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Hi everyone. I'm going to try to use 1,3 propanediol in my anhydrous body butter to adjust its viscosity but I have the following questions: 1. I understand this is not an oil, and in fact, it is water soluble, but would it work in my anhydrous body butter anyway? 2. If I am able to use it...

I want to make body butter that spreads better so I don't dread using it as much as I do now. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!

There's a dry feel that you get when you use something like a serum, like it just disappears into your skin and almost feels like it evaporated into thin . . . well, skin. I would like to learn how to create products that have that feel but I don't even know what to search for cos I'm not sure...

One of the most important things I've learned on here is that solid soap needs time for three things to happen: saponification to take place, excess water to evaporate and soap to develop a crystal structure. My question is, when you interrupt this process to rebatch soap, how do these all get...

Holiday is over and I'm back to contemplating recipes and soaping! Well, first soapy thing I did this year was rebatch a citrusy soap that I piped into little floral disasters last November into sugar scrubs. It turned out beautifully (I got new silicon heart-shaped molds, yay!) but it doesn't...

Hi everyone! This time of the year I always struggle with keeping my skin non-scaly, except, this year I've become more crafty and my sense of adventure is somewhat heightened. So, today I was looking at a bottle of homemade mayonnaise and the thought came to me, other than the smell of raw egg...

My first real-life contact with sodium hydroxide came from soapmaking. Imagine my surprise when I saw sodium hydroxide on the label while shopping for a lotion/cream for the season yesterday. I grabbed a few more at random and scrutinized the labels, and sure enough sodium hydroxide showed up...

Christmas gift soaps done, I'm taking a holiday from soaping until the new year! For my grand finale I made . . . (Drum roll) All-Mighty-Pure Castile Soap! I think this choice was rather apt since I have since banished them to the back of my curing rack to begin the six-months cure. Was so...

Hi everyone, I've observed something while measuring ingredients and I thought I'd share. You know how we should always soap in a well ventilated area? Okay, so whenever I'm in the soaping area, I throw all windows open and there's a cold draft. I then put an empty bowl on the scale and tare...

I'm getting close to the full cure of some of my soaps, and having been around here a while and learned a few things about cured soaps (like how they might sweat or how they might absorb scents from one another), I thought I'd ask here about how everyone stores their soaps and see if any of your...

My recipe was originally conceived 100% CO but I have some Shea Butter from my last batch and Castor Oil has come to be something I add by default to all my soaps, and I would like to adjust my recipe to include these. The numbers I am concerned about are my Oleic (16) and Linoleic (3), and the...

I'm asking this question here because it pertains to entering the coconut oil in the lye calculator. So, I make my own coconut oil at home but then I have a hard time knowing exactly which type I've made and whether to enter it in the lye calculator as coconut oil 76 deg, coconut oil 92 deg, or...

Hi guys, I haven't yet figured my recipe but I'm considering it. So I want to know how much cocoa butter (in percentage) I can use in a recipe to retain the chocolate scent and not have any other problems (also, what are some problems to consider). Thanks!

I have a recipe whose total weight was 748.49g. 150.3g of this was water. I poured this into 5 individual molds. If all the water evaporates during curing, it means I should be left with 598.10g of soap, that is, each individual soap should be 119.62g . When I first popped them out of the...

I read somewhere online that they can but it was in passing and I didn't think too much of it until I was pouring Tea Tree EO yesterday and I got a near-instant bad headache and it got me wondering, could it be the EO? Has anyone any experience with this?

Hi, everyone, I'm new-ish to soapmaking, and by that I mean that I've been soaping for a really long time in my head, but I've got a few small batches under my belt now---with some really good ones. So, I made this batch with 0% superfat and 100% coconut oil which is supposed to be drying (for...

I made a batch which was separating into thick soap mix and water at the bottom so I thought I would cook it up and see if I could get the soap to mix up again. In my panic I poured the soap mix into an aluminum pot and of course I had to pour it right out again when the reaction started...

When I arrived ever-too-soon at a false trace today, I took the above advice which I found on a very reputable soapmaking site. Unfortunately when I did, my mixture just separated, with clear lye solution (or maybe water?) sitting at the bottom and refusing to join the party. This is the...