Seaside Abalone Soap Recipe

Seaside Abalone Soap

 

I really enjoyed making this soap. I made a small 3 LB test batch to try out Crafter's Choice Abalone Fragrance.

Abalone are found in the Ocean. They are very beautiful and reflective on the inside, a lot like Mother of Pearl, Abalone looks kind of iridescent.

The colors I used were inspired by Abalone, to match the fragrance oil.

I designed this recipe with the pretty abalone swirl in mind. Believe it or not, this batch has been a few weeks in the making. 

I used several colors of mica in this soap. because some of the soap was just mixed to thin trace and poured into condiment bottles, I had to design a soap recipe that would not get thick too fast.

I dispersed the mica 1tsp at a time, into 1 TBS of sunflower oil. I added the colored sunflower oil to the condiment bottles and pyrex cups prior to making the soap. Each bottle or cup got 1 tsp.

It added up to 2oz of sunflower oil (justfor the colors)

 Be sure to include the sunflower oil used to disperse the pigment into your recipe.

 You must account for this added oil or you could end up with soap that is too soft.

In this Cold Process Recipe, due to the many colors, the sunflower added up to 2 oz.

This would make a HUGE difference in your lye calculations!

ALWAYS, I can not say this enough, ALWAYS check your recipe YOURSELF with a lye calculator!

I use www.soapcalc.com

Be it human error or straight up sabotage, there are soap recipes out there that are IMPOSSIBLE, or at the very least TERRIBLE! 

Lye calculations in soap making are imperative. Too much lye in your soap will make it super harsh.

Not enough Lye, and the oils do not all saponify (turn to soap) and them you have soft, greasy soap that will never set up.

  Here are some pics, and I will be posting complete instructions tonight.

This cold process recipe I came up with might be my new favorite soap recipe.

It gelled nicely, was hard enough to cut about 12 hrs later, and the colors are the prettiest I have done so far.

Abalone Cold Process Soap

Abalone Soap Just After Being Poured into the Soap Mold

Abalone Soap After it Cooled

Abalone Soap Cut into Bars

Beautiful Cold Process Abalone Soap

This soap contains sea clay, which is great for your skin!

Made with all natural ingredients. 

Seaside Abalone Soap Recipe

6.25% or 2 oz Sunflower Oil
*Take out 4 1/2 TBSP Sunflower oil to use in dispersing mica coloring 

3.13% or 1 oz Cocoa Butter
6.25% or 2 oz Soybean Oil
25% or 8 oz Olive Oil
28.13% or 9 oz Coconut Oil-76'
18.75% or 6 oz Palm Oil
6.25% or 2 oz Castor Oil
3.13% or 2 oz Avocado Oil
 Seaside Abalone Fragrance 2 oz
2 tsp Sodium Lactate (optional) recommended with silicone molds
 1 tsp Titanium Dioxide-dispersed in 1 TBSP Sunflower Oil*
1 tsp Blue Oil Locking Mica-dispersed in 1 TBSP Sunflower Oil*
1 tsp Blue Ultra Marina-dispersed in 1 TBSP Sunflower Oil*
1 tsp Black Oxide-dispersed in 1 TBSP Sunflower Oil*
1 tsp Sea Clay dispersed in 1 TBSP water
1 tsp Gold Mica Shimmer dispersed in 1/2 TBSP Sunflower Oil*

Water/Liquid 12.16 oz
Lye 4.54 oz by 
5 (Soap Safe)  Cups to divide Soap- Solo Cups work great!
1 Condiment Bottle

SAFETY FIRST!!!!

Directions: Before beginning this recipe, please take a moment to read through to the end.

Also make sure you are experienced and aware of the safety precautions you must take when working with Lye and Oils.

1. Carefully, add measured Lye crystals to Distilled Water. Stir Carefully, and set aside in a SAFE place out of the way of the next few steps...

2. Combine hard oils (Coconut Oil, Cocoa Butter and Palm Oil) into a large microwave safe cup, I use a 8 Cup Glass Pyrex Cup. Microwave for about 1 minute, stir gently. Microwave for additional 30 second intervals until all hard oils are melted.

3. Add remaining Oils to melted hard oils (make sure to keep the 3 TBSP Sunflower out of the batch, you will need that later. If it's too late, don't worry, you will have an additional 3 TBSP in your final recipe but it will be okay....

4. Now you have melted hard oils plus remaining liquid oils all in one big Microwave safe cup... Put the oils back into the microwave for another 30 seconds or so.

