The love of the craft

As a result of my international shipping scam blog posts, I made the wonderful long-distance acquaintance of Rosa Ziv from Carmel Gifts in Israel, who offered me the incredible sequence of contacts she'd had with a shipping scammer for publication in my blog post International Shipping Scams: Part 3.  Thanks to Rosa's help, thousands of people have read about exactly how these scams work, and many have been saved substantial time, trouble, and money in the process. 

The spike in the number of visits to my blog immediately after
publishing the post on which Rosa and I collaborated.

And, as a result of our having collaborated on the shipping scams post, Rosa invited me to write a guest post for her store blog!  I was delighted to be asked, and greatly enjoyed doing it.  (Amazing how the Internet can build relationships between people who would never meet or cross paths in any other way!)

As I considered various ideas about what to write, I finally settled on talking about – and correcting – a few of the common misconceptions people have about handcrafted soap.  I focused, for example, on the issue of soaps vs. synthetic detergents because in my experience, many people don't fully understand that there is a difference, or what that difference is. 

I talked about the environmental and skin care ramifications of using cleaning products that are manufactured with chemical vs. natural ingredients.

I also addressed the issue of whether handmade soap made "has lye in it," which is another area of misunderstanding for people who are unfamiliar with the basic chemisty that converts oils and fats into soap.

Given this, you might wonder why Rosa chose to title it Handmade Soap Contains Love. 

One simple reason.  As a crafter myself, as one who has always delighted in the uniqueness of anything that's handcrafted, and as one who's had the privilege of meeting, getting to know, and working with crafters in many different media, I know that what draws and binds us to each other is our love of what we do. 

As I put it in the post for Rosa's blog, "whenever you buy anything that’s handcrafted, you’re also getting – at absolutely no extra charge – all the love and care that went into making it.  You can’t put a price tag on that."

Scientific soap making part III: essential oils vs.fragrance oils

As I prepare to teach a couple of soap making classes in the coming weeks, one of the topics I'll be covering is essential oils vs. fragrance oils and the pros and cons of each in cold process soap making.  My clear preference is essential oils because they're natural and have beneficial properties that fragrance oils don't have.  But first, let's clarify what the difference is between the two.

Essential oils are natural scents extracted from the leaves, bark, roots, flowers, and fruits of plants.  Fragrance oils are synthetic blends of the aromatic compounds found in essential oils and elsewhere. 

Is one preferable to the other?  Strictly in terms of cold process soap making, it's a toss-up.

Essential oils have an edge in that they have benefits beyond just scent.  Tea tree is a great example because its natural antiseptic, antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral properties are well researched and documented.  Eucalyptus essential oil's value in relieving symptoms of respiratory infections can make it a beneficial additive in skin and bath products.  Many beneficial claims are made for other essential oils, although most are poorly researched and largely unproven.  Fragrance oils, however, have no such additional benefits. 

A field of Bulgarian lavender, considered by many to yield the highest quality lavender essential oil.

It's a toss-up between essential and fragrance oils in that both can be problematic to use in soap making. 

A problem with some essential oils is that the temperature at which their scent vaporizes (i.e., the flash point) is so low it won't survive ordinary cold process methods.  Eucalyptus, unfortunately, is a prime example.  With a flash point of around 110 degrees F, it can only be used in a soap that is prevented from heating up and going through gel phase, and preventing gel results in inferior soap texture and appearance.  The Lavender Oatmilk bars pictured below are a perfect example of a soap that did not go through a proper gel.

See the rind-like appearance of the outer edge?  It's noticeably lighter than the center of the bars, and it has a somewhat chalk-like texture.  Bars like these I either use myself or give away. 

Fragrance oils, on the other hand, have high flash points so that's not an issue.  The problem with fragrance oils is that some accelerate the saponification process and cause the soap batter to become so thick so quickly that it becomes difficult or impossible to pour.  With some I've used, the window of time between when the fragrance is added and when the soap becomes so thick it glops out of the pot rather than pours is less than 60 seconds.  You gotta be ready to move fast! 

Fragrance oils have an edge in cost and lifespan.  With just a few exceptions, fragrance oils are less expensive than essential oils.  Those with which I've been happiest cost around $1.50 per ounce, and their scents hold up for years, both in the bottle and in the soap.  Many of the more popular essential oils, on the other hand, average around $3.00 per ounce, and some (jasmine or sandalwood, for example) cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars per ounce.  Essential oil scents also tend to fade faster.  Citrus oils can be especially short-lived in soap, with noticeable scent degradation in as little as six months.

One thing I personally like about fragrance oils is that I can use or experiment with scents that are either too costly to buy as essential oils -- like jasmine and sandalwood -- or that aren't available as essential oils.  I do love the fresh, crisp, clean and slightly astringent scent of cucumbers, for example, but there's no such thing as cucumber essential oil.  You can also get fragrance oils that are imitations of popular designer perfume and cologne scents, which some folks really love.

