Search results

Hi there, As I explained in my presentation, I'm making soap for quite monumental artistic purposes. I'm thus aiming to find The Strongest Antioxidant and it appears to be BHT (correct me if I'm wrong). It seems pretty simple to purchase in the US but in Europe I could not find anywhere to buy...

The scents can actually lead soaps to misbehave like this. If you used undiluted NaOH grains (which I assume you didn't), you can still salt the lye and the glycerin out. This was actually one of the traditional steps of Marseille's soap. It works by making HP soap with lye excess, then salting...

Licorice is actually plenty of tanins. It has strong antioxidant properties as an extract. However, I may not have a great interest in soap since its main ingredient, glycyrrhizic acid (always struggle with the spelling of this one), will be neutralized by the lye. Maybe this still have some...

Castor Oil has much water affinity and it's not very gentle to the skin in big quantities. Stearic Acid is good for stabilizing lather, although it's difficult to manipulate in CP. I made a 15% stearic acid soap once, I had to keep everything above 70°C until it accepts to mix with the rest of...

Wow, I totally love the way it seems translucent in some zones and opaque in others. Really stunning effect!

Wow, why did you use such a hard recipe? As many others, I think your skin is reacting to the striping. This is bad, and can take several weeks to recover. Some people don't support soap at all on their faces. That's unfortunately my case. However, you still can make a soft soap with plenty of...

Nice colors, very beautiful texture. Did you use natural coloring?

Oh, excuse me, my French sometimes overrides my English. I meant clays. Kaolin, Montmorillonite… they give a nice texture.

Labdanum or yellow birch (Benzyl acetate) also have leathery, masculine notes, without the sweet facet of Peru Balsam or Benzoin. Hyraceum is typically used to replace animal notes. Depends if you want to pass directly from bright to leather or if you prefer a little balsamine trip before...

All sugars will give you more lather. This includes white sugar, brown sugar, honey, syrup, and beer (especially brown ones). Be aware that they may also cause trace faster and cause gel to your soap, depending the amount you put in. Beer should not have bubbles anymore. Eventually, it can be...

Thank you so much for your feedback and kind words!

Hi there, Just made a little batch yesterday. It's inspired by French marble "fleur de pêcher" (peach flower marble). I really love marble stones, I find they have both bold and natural looking. As I'm aiming to get some sculptures in soap, I found interesting to learn how to do naturalist...

I know the article you are referring, but Kevin Dunn used almost twice less than recommended. As I said before, it is still possible for tocopherol to be really less cost effective than ROE. And I certainly have no doubt that BHT is also an excellent antioxidant, but question here was about...

Well, I don't agree with you. It is in fact a great cosmetic ingredient and diary, but its action is precisely antioxidative. A lot of furnishers sell it for this exact purpose, and it has been used in the oleochemical industry for decades for preventing rancidity. Edit: After reading your...

Oh, you're welcome :-) I love to share knowledge! And yes I am a CGI artist, so I'm pretty used to 3-D print. I've also been working with etching and screenprints for more than 5 years now. I am in fact a newbie in soapmaking, but with a strong technic background. And I like reading ^^

Thank you Artemis. I'm reading this now. Living and learning!

Iron oxides can provide colors as blacks, brown, purples and reds. As Kittish said, I think the brown oxide may have turned purple. 5% citric acid is quite a lot, it can change the pH of the whole batch. As this oxide was meant for soapmaking, it is possible that it turns to another color at...

Hi, Now the use of Tocopherol (Vitamin E) as an antioxidative is also quite common. It seems to work pretty well, plus it doesn't smell anything noticeable at recommended quantities.

Gosh, I never thought that glass could be etched by lye. Good to know. Thus are thicker glass recipients still safe to use?

I am one of those who like mallets. I think it gives you more comfort to do many stampings, but you need to control your strength. It is better for bigger and harder soaps, like Marseilles'. It has to be hit only once, at middle. One trick is to glue your stamp to a quite big plate (same size...