5. PREPARE YOUR COLORS

a).Let's call this- Cup #1   Add Titanium Dioxide to 1 of the reserved TBSP Sunflower Oil

b)Cup #2 Add Blue Oil Locking Mica to another 1 of the reserved TBSP Sunflower Oil 

c) Cup #3 Add Blue Ultra Marine to the 3rd reserved 1 TBSP Sunflower oil

d) Cup #4 Add Black Oxide to 1 TBSP reserved Sunflower Oil*

e) Cup #6 Add 1 TBSP Distilled Water to 1 tsp Sea Clay

f) To Condiment Bottle Add 1/2 tsp Gold Mica Shimmer dispersed in 1/2 TBSP Sunflower Oil* 

These will make your 6 colors

TIME TO CHECK YOUR TEMPS

Your lye water should be cooling off some by now, you want the lye water to cool to 120-125 degrees

Once Lye has cooled you can stir in 2 tsp Sodium Lactate (optional) to help make a harder bar and easier to unmold

Try to warm up your Oils to match the Lye Temp.

Once both Oil and Lye water cools to the 120'-125' range, you can

SLOWLY add the lye water to the oils. Pour carefully, down the stick of your blender or spatula to reduce air bubbles in your batter.

Stick blend for just a few seconds and STOP while your soap is at thin trace. 

You just want the oils and lye water mixed enough that they won't separate. 

You can test this by leaving the batter to rest for 5 minutes, if oil floats to the top and separates, you need to stir a little more. They need to be emulsified, that is, mixed beyond the point of separating.

Once you are sure you have completely emulsified your lye water and oils, pour soap batter into Condiment Bottle about 1/4 full.

Divide remaining Batter between your 5 prepared Cups. It is okay to estimate, you do not need these to be exact. Stir each Cup of soap to incorporate the color, then add Fragrance to each Cup.

DO NOT STICK BLEND AFTER YOU HAVE ADDED FRAGRANCE OR ESSENTIAL OIL

Line up your Cups/colors in the order you want them. 

Because I was trying to go for an 'Abalone' appearance, I used Sea Clay as my layer that appears at the top, bottom and middle.

Beyond that, I just took turns pouring the soap into the mold in thin layers. 

Pour from varying heights to create the waves and drops of colors through out the soap.

As you get to the last 1/3 of available space in your mold, start pouring the alternating colors in an "S" pattern, going lengthwise.

Taking turns with remaining batter AND Gold Mica Shimmer colored soap (condiment bottle) keep layering the "S" curves until you use all the soap.

Once the mold is full, take a skewer and go opposite direction of your "S" curves. Now you are going side to side.

I went back over the soap with the skewer in a curly pattern, similar to a coil or telephone cord.

The result was a beautiful swirl.

Cover your soap with plastic wrap and insulate with towels.

Check back (no PEEKING) in 24 hrs.

Soap should be ready to unmold. If soap is soft like a block of cheese, leave it in the mold for another day or two.

Once unmolded and cut, allow your beautiful new soap to cure for a few weeks to ensure it is safe to use and that you will have a hard, long lasting bar of soap!

 

 

How to Make Cold Process Shave Cream Lotion Bars

 How to Make Cold Process Shave Cream Bars

I am a big fan of handmilled shave soap. In fact, everyone in my house has used nothing BUT my shave soap for about 2 yrs now.
I make it with skin nourishing oils, and I add bentonite clay and colloidal oatmeal to give it the perfect 'slip' that shaving cream needs.

To try something different than the usual square bars of shave soap, I tried pouring it into plastic push up tubes, like the tubes deodorant comes in. I also lined a few tins with plastic wrap and poured into the tins.

Never use tin or aluminum with cold process soap! The lye reacts with the metal and will corrode it. If you use an aluminum pan while making your cold process soap, the batch will turn to concrete before your eyes.

I started with 1 4lb Batch. Once the lye water was added to the oils, I blended to a light trace. I didn't want the soap mixture to be too thick, because I needed to be able to pour it into the tubes.

I blended it until I thought it was at least emulsified (mixed beyond separating) then divided it into 2 equal portions. The first portion was scented with Lavender Essential Oils. The 2nd part was scented with Coconut Cabana fragrance Oil.

The Lavender EO batch traced nicely, went easily into the tins and tubes, but the coconut cabana soap was not so lucky.

