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In last year’s soap making, layering indigo and white in one soap seems to have been the least successful, especially when the combination was an insert. I started out pouring a batch in layers (2, blue and white; or 5 blue and white 3 and 2). Later on I would pour a fraction of a recipe in...

Early in the year, pre-Covid (remember when?) I made a three layer cp soap by coloring the first layer with indigo, then diluting the next two with plain white batter. Months passed with the soap curing out of sunlight. Late this summer I gave a bar (which had still managed to fade...

A friend has requested I try making shampoo bars (for dry hair, like hers). Ok. Why not? I went looking on the internet, and once again (although even more so than with CP soap itself) I found myself wondering “where is the science”? Lots of claims about this or that ingredient, but no sense...

One website insists one ALWAYS infuses oil with a colorant at a ratio of 9:1. Soap Queen by contrast seems to argue (in what seems more like diffusing than infusing) 3:1, or 1t to 1T of oil (3tsp=1T of course). I’ve generally used the 9:1 but as quantities grow, the amount of paprika or...

I’m going to make a beer soap next weekend, setting out a medium colored beer, probably an IPA or Pale Ale, on wednesday to begin conditioning. Questions abound. A lot of the recipes I see call for oils I don’t use (avocado) or colorants so sparkly and “pretty” they just seem out of place in...

I bought “Scientific Soap Making” out of an abiding respect for Science, and figured it would make a good research and reference tool, answering why things went south, with a scientific explanation of what was happening. I was wrong. It is more of a science course in soap making, and goes off...

Is it possible to get a consistent blue from indigo? I generally add it to the lye solution, 1tsp per pound of soap. I’ve gotten lots of gray, occasional Levi’s blue denim and once a quite striking navy that was nearly black. That the other layer was white kaolin clay enhanced (also added to...

I’ve seen many good articles, some referred to me here, on how SoapCalc calculates its figures for hardness, conditioning, etc, but how does it calculate its recipes? It seems that anything more than a 2 layer soap taxes my abilities of concentration to the breaking point, given my already...

I was formulating a recipe on soap calc using Jojoba and Shea Butter (7%ea) in addition to my four base oils (Coco,Palm,Olive and Castor). Conditioning was given at rock bottom at 45 in a range of 44-69. Eventually I reduced the coco and palm oils and raised the olive and got a number in the...