That’s right, another post about soap. This will be the last one for a while, until I experiment and formulate a few new things. Oddly enough, me and the husband have started watching that old TV show “Soap” on Netflix. I really do have soap on the brain. More photos of my new hobby…
Welcome to my soap and beauty product hutch. I found this metal pantry for $25 at the thrift store and bought it right up. It’s 5 feet tall and has little shelves in the doors which are great for holding all my fragrance and essential oils. Then it’s stuffed with vegetable oils, lye, sugar & salt (for scrubs) and all kinds of mixing apparatus – most of which was purchased at various thrift stores around town.
My great husband salvadged an old kitchen cabinet and hung it sideways on the basement wall next to the soap cabinet. (wasn’t that sweet?) I put some wire cooling racks and brown paper in there to make a curing rack where the soaps can dry out for several weeks.
Here are those same soaps from the curing rack placed nicely on some background paper. Clockwise from top left: chocolate soap, blackberry soap, lime patchouli with hemp, goatsmilk round, castile.
Oh yeah, I also made some pure coconut oil soap for household cleaning. I shredded and chopped it up in the food processor, then add it to borax and washing soda for a homemade laundry detergent. So far, so good on that endeavor. But I admit I haven’t done much laundry lately. (The bag of soap still looks like cheese to me – must be because I live in Wisconsin with all the cheeseheads)
But the handmade soaps for hand and body are going GREAT! I’m really getting off on washing my hands these days. It’s pretty weird. I made some paper wrappers for soaps to send to my parents.
I’ve also been playing around with lip balm, sugar scrubs and shampoos. But I don’t have any photos for those because there is nothing pretty yet. The lip balm is very nice, but I need nicer labels before I can show them off. (and since I don’t need 1000 pages of labels – that won’t be happening any time soon.)
For my next trick…I’ll be experimenting with solid shampoo bars and solid hair conditioner. Sounds crazy? Lush makes solid shampoo and GetLathered does a good business selling her solid shampoo on Etsy. I’m pretty excited to try out my own version and share my experimental results. These are not soap, but shampoo detergents in solid form. There are many people selling soap bars for washing hair – those don’t work for me because soap is too alkaline and damages hair. The shampoo bars are made from mild detergents along with many conditioning ingredients. My ingredient shipment is due any day. And after ordering my ingredients I realized I will have all the materials to make a lotion from scratch. Oil + water + emulsifier + stirring = lotion. Yep, I’ll be playing around with that as well.
But before I share all those fun experiments, I PROMISE to post SOMETHING sewing related in the next post. I just don’t know when that will be. 
I feel like a kid with a new chemistry set!
June 30th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
I don’t mind lots of soap posts. The blackberry sounds lovely.
I’ve never found a bar soap that doesn’t dry out my skin and leave me itchy, including amongst etsy sellers. I wonder, if the solid shampoo is milder, how it would work on skin?
June 30th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Ditto. If you’re into it, keep the soap posts coming! Excited for your new medium. : )
June 30th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Now I have to go visit Mom and use her soap!
June 30th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Corvus, it might be a high percentage of coconut oil that is drying your skin with handmade soaps. Even with a superfatted soap (where there is oil left over in the soap bar) I still find too much coconut oil in the recipe dries out the backs of my hands.
The shampoo bar could also work for skin, but it has expensive conditioners which make it overkill for skin. If you want – contact me through the blog and let me know what you currently use. You might be a good tester for me!
July 3rd, 2010 at 11:23 am
It all looks so wonderful and something I want to learn. Good thing I have NO space to make soap.
July 7th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
This is good stuff! I am eager to hear about your experiments, especially with lip balm and solid shampoo. I can’t ever find a balm with a touch of color that is good enough and I’ve been thinking about making my own. Same with the shampoo bars. I got one from Lush, but it stripped my hair. It would be nice to have a good quality, gentle bar I could take when I travel and not futz around with TSA. The soap look good in their drying home, too.
July 8th, 2010 at 7:04 am
Wow, that’s some storage cabinet… and, your soaps look delicious.
Someone should tell Lynda she should visit her Mom, soap or no soap!
July 16th, 2010 at 3:23 am
Your soap looks so good. I can smell it already. I am sure that it is made perfectly for our skin. The blackberry sounds so cool. I wish I can buy one of your soap.
August 1st, 2010 at 8:22 am
Welcome to the world of soapmaking. I started soaping as a business about 12 years ago, after working at the hobby level for some time. Now I”m back to hobby level, simply because I love every single bar of soap I make – they’re my babies! – and I want to keep feeling that way. I’m a sewer & crafter too. There’s room for all of it! Looks like some lovely soaps, and I’m really intrigued with the idea of lining with fabric.