lemon Essential Oil, Basil Essential Oil, Lemongrass Essential Oil, Juicy Lime Fragrance Oil, Orange Essential Oil (Citrus aurantium), lemon peel, lime peel, orange peel and Wood and Spice Fragrance Pastilles.
Instructions:
1. Grow or otherwise obtain two handfuls of each of the following dried leaves: Rosemary, Lemon Balm, Lime Balm, Korean Hyssop, Red Rubin Basil and Sweet Basil. The herbs I used for this particular batch were home-grown. Put the leaves into a large container that has a tight-fitting lid.
2. Add several drops of each essential and fragrance oil and shake or stir the contents. Smell the mixture and see if it is strong enough. If it's not, repeat until you are satisfied with the fragrance.
3. Peel several limes, lemons, and oranges. Cut the peels into thin strips and set out on a cookie sheet for several days to dry. When the peels are throughly dry, add them to your mix. If you need a use for the juice of the lemons and limes, here is a tasty cookie recipe.
4. Optional: Display potpourri in an open decorative container and place a few fragrance pastilles on top.
On The Santa Fe Trail Soap Bar
Ingredients: Natural White MP Soap Base, cooking spray for mold release (soybean oil, soy lecithin, water, propellant), Polysorbate 20, Leather fragrance oil, cosmetic grade colorants, home grown yucca root, home grown sage (salvia officinalis), Fruit Fresh (Dextrose, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Citric Acid, Silicon Dioxide), 70% isopropyl alcohol and Bubble Buster.
Instructions:
1. Spray the insides of the cavities of a Horse soap mold with cooking spray. Wipe out the excess cooking spray with a paper towel. Balance the horse mold on the bottoms of four identical upturned shot glasses (or any four small objects with flat bottoms of identical height) to keep the mold as stable and level as possible. It will make the pouring a lot easier.
2. On the first pour we'll fill in only the details of the horse portrait and rope border. Melt some opaque white soap base, and color with brown soap coloring to make light brown. Add leather fragrance and Polysorbate 20 in amounts recommended by the manufacturer. Pour into the horse soap mold filling only the horse and rope portions of the design. Let this layer harden.
3. While the light brown pour is hardening, grind some dried yucca root pieces and dried sage pieces in spice grinder as finely as you can get them. Sift the ground pieces through a fine meshed strainer to remove any large pieces that might remain to get a fine powder to add to your soap. Discard the sifted out large pieces or save them to use for something else.
4. When the light brown layer is hard enough to handle without damage, inspect your pour for any light brown drips or spills that are outside the rope and horse portions of the mold. You might be skilled enough not to have any drips where you don't want them, but I'm not! If there are any, you can remove them by cutting around them with the tip of a knife that is not sharp enough to damage the mold, and gently pulling the unwanted pieces up. They should come up easily due to the earlier application of the cooking spray. Some unwanted bits might come up more easily by scraping them with a piece of cut-up credit card.
5. Melt some more opaque white soap base, and color it a light tan-yellow color. Make sure it's lighter enough in color than the brown layer to create enough contrast to show the design. Add Polysorbate 20 and Leather fragrance in amounts recommended by the manufacturer. Add approx 1/4 tsp Fruit Fresh and 1 TBSP combined yucca root and sage powder to about 1 1/2 cups of melted soap.
6. Spray the brown pour layer with alcohol or Bubble Buster, and fill the remaining space in the mold cavities with the light yellow mixture.
7. Let the bars cool, then unmold and enjoy.
Cream of Celery Soap Bar
A fresh green color and fragrance will cheer you as you wash if you can't wait for spring to get here!
Ingredients: Commercial crafting soap base (Life of the Party Cool Soap Base, Life of the Party Avocado Cucumber Soap Base, Soapcrafters Glycerin Melt & Pour Clear), celery, contents of vitamin E capsule, Polysorbate 20, Ros