Soap Swirl

This is a video I found on you tube of a very nice and very neat type of swirl. I like it! I Hope in the near future to make something like this.

Hey! Want to learn how to make beautiful column swirls on your soap? Watch this video. Also read for her advice on how to achieve a thin trace for swirling, great stuff!

LUSH Review

Recently I was able to visit a LUSH store in the Florida Mall. I had been curious for a long time on what experience I might have at a LUSH store. Well I was there to find out. So, we walk up to the store and we go in. You are received by an extreme mix of different fragrances which depending on who you are you might like or you might not like. A lot of their stuff comes "naked" or with out packaging. Then when you select an item they put i baggies with their logo. There were Bath Bombs, lotions, creams, body balms, lip balms, solid perfumes, bubble bars, cocoa massage bars and jelly soaps and many other products. Lush is not short of articles to choose from thats for sure.

However, and  this is my opinion and what I perceived and I didn't like. When I entered the store I was greeted by an employee of the store. He gave us a short demo of a solid bubble bar. Shortly after that he asked me where I was from, when I told him where I was from he pretty much walked away and didn't actually help us after that. I was interested in buying some stuff to try out since I had never been to one of their stores and this felt a bit out of place. We had to ask another employee to help us to find some products that contained some specific aromas and essential oils. She did her job properly and tended to us without hesitation.

As for the products, I would not buy anything else at lush again. Thats MY opinion! If you love Lush and would love to buy there, good for you. If you don't make cosmetics like I do, you should probably buy there. But my impression of the products was that they weren't all what they  advertise  them to be. Their marketing has proven to be extremely effective and their activism has probably gotten them a huge customer base. But since I personally make cosmetic products myself, I can't say I was impressed. I have to say I did love one of their products. And it was the soap jellies. They are fun and they smelled great and very refreshing this is a product I would buy there again. But everything else you could probably buy from many hand made products vendors at markets and online. Many of the people who make these products are really dedicated to their craft and deserve your business too. And I believe their products can be as good as any Lush product or even better at better prices.

One last detail. I think lush has used the word vegan or vegetarian on their products, if I was a vegan or vegetarian I would be upset with them for daring to use those terms when many of the products advertised as such have Sulfates that are not vegetable derrived or even naturally derived. I am not against the use of these synthetics as they have been proven safe or GRAS by the FDA but, in my opinion I would not call that product vegan or vegetarian simply because it contains many vegetable derrived ingredients.

Other Soap Blogs

Today I wanted to mention other blogs. I know how we soap makers love to see pictures and these ones have plenty of them! One of the blogs is The Soap Bar There's a lot of pictures and it's been around for some time now. There is a lot of content and it's updated regularly. If I were you, I would check it out!

There's also Simply Soap from Australia. Lot's of pictures, a lot of content. I would also absolutely check them out. Also stay tuned, hopefully this week I'll be able to make a video of some swirls in action, nothing fancy, something minimalistic probably but remember, simple is not mediocre! Till next time!

Coffee Lovers

Hey! Today I wan't to show you one of my latest soaps. If you are a coffee lover this is for you! This is a simple version of a coffee soap that I have made in the past. It has ground coffee in it and coffee fragrance. The other recipe, is a bit more elaborate which includes brewing a nice cup of joe and adding it to the soap mixture. But, in this case if you want a simple, easy to make coffee soap to indulge your coffee fix, this is it!

Soap Recipe

Today I want to share with you one of the recipes I use all the time. This recipe is really simple to make, just Olive Pomace, Coconut and Palm oils. It's been super-fated to 8%. It might be a simple recipe but, you can add exfoliants to it like oatmeal, have it unscented as a natural bar or add essential oils to it. Experiment with it and you'll have many variations in no time. The recipe is as follows...


Coconut Oil 10.08 oz
Palm Oil  4.32 oz
Olive Pomace Oil  14.4 oz
Distilled Water 10.8 oz
Lye 4.039 oz

This makes approximately a 2 pound batch. Like I said before, you can add color, essential oils, oatmeal, dry herbs use your imagination! and you'll have a great soap at the end. If you have any questions just drop a comment. And remember always, ALWAYS, put your recipes trough a lye calculator even if it comes from a book, reliable source, it doesn't matter always make sure your lye quantity is correct. For a lye calculator go to soapcalc.net and put the recipe trough it before you work with it. Enjoy.

Natural Liquid Soap Making Book Review

I want to share a review you today. Its about the Liquid Soap Making book by Catherine Failor.
I bought this book some time ago and I have to say it is the best liquid soap making out there. If you want to make liquid soaps this book is for you. It is full of recipes and full of information. It teaches you how to make liquid soap in a simple to understand manner. There are recipes for Natural liquid soap made with olive oil, jojoba oil, castor oil, coconut oil, shampoos and much more.

She teaches you how to formulate your own recipes and how to get to the correct PH on your soap.
This book is the most complete book in liquid soap making in the market hands down. So if you want to make Natural liquid soaps, Natural shampoos and shower gels the natural way this is the book for you.

Math! The subject everybody loves to hate. But math is what makes our world possible. We soap makers are no exception to that. In the last post I gave you a recipe for a batch of soap. They were only percents. The reason I like to give percents is because you can make your soap recipe as large or small as you need by only doing simple math. So let me explain this simple math.

