Homemade moisturizing body wash is easy to make with ingredients you probably already have on-hand. By using only natural ingredients, you can feel good about lathering up the whole family with this simple recipe. Customize your suds with essential oils, add more or less of this or that to find the best body wash for […]
Soapmaking books and resources that I love
I reckon there are three types of people who want to make soap: 1) people who just want to follow the recipe and don’t want to understand the chemistry behind soapmaking 2) people who want to know enough to design their own recipes, but not the full detail 3) chemistry geeks who want to know […]
Simplifying soapmaking
I know a lot of people would like to try making soap, but are put off by the cost of ingredients and equipment, the perceived danger of using caustic or the complexity of the recipes. Soap making does not have to be expensive, dangerous or complex. I want to share a few tips to get […]
soapmaking – how much water to use
For all of my soap recipes I use 1 kg of oils (including tallow), the amount of caustic to react with the oils (a little less to allow for “superfat”) and about 330 mL of water. Someone asked me recently why I don’t specify an exact amount of water. I had to go back to […]
Salt soap fail
I decided to try a couple of recipes that use salt – soap with pink salt as an exfoliant, and then soap with salt water in the lye to make a harder bar (its called soleseife in German). Salt is supposed to produce a nice lather and a soft, soothing soap. Everything went well until […]
Neem oil for skin-healing soaps and salves
After my success using neem oil to control insects around the farm and to cure my toenail fungus (how I use neem oil), I did a lot of reading about neem oil and I was keen to try to harness its properties as an anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory to help heal skin. Neem oil itself is […]
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