Rebatch soap

Here's another of my trysts with natural cosmetics. Soap making has always had it's draw for me but given all the equipment I would need to try it out, I was holding back. Then I read about re-batch soap and it seemed the perfect fit for me. It gives you a feel of making soap without all the equipment and if you like it, you could go for the real stuff!

 

I bought the luxury re-batch soap from Brambleberry. If you're in WA and happen to go to Bellingham then you can buy it from their brick and mortar store, OTION. I love browsing that store!

 

I've put together a step-by-step tutorial of what I did.

 

1. Setup a double boiler. You can read about how I setup mine here. Add the grated soap to the upper pan. Add 1 tbsp boiling water to 1 lb of rebatch soap. I found that without the water it was taking the soap forever to come together. Keep mixing in the double boiler till the grated soap forms a mashed potato consistency.

 

 

2. Take the soap off the double boiler and add your essential oils. I added around 1/2 a tsp of rosemary EO to one batch (DH wanted a lightly scented soap) and 1 tsp lavender EO to another batch. Each batch was 1 lb.

 

3. I put one batch in a loaf pan and another in a muffin pan. The loaf pan is lined with wax paper and the muffin pan has cupcake liners. The wax paper and the cupcake liners made it very easy to take out the soap once molded. I oressed the soap well in both the molds so  that there were no air pockets.

 

4. I let the soaps set for a day and then took them out from their molds. Here are the cupcake soaps.

 

 

5. The loaf pan soap came out as a big bar, which I then cut into smaller bars.

 

 

6. Since I added a tbsp of water, I'm letting the soaps dry a few extra days. The more it dries the longer it'll last. The room where it dries has such a wonderful aroma of lavender and rosemary! I wonder how good my bathroom will smell once I start using these!

Lotion/Masage bars

I read about making lotion bars at home here and it seemed pretty do-able. I had already collected all the ingredients when I made the body butter. That I didn't have to buy any ingredients to make these made me all the more excited to try out the bars!

Before you embark off to try your own let me tell you that unless you're using the exact same ingredients, don't be surprised if you've to do them again and again to get the right texture! The recipe on the link above didn't work for me maybe because of the butters and oils I chose.

Also, start small - I can't stress it enough. I didn't realize this till I'd to re-do them and then all I could do was add more to the quantity. I started with 6 oz all together and then I realized I needed to add more butter and oil and soon I'd lotion bars for my whole neighborhood!

The good thing is if you find that the bars are too hard/soft for you, you can melt them and add the relevant ingredients. Then solidify it. That's exactly what I did. My batch one was too hard to use. So I melted it and added some oil. Batch two was good enough but I figured a little butter would make it better. Melted it and added some butter. Batch three was perfect.

Enough of my teachings! Onto the recipe. Oh before I do that I want to thank my phone - you see it was thanks to my phone I could take photos of all these different steps. I would be too lazy with a camera!

Ingredients:

2 oz beeswax

4 oz Sweet Almond oil

4 oz unrefined shea butter

~ 1.5 tsp essential oil (I used 1 tsp lemongrass and 0.5 tsp sweet orange) - unrefined shea butter has a strong aroma which I wanted to suppress. If you're using refined shea butter or any other butter that doesn't have a strong aroma you could use less.

Method:

1. Setup a double boiler. All that means is, fill a pan half or one-thirds with water and put another pan on top it. Put this apparatus on heat. The heat from the boiling water heats the upper pan and melts the butters. Direct heat is too much for the butters and will burn them.

2. Add the beeswax to the upper pan. Once it's almost done, add shea butter. Shea butter melts much faster than beeswax that's why we add it later. Once everything's melted add the almond oil to the mix. Then add the essential oils.

3. If you have some molds then feel free to use them. I didn't have any so I used my muffin pan! I lined it with cupcake liners and then filled them each.