AFTER I poured it into the tubes and tins, the oils began to separate. I had oil floating to the top of the soap! This can happen if you mix at too low of a temp, and can also be caused by certain fragrance oils.

I poured all the tins and tubs back into the big pyrex cup and blended with my mixer until proper trace was reached.
It was messy, and I had to wash all the tins and tubes from the first time around. Luckily I had extras I was able to use while the orig tubes could dry out.

I will update this post and let you know if the shaving soap being in tubes as it cures causes a problem or not.
I think it will take a little longer to dry out but should be fine.

 If you want to make some of my shave soap, here is the cold process soap recipe below.

Also, this recipe can be made in the crock pot using the Hot Process method. With the hot process, the soap would be hard to pour into small molds but would work well in a regular loaf or wooden log mold. Hot Process Soap does not need to cure, just a week or so to harden up for a long lasting bar.

Shave Soap Recipe

45% Olive Oil  23.9 oz

20% Coconut Oil  10.6 oz

20% Castor Oil 10.6 oz

8% Palm Oil 4.2 oz

7% Sweet Almond Oil 3.7 oz

3 TBS Bentonite Clay

4 TBS Colloidal Oatmeal

1 oz Lavender Essential Oil- makes a subtle fragrance preferred in face products

1tsp Sodium Lactate (optional) makes a harder bar of soap

20 oz water

7.26 oz Lye

Take the time to Prepare before you dtart your cold process soap recipe.

I like to get my colors and add in's dispersed ahead of time. Below you can see the Bentonite Clay after I added a little distilled water. If you don't moisten the clay, it will suck water out of your soap recipe and can leave you short on water. This can result in crumbly soap, or harsher soap than you planned.

Weigh and Measure everything FIRST!

I always weigh and measure all my ingredients. Nothing worse than finding out half way through the soap making process that you are a few ounces shy of something. This means a trip back to the lye calculator to recalculate with whatever oil you use as a substitute!!

 1. Add  Lye to Distilled Water, Stir and set aside to cool

2. Put hard oils, Coconut and Palm into a microwave safe large Pyrex cup or double boiler
Melt 45 seconds at a time until hard oils are melted. Add remaining oils, stir, put back in microwave for another minute or so.
3. Once Lye Water and Oils have both cooled to 125, add Sodium Lactate to the Lye Water and Stir
4. Add Lye Water/Sodium Lactate to the warm oils SLOWLY.
5. Mix to thin trace, stir in dispersed Clay and Oatmeal.
6. Stir by hand until mixed well, then a few short blasts with your mixer.
7. Add fragrance or Essential Oil, then pour into molds.

Allow this soap to cure a few weeks. This makes a wonderful shaving cream that will outlast several cans of commercial shave cream.

Lavender Essential Oil is good for your skin too!
You can sprinkle a few grains of oatmeal on top of finished bar for decoration.
Here is a pic of my last batch of shave soap, I forgot to add Sweet Almond Oil on the label, but the recipe is the same.

Citrus Herbal Cold Process Soap Recipe

Naturally Repels Mosquitoes and Ticks

 I made a batch of this cold process soap last night. This soap has essential oils that repel mosquitoes and ticks.
I am not sure until I get to try it, if this works with soap. After all, soap gets rinsed off. Either way, it looks cool, and it smells citrus and fantastic!

I didn't have citronella essential oil, so I used lemongrass, which is very close to citronella.


If you would like to try making this, please see the cold process soap recipe below.

When choosing which oils to use in this recipe, I tried to keep in mind, that this color technique requires some time to do, so I avoided using a large percentage of oils that are hard at room temp. I used a higher percentage of olive oil, which will give you some time to make your magic.


Here is a picture of the cold process soap right after I poured and swirled it.
I used a box lined with parchment paper as my mold. For this swirling color technique, you want to use a flat style of mold, since the art work is on the face of the soap bar.

First of all, I made a small batch to test the fragrance oil. Any Soap Maker will tell you that each fragrance oil reacts differently when added to cold process soap. Some fragrance oils will cause your batch to seize up and turn to concrete right before your eyes!

You have to start with good quality fragrance oil or essential oil.

Fragrance Oils are not all created equal. There are a lot of companies out there that buy the concentrated oil and the dilute it and sell it. This is a problem, because not only does it lessen the fragrance, but the added oil they use to dilute it, is not factored into the soap recipe when you run your recipe through a lye calculator.

This can result in runny, oily soap that does not trace properly.

