Castile Laundry Stain Stick

Venus of Willendorf (kind of like a fertility goddess; I just recently bought this soap mold and was really excited about using it!)

I'm very excited to be posting about a new soap that I've recently made. It's a "castile" soap because the fat in the soap is 100% olive oil and it's a "laundry stain stick" because I rub it on stained clothing before washing and it does an AMAZING job at removing stains. I'm also going to start using it in my laundry soap and liquid dish soap.

I got the idea to make a bar soap specifically for laundry from another blog while I was doing research into soap making. I think this soap recipe works really well on stains because of the lowered amount of superfatting (from 5% in my body bar soap to 4% in this soap)--basically I used a smaller lye to fat ratio because I won't be using this soap on my skin, just on clothing and dishes.

I used my new soap mold (see above) for the laundry stick because I was really excited to see how the soap would look. I rubbed the soap on some clothes the other day and was amazed at what the stain stick actually got out of the clothing.

I was so excited about the results that I listed some bars of soap on my Etsy page! And because I've been on such a homemade-beauty-products kick (I've also recently made deodorant and lip balm) I've also listed some homemade lip balm. I think I will actually end up changing the name of my shop soon too...

Also, I've just started a Facebook page for my shop, you can get to the page by clicking here.

In other exciting news, C has recently started walking (today actually) and said her first words yesterday! She said "buh-bye" to my friend Kat as she was leaving our house yesterday. We weren't actually sure if that's what she meant or even said but then she said it about 5 more times while waving so we're definitely counting it!

We spent the weekend up on the coast, actually only Friday night and Saturday morning, and went to the beach. The water is warming up wonderfully again and it was great to take C to the beach.

All is well here and I hope the same is true for you!

xoxo

Hot Process Homemade Soap

Our weekend wasn't too eventful but it was enjoyable; garage sale-ing and hanging out with friends on Saturday, and Sunday saw me finally getting to make soap!

I've been crazy excited to make homemade soap - I ordered lye and other soap making supplies about a week ago - and they finally arrived late Saturday! So on Sunday I gave it a try.

I did a lot of research into homemade soap because I wanted to know which oils would be best in my soap recipe. I tend to have dry skin and didn't want a soap that would further dry my skin out. I found a few great resources on oil properties so I could wisely choose oils that would be best for my skin.

First I choose a few fatty acids that I thought would be best, I settled on Oleic acid because it's a great moisturizing oil and Ricinoleic acid, also a great moisturizing oil, is a fatty acid that occurs in mature castor oil plants and castor oil is great for you skin.

After I choose the fatty acids I wanted to focus on, I then found oils that contain those acids in high levels so I could make my soap with those super moisturizing oils.

For this soap I choose olive oil, macadamia nut oil, jojoba oil and castor oil. Because I have never made soap before I only made a very small batch just to be sure that I would like this particular recipe.

This is my recipe:

Olive oil                      55%
Macadamia Nut oil     35%
Jojoba oil                   7%
Castor oil                   3%
Steric acid                 .2% (steric acid is used to harden the soap, beeswax may also be used)

I then entered all of my oil amounts into a lye calculator so I would know exactly how much lye to add to my recipe without having any un-reacted lye left over. (Which would produce a very harsh soap that may even burn skin)

After I got my exact recipe amounts, I gathered my ingredients and began making my soap!

My supplies: Crockpot, immersion blender, safety glasses, glass measuring cups, digital scale, steric acid, lye, and oils

Oils added to the Crockpot

CAREFULLY measuring the lye

CAREFULLY adding the lye to the water

After the lye/water mixture was added to the oils

Mixing 

More mixing

Finally there, trace (when the mixture thickens and is ready to "cook")

"cooking"

Lavender is ready to be added and then it's time to put into molds

my prepared mold

soap in the mold cooling and hardening overnight

I scraped the Crockpot and now have soap that doesn't need to cool!

After setting overnight

Bars of soap! 

My soap still needs more time to harden (and it will over time) because the harder the soap the longer each bar will last but I still intend to use this soap today!

I used the soap yesterday on my hands and Brett used the soap this morning and said he liked it and it didn't dry his skin out so I can't wait to use it! 

Sleepy girl while watching Mom make soap

She has her two top teeth coming in!