4. Put it in the fridge for 10-15 minutes or as long as it takes to set. This is how it looks once it sets.

5. Yummy lotion bars are ready! Seriously don't then look delicious?!?!

Project cost: 

• Beeswax: $1.875 for 2oz
• Sweet Almond Oil: $2.5 for 4 oz
• Shea butter: $4.50 for 4oz
• Essential oils: ~$2
• Total: $11 for 10 oz of lotion bars (compare to $10 for 2.5 oz at Lush) 
• The joy of making your own lotion bar - priceless!

Note:

• Beeswax is what adds the hardness. So if your bar is too soft you would want to add more beeswax.
• If your bar is too hard, you need more oil for sure. You can add more butter too - like I did.
• I would encourage you to buy Fair Trade shea butter if possible. I've linked above my source of fair trade shea butter.
• I do *not* get any commision for any of the linked products. Just wanted to share my sources.
• I found a local store, VitaminLife (could be a chain, I don't know), which has all the oils (carrier oils and essential oils) at a very reasonable price.

Handmade Shea Body Butter

Do you find photos of handmade soaps yummy? I do. They’re like eye candy to me. I almost drool over them and handmade body butters; and have been wanting to try my hand at them for a very long time. My visits to Body Shop convinced me that it was time I give body butters a try. Not only are they expensive but full of chemicals!

(Doesn’t that look yummy?!?!?)

The best part is it’s so simple and needs so few ingredients! I followed this recipe. It calls for 60% Shea butter and 40% natural oils.

I took:

• 6 oz Shea Butter (I got my fair trade shea butter from Agbanga Karite)
• 4 oz Sweet Almond Oil
• .05 Sweet Orange essential oil (you can use any EO you like or even fragrance oil)

Then what I did:

1. Setup a double boiler. What that means is take a big pot and fill some water in it and then put a smaller pot on top of the water. Put this apparatus on heat. The heat of the water will heat what is inside the smaller pot. I initially put it on high heat and when the water was sufficiently heated up, reduced it to medium heat.
2. Put the shea butter in the smaller pot and melt it.
3. When the butter is melted, take the smaller pot out of the boiler and turn off the heat.
4. Add almond oil to the melted butter.
5. I then added the essential oil. I later read that it’s better to add the EO after the mixture has cooled down a little.
6. Next we need to cool the mixture. One way is to put it in the freezer for sometime but if you’re as impatient as me then in a big pot prepare an ice bath (lots of ice in water). Put the small pot on the water. Let the mixture cool a lilttle bit.
7. When the mixture is of a soft consistency beat it with a hand mixer. If it has reached your desired consistency then you can stop otherwise let it cool a little bit more and beat again. Repeat till satisfied.

Notes:

• I’d read that shea butter if heated at a high temperature turns grainy so I was quite conservative about the heat; and I found that shea butter melts pretty easily. So you don’t need  high heat for the double boiler.
• I started beating even when it was liquid. No harm done – there’s not much that can happen if you beat a liquid! Duh!
• When you beat the mixture let it still sit in top of the ice bath.
• Unrefined shea butter has a nutty smell of it’s own which may not be very pleasing to you. However after applying it on the body it disappears.
• 0.5% (or 0.05 fl oz) EO didn’t seem enough to suppress the smell of shea butter so next time I would up it to 1.5% (or 0.15 fl oz)
• The body butter solidifies some more after you keep it in a cool place.
• I didn’t use the corn starch as specified in the original recipe, so the butter is a little greasy but it gets absorbed by the body in a few minutes.

Sources for ingredients:

• I got my fair trade shea butter from Agbanga Karite. I think they’re quite reasonably priced.
• Essential oils can be found in natural food stores like Whole Foods Market. They’re in the Aromatherapy section mostly.
• Natural oils can be found at amazon or your local supplements store like Super Supplements.

My one step towards a more natural me! Oh and just for fun here’s a cost analysis: $2.50 for almond oil, $8 for shea butter and $0.50 for EO. So that’s $11 for 10 oz (as compared to the $18 for 6.5oz or $25 for 13.5 oz at Body Shop!) and not to forget you’re getting an all natural product!