Let's say you want to use 32 oz of oils. That's 2 pounds. And you have to use coconut and olive oil. The recipe would look something like this.


%30 Coconut oil
%70 Olive Oil

Lets see how much coconut oil we need. Remember we are using ounces. What you have to do is multiply .30 by 32. which looks something like this:

.30 X 32= 9.6

So that means we need 9.6 OZ of coconut oil for our batch of soap.

Now we need to calculate our Olive oil. We're going to do the exact same process that we did with the coconut oil.

.70 X 32=22.4

This means that we need 22.4 OZ of Olive oil for this batch of soap.

If you add 9.6+22.4 it will be 32. That's the total of your oils which equals the %100.

You might be asking why I am giving a basic math class here. Well I have noticed that even though this is really basic math many people get confused by recipes in percents. What I just taught you applies to everything. lotions, creams, shower gel, soaps, and all the other good stuff we soap making folk like. If you have any questions please comment and I will answer as soon as possible. Also subscribe to the blog so you get updated every time there's a new post. It's a little basic right now but I want to keep updating regularly and with your comments we can make it grow and informative.

On future posts I'll tell you how to calculate Lye for manually. You may think why should I learn this when I have a lye calculator that gives me all the numbers! Well you might not always have a computer to make your recipes so I think knowing the process by pen and paper helps you be more knowledgeable about soap making. That's it for now, till next time!

Soap Recipe

Guys, I want to share with you today a very simple recipe that I use to do swirling. But not only swirling, this a great simple recipe that's very conditioning to your skin as most of this recipe is awesome avocado oil which is very emollient. This is the recipe I used in the picture on this post. And this is how it goes:

%65 Avocado oil
%35 Coconut oil
%7 Superfat

%35 Water

I personally like using percents for my recipes. This way at the time of making a batch of soap I can calculate according to any mold or quantity that I want to make. Don't know about percents? Stay tuned as I will explain all about them on a following post!

The Sweet Smell Of Success

Greetings everyone! Today I want to write a review on a recent purchase that I made. It's the E-Book The Sweet Smell of Success. This book is about making your own perfume or fragrance oil blends. The Author Daphne Moss has plenty of experience blending her own fragrances and shares her experience with all of us in this book. In my opinion is a great book, it's trains you on how to make your own perfumes and blending different scents. One of the most important things about making your own perfumes is the knowledge of  the "notes". She goes into details describing the characteristics of the three major note groups and tells you how to make your own original scent.

Something that I really liked about the book also was that she included a comprehensive list of suppliers and resources to kick start your business. There's suppliers for fragrance oils, soap making supplies, packaging, labeling, and much more. You can never be short of suppliers in my experience.

But that's not all! In the download she includes another 2 books.  The one that attracted me the most was a book with 64 Handmade Bath And Body recipes. There's recipes for Scrubs, Melt and pour soaps, Detoxifying soaps, Bath salts, Bath Bombs, Bubble baths, Shampoo Bars,Solid Perfumes, Chocolate Soaps the list goes on. With that recipe book only you have more than enough to start a Bath And Body business if you are starting out. If you are an experienced Bath And Body artisan then there is more than plenty to expand your product line.

And, on top of that she also includes a guide on how you can promote your business online on twitter. She also teaches you how to run and market your Bath and Body Business.

I think that overall the book is a great product, it is very very complete and I feel like I got  great deal on it. I really recommend you buy this book. For the price you pay on the book, you can make that amount and so much much more with all the information provided on the book.  Here is a link where you can buy the book.

BUY THE BOOK HERE

WOW! What a day, Like I said in my introduction to this blog, I would talk about different topics but always relevant to soap making or the business side of it. Well today I started a new venture into the business world by joining an Internet Marketing site. I have been doing my research and I hope in the near future to be making some extra income. Like any business venture the key is not to give up IF, you know the audience and customers are there. I believe that in the near future I'll be doing more of what I like, and in the process I really hope to help many people learn a few things.

So, if you guys have any questions related to soap making or candle making please send me your questions and I'll try to answer them to the best of my knowledge and experience! And hopefully in the near future I'll be able to answer questions about Internet Marketing ( that'll   be another blog though) Until next time, Keep soaping!

Natural Soap

This is one of my all natural recipes. No colors, no fragrance just plain simple natural soap. This is a 3 pound batch.

Bar Soap

This is a soap that I made a while back, very simple no swirls and nothing fancy but it had the greatest citrus aroma! I like fruity fragrances and oils they are sure to liven up even the crankiest  morning person.

Soap Making

Greetings soap makers!


   Hello, my name is Dan and I am a soap maker! The purpose of this Blog is to pass on information I have acquired over the years and that I want to share with you all. I love teaching people how to make soap and it is great to see what they come up with after they have learned. Making soap is a great hobby, also it is a great way to make extra income. It doesn't matter why you do it, I hope you learn something while on my blog and that you give me feedback as to how has it helped you become a better soaper.

I want to keep the blog as updated as possible and I wish to post many pictures soon. Sometimes I may post something that may not be directly related to soaping but completely relevant to it. Let me explain. My wife and I run a business, so I would also like to try and give simple business tips or a few words of encouragement to those who sell soap and other cosmetic products. As a business owner, I can relate to the ups and downs of running a business. So, I would also share with my experience in that area of soaping. I hope you all like it, and I wish you could give me feedback on the content of the blog or what would you like to see in the future.