Teach Soap

Curious as to what everyone's favourite scent, essential oil, oils or butters for cold process soap and colors?

Mine so far are tobacco bay leaf mixed with a little burnt sugar from brambleberry. Essential oils a mix of orange and lemon. Don't have favourite yet for oils and butters in soaping yet still starting out. Colors I like charcoal and indigo powder.

I haven't made very much soap yet, but my favorite soap so far is 100% castile. So I love olive oil!

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Olivia :)

Sounds great! I've tried 100% coconut oil with 20% super fat. It bubbles really well. I really want to try a sea salt coconut bar.

That varies from season to season. Right now, I'm enjoying a bar of Patchouli no color, a bar of Vanilla with oatmeal that's brown with no color added and a bar of Cleopatra that has a dusky mauve color.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Re: oils in soap making, I couldn't really pick a "favorite" b/c they act together. I love lard. Cheap, makes a bar that is hard, yet gentle and conditioning. I have yet to come up with an all-veg recipe, or try an all veg soap bought from someone else - that equals a lard soap.

EOs - I guess I'd have to say lavender.

I am also very fond of yellow beeswax. I love to smell it, and I like to use it in lipbalm and soap, vs using bleached beeswax.

I have too many FOs I love to pick a favorite.

My mom's favorite is Applejack & Peel. My sister's favorite is Black Raspberry Vanilla. Both of those are in my top 10 as well.

LOL, I say "Top 10" but my top 10 would probably be way longer than 10.

Lip balm, mint chocolate is my favorite flavor. Many of the other ones are too candy-like for me.

@Gingerstinks: I've been wanting to try a 100% cocunut with 20% super fat myself!

@dixiedragon: Lard is a good soapmaking oil on it's own? I thought it was generally considered to make a soft bar with few bubbles. I'd like to try it, since you say you like it so much! I have an Applejack Peel FO sample that I'm going to try in a Christmas soap! It's smells delightful out of the bottle. Does it smell as good soaped?

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Olivia :)

@stokedtophat it wasn't hard. I found a post by soap buddy earlier and tried the recipe. I used tobacco and sugar as the fragrance and it's wonderful. My testers rave about it.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Thank you for being kind and helpful with us noobers,

I did a salt bar that was 100% coconut and 20% superfat, 100% salt. It was not hard at all. I do think that using individual molds is a requirement with this one, b/c the salt bars are so brittle.