Fading Scent

[pink-north]

Hi Everyone,

I've been having trouble with keeping the nice lavender smell in my soap lately. I use a pretty basic recipe of coconut oil, olive oil, soybean oil, and a little palm kernel for hardness. With a recipe of 74 oz in oil I usually add 30 ml e.o.

I add the e.o. at trace. I like to wait until I see a pretty full trace before adding the e.o. Other than that it's a normal soap, but no smell.

What am I doing wrong ? I appreciate any suggestions/help you might have.

 

[AmyW]

30ml= about 1oz and most people use between .5oz and 1oz per pound (16oz) of oil. For 74oz of oil, you'd need a lot more EO.

 

[pink-north]

Thanks for the info. Here I thought I was being conservative. Turns out I'm just stingy . I'll adjust my recipe.

What about other e.os? Should I use the same formula?

 

[carebear]

pretty much!

 

[judymoody]

Thanks for the info. Here I thought I was being conservative. Turns out I'm just stingy . I'll adjust my recipe.

What about other e.os? Should I use the same formula?

Most people use .7 as a standard usage rate. I don't like overly scented soaps so I go with .5 to start and adjust up or down with experience.

For clove, cinnamon, and kind of mint, eucalyptus or menthol, I'd use less as they are very strong and are potentially irritating to the skin in large quantities.

For basic citrus - grapefruit, orange, lemon, lime, etc. you can go higher as citrus survives the lye process less well. Also it's good to anchor citrus with an EO like litsea cubeba or lemongrass.

 

[DottieF.]

When making lavender soap, I add it at the rate of 1 oz. ppo. So for a batch of your size I would have used 4.63 oz. of lavender eo. I generally use most eo's at .7 ppo but lavender isn't quite as strong as patchouli for ex.

Dottie