Sadly, I learned this first hand on my first few batches of cold process soap. I followed the soap recipe perfectly, meticulously weighing out all my base oils, lye and water.

The best lesson my failed batches taught me, was to always do a test batch.

Try a 2lb batch and if things go sideways, you may still be able to rebatch it and save the soap.

We will talk about rebatching later. 

If all else fails and you have to pitch the whole batch of soap, your only out 2 lbs instead of 5 lbs.

Here is the Recipe for the 2lb Cold Process Zebra swirl Soap pictured above:

2.31 oz Sweet Almond Oil

10 oz Coconut Oil

16.59 Olive Oil

7.1 oz Palm Oil

3 oz Castor Oil

1 oz Avocado Oil

1/2 tsp Black Oxide

1/2 tsp Titanium Dioxide

1 tsp Sea Clay

1 tsp Nettle Leaf

1 oz Lavender Essential Oil or Fragrance Oil

.50 oz Eucalyptus

.50 Lemongrass

4 TBS Sunflower Oil (Or any light Oil to Disperse Pigment) 

1 tsp Sodium Lactate (optional-will make a harder finished bar)

15.2 oz Distilled Water

5.63 Lye (Sodium Hydroxide)

Directions:

Color Prep: Disperse Colors by adding 1 TBS Sunflower Oil to 1/2 -1 tsp of the Pigments

You will add 1 tsp of each dispersed color into each of the 4 bottles to give you white, green, black, green-gray

In the 1st Bottle add Black Oxide 

In 2nd Bottle add Titanium Dioxide

In 3rd Bottle add Sea Clay

In 4th Bottle add Nettle Leaf Powder

Some soap base will be left natural to add another color to your color scheme.

Set these aside, you will fill these with soap batter later on...

1. Carefully weigh out all your base oils and fragrances- There is nothing worse than getting half way through making a batch of soap and realizing you don't have what you need to complete your recipe. Save yourself a trip back to the lye calculator and be prepared before you begin. I can't stress this enough! 
2. Weigh Distilled Water and put into a glass measuring cup. Weigh lye exactly, and then slowly add it to the water. NEVER ADD WATER TO LYE. Set Aside to cool.
3. Melt Hard Oils First-  In a LARGE glass measuring cup, add the hard oils (coconut and palm oil) and microwave for about 45 seconds at a time until melted. Add remaining oils and put back in the microwave. Microwave for another couple 45 second rounds until the oils are in the 130 range. The oils will take longer to cool than the lye water does, so don't overheat the oil. 
4. Check Temps- Once the Lye Water has cooled to 125 degrees or less, you can stir in the Sodium Lactate. Lye water and Oils should be as close in temps as possible, and never more than a 10 degree difference.
5. Mix Lye water and Oils by hand at first, followed by a few 3 or 4 second blasts with your mixer. Do NOT mix until you reach trace, or your soap will be too thick to pour into the bottles. After short blasts with the mixer, let the soap rest a minute or two. If you can still see oil rising to the top, the oils and lye water have not yet emulsified. Give it a few more blasts just until emulsification, but stopping just short of actual trace.
6. Add fragrance or essential oils, stirring in by hand, Check again to make sure there is no oil rising to the top, if there IS, give it another wuick blast with the mixer.
7. Pour the Soap into the bottles first, fill them each up about 3/4 full
8. Leave remaining soap uncolored. This will be your base.
9. Shake the bottles like crazy!! Make sure you mix the color through evenly, shake shake shake!!!
10. Start by mixing the uncolored base soap until it thickens.
11. squirt a few lines of color into the bottom of the mold. This will make the bottom of the soap bars look pretty. Then, pour about 1/2 of the natural base color over that.
12. Now for the fun part! Taking turns with the colors, squirt the colors lengthwise up and down the mold in a long "S" pattern (see Illustration 1) Try to lay the colors next to each other rather than right on top of each other. Some overlapping will happen, don't worry. The idea is to 'layer' the colors in there.
13. After you have used about half the soap in the bottles. pour remaining uncolored base color lengthwise in straight lines, to add dimension to the colors.
14. Continue again with the bottles, alternating colors, until the mold is full.
15. Using a spatula, drag the spatula opposite way of the lines you made. So go side to side. When you reach the side, curve around and make the same "S" pattern with the spatula.

     This will result in the pretty swirl pattern. You can do this with any color, but I recommend starting with black and white and then adding additional colors from there. Nothing looks sharper nd more contrasting than black and white!

http://www.customsoapandsupplies.com/shop