An open question is whether one is safer for skin contact than the other.  Essential oils are derived from natural sources, but some are known to trigger adverse skin reactions.  Lemon essential oil, for example, is known to be irritating or sensitizing to some people's skin, as are spice essentials oils such as cinnamon and clove.  Synthetic fragrance oils . . . well we usually don't know how safe they are because the compounds used to make them do not have to be itemized on product labels.  We do know that phthalates used in fragrance oils and many plastic products have been linked to a number of health risks, but most fragrance oil manufacturers that used them have reformulated their products to be phthalate-free.

But whether scents are natural or synthetic, their effect and power is something I find endlessly fascinating.

I recently invited a friend to smell the scent blend I used in a new soap I formulated. She sniffed and appeared to have no reaction at all, just a funny kind of blank look on her face. 

 

"It reminds me of playing with Barbies," she finally said, completely unable to say why, or even whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.  The most she could add was that she didn't mean the soap smelled like a Barbie doll, just that it reminded her of playing with Barbies. 

Science can help to explain how we perceive and process scents, but it can't account for the uniquely personal associations we make with them or the emotions they trigger.  That is beyond both the art and the science of scent development.  And that is the reason I so enjoy experimenting with new scents and scent blends, using both natural and synthetic fragrances. 

One customer told me she absolutely loved a soap she bought that smelled like leaves burning in the fall.  I personally can't imagine wanting to use a soap that smells like anything that's burning, but I totally understand that she has her own special connection to that scent, and that's all that matters. 

Scientific soap making part II: curing soap and water discounting

First, let's be clear that we're not talking about "curing" in the sense of helping to get over an illness or disease.  We're talking about curing in the sense of aging and mellowing: storing or keeping something under controlled conditions for a period of time long enough for it to develop certain desirable or unique qualities -- like complexity of flavor in an aged cheese or fine scotch.

With cold process soap making, the time spent actually making the soap is minimal.  What takes time is curing the soap once it's made, and that's four to six weeks depending on the soap.  Or is it?

Curing soap does two things.  It ensures that the soap is fully saponified, and it allows moisture to evaporate so the bars become firmer.  If the soap goes through a full gel stage, saponification will be nearly complete within 48 hours.  If it doesn't, it may take longer.  But in no case should full saponification take longer than two weeks, so after that it's just about letting it dry out and become nice and firm. 

With that in mind, it stands to reason that if you use less water to make it, there's less moisture to evaporate.  And that should shorten the drying time, right?

To test this, I tracked the weight loss of three different soaps over a six-week period, and found that the soaps made with a lower percentage of water (a solution of about 60 percent water, 40 percent lye) reached a stable weight in about 3 weeks.  Those made with a higher percentage of water (about 66 percent water, 33 percent lye) took about 4 weeks to reach a stable weight.  Clearly, using less water shortens the drying time.

Some soapmakers maintain that drying time is bascially immaterial, and that curing soap for six weeks or longer somehow makes it even milder and better.  One even suggested that a soap that has cured for a year is about as close to the ultimate as you can get. 

But what happens to soap in a year that doesn't happen within 3-4 weeks of having made it?  Soap isn't cheese, and the chemcial and biological processes that are key in aging cheese or wine are irrelevant when it comes to soap.  The only thing that really happens over an extended period of time is that the soap's scent tends to fade, and the bars themselves become extra hard.  That's about it.

My conclusion is that reducing the amount of water in the recipe shortens curing time and results in soap that is ready to use sooner rather than later.  To learn more about water discounting here's a link to a detailed description of the process.

Blame it on the soap fairies

A customer who's interested in learning how to make soap recently asked how I dealt with the frustration of soap batches that didn't turn out right. 

That’s a great question because I’ve never been able to overcome the disappointment of having wasted valuable ingredients. Soaps that failed frustrate and disappoint me just as much today as when I actually made them, no matter how long ago that was. But that’s just how it goes. Some experiments work, others don’t. Usually when a soap fails it’s due to an error in the formulation. Something was left out, something was mismeasured, or something was calculated incorrectly.

I rarely have failures now, I'm happy to say. But I do have experiments that don't come out as well as I had hoped.  A new fragrance blend doesn't smell quite the way I wanted it to, for example.  Or something I tried to enhance the appearance of the finished soap didn't quite result in the look I had in mind.  Or one of the fussier soaps I make decides to be extra fussy and not gel properly, resulting in a soap that's just not up to par in terms of appearance or texture.  Most of these soaps I either use myself, sell at a discount, or give away.  

But I'm convinced that sometimes the real explanation is that it’s the work of the soap fairies.  They’re quiet and benign most of the time, lurking in the background, watching but not interfering.  When they decide to act up, however, there's no telling what will happen.  The result can be an unaccountable failure or a magnificent success. Both have happened to me. All I can do is scratch my head and wonder.

DIY bath bomb making video

I made my very first video and posted it on YouTube!  It's me demonstrating how to make bath bombs with recipe details and step-by-step instructions.  The recipe is the same as that on the DIY page of my website.  It's just tripled for making a larger size batch.

I love it spite of its total amateurishness.  It was filmed with the video camera that's built into my cheap little laptop, and edited it with the "Movie Maker" software that was on the laptop when I bought it.  Neither can be described as high tech . . .   But I had great fun doing it.  Enjoy!