Filmy feel

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vwerin

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Hi there,

I am new (obviously) to the whole soap making thing. I attended a work shop where they teach you how to make a batch, predetermined recipe in 2 hours. You chose your colors and scents and between shea or cocoa butter. But the work lacked in a lot of info. The soap now has cured for 4 weeks and have been using it and it doesn't feel like it rinses completely clean. It leaves almost a slimy, filmy residue that leaves you feeling like you need to rinse your hands more but you'd be standing at the sink forever.

Now, to my question - I have palm oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter, shea butter and colorings/scents to make my own soap to start off with. Is there a recipe anyone could recommend that would give me a clean feeling soap? Also - I have played around with the soap calculator and have randomly put in the %'s and my results fall within the perimeters, giving me a hard, creamy, somewhat bubbly soap. I have looked up the properties of oils/butters and how they affect your soap, but haven't really come across anything that says certain ingredients leave a film like feeling. I can only guess that some kind of oil would. I have lost the recipe that was provided in our work shop.

Also- one more thing (sorry for my rambly, poorly pieced together thread) but I also noticed that my soap from the work shop has no fragrance smell when I followed his directions for 5ml's of EO. It does not come through the soap at all. recommendations for scent, as I really want a great smelling soap as well.

Thank you in advance for all of your help!!!
 
Can you post your recipe?

That filmy feel could be from the shea and the cocoa butter, if you used a lot. They are high in unsaponifiables - things that do not become soap. It also could be that your soap is only 4 weeks old.
 
30% Olive Oil, 30% palm, 30% coconut oil, 10% castor oil will give you a hard bar in 4 weeks that will clean without leaving any film whatsoever.

It's a pity you lost the workshop recipe but if the soap you made is high in olive oil it would benefit from a longer time to cure, try it again in another month then again in another month after that. The filmy feel will no doubt go and leave you with a creamy feel.

Try using fragrance oils or EOs at 15 g ppo to start then add more if necessary.
 
That filmy feel could also be soap scum. If you've got hard water and you're used to using commercial soaps and detergents, you're going to notice what feels like a film left behind on your skin.

In that case, you can add a chelating agent like tetrasodium EDTA or sodium citrate to help reduce that soap scum feeling. It's made a huge difference for my soaps.
 
That filmy feel could also be soap scum. If you've got hard water and you're used to using commercial soaps and detergents, you're going to notice what feels like a film left behind on your skin.

In that case, you can add a chelating agent like tetrasodium EDTA or sodium citrate to help reduce that soap scum feeling. It's made a huge difference for my soaps.

Ditto what Galaxy said. I have really hard water, which used to leave my skin feeling squidgy/filmy after showering with my soap, but since I have taken to adding a little tetrasodium EDTA to my batches, things are so much better- no squidginess/filminess.


IrishLass :)
 
If you have soft water, a little soap goes a long way, so you may be using too much soap for your water.
 
Howdy and welcome!

As far as fragrances sticking in soap, it's a bit more challenging with essential oils. Some fade altogether but most lose some degree of potency. If you want a strongly scented bar, you might consider buying fragrance oils instead from a reputable soap supplier (like Brambleberry, Nurture Soap Supply, Wholesale Supplies Plus, Mad Oils, Nature's Garden, and so many more) . Make sure to read reviews of other folks' experiences in CP soap to know a little of what to expect. I normally use FOs at 1oz ppo (per pound of oil) if it is within IFRA safety limits for that FO, and folks didn't mention that it's incredibly strong. Feel free to ask opinions here... we have lots of opinions :)

With soaping, you'll want to measure everything by weight instead of volume. That goes for all additives, fragrances, just everything...
I meant to add: you have to be careful with allowable limits for EOs as some (peppermint, clove, various others) can actually injure people if used at too high a percentage. A blanket 5ml rule from your teacher isn't actually safe.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi there,

I am new (obviously) to the whole soap making thing. I attended a work shop where they teach you how to make a batch, predetermined recipe in 2 hours. You chose your colors and scents and between shea or cocoa butter. But the work lacked in a lot of info. The soap now has cured for 4 weeks and have been using it and it doesn't feel like it rinses completely clean. It leaves almost a slimy, filmy residue that leaves you feeling like you need to rinse your hands more but you'd be standing at the sink forever.

Now, to my question - I have palm oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter, shea butter and colorings/scents to make my own soap to start off with. Is there a recipe anyone could recommend that would give me a clean feeling soap? Also - I have played around with the soap calculator and have randomly put in the %'s and my results fall within the perimeters, giving me a hard, creamy, somewhat bubbly soap. I have looked up the properties of oils/butters and how they affect your soap, but haven't really come across anything that says certain ingredients leave a film like feeling. I can only guess that some kind of oil would. I have lost the recipe that was provided in our work shop.

Also- one more thing (sorry for my rambly, poorly pieced together thread) but I also noticed that my soap from the work shop has no fragrance smell when I followed his directions for 5ml's of EO. It does not come through the soap at all. recommendations for scent, as I really want a great smelling soap as well.

Thank you in advance for all of your help!!!


Maybe if you email your instructor asking for a digital copy of the class recipe, you could get it that way. It would really help a lot. I know I have one soap I really love, the second one I ever made. And wouldn't you know, that was the one that I couldn't find the recipe for ages. Finally I did find it, as luckily I had saved it in my phone. But not in computer or in my notebook. I was frantically searching my notebook and calendar for any reference to refresh my memory as to where I might find it thinking I'd never be able to duplicate it again. Wow, was I glad to have discovered that I actually had saved it and tested it out to make sure it is the same soap I love so much. It is, thankfully. Whew! But it certainly taught me how important documentation of my soaping activities is extremely important for my own reference.

I've only been making soap for a year, so I am by no means as knowledgeable as most folks here. But I think it's a great idea to try out a couple of other people's recipes if they share them, like penelopejane did above or from soaping books or even the iternet. Always run them through SoapCalc of course. Making your own recipes is a lot of fun, too, but sometimes it just feels nice to try something someone else says works really well for them.

One thing I did soon after I started was to do single oil soap samples and kept them around (still have them) to observe what they are like. I think the drawback to that, though is that sometimes it seems a particular oil is really pretty awful by itself, but when mixed with another oil, the negative aspects of that single oil seem to just vanish. So although I learned I don't like certain oils at all based on that experiment, I have learned that a couple are just fine in small amounts mixed in a soap. I also learned I really really like certain oils very much, also as a result of that experiment. So it was a good exercise for me.

As far as the filmy feeling, without a recipe to look at it's so hard to even guess what it might be. High olive oil content without a long enough cure? Some other additive? Super soft water from your water softener? (I only say that because when our water softener has new salt put into it, it feels like we can't rinse our soap off when we shower, but that's with all soaps, not just a new homemade bar.)

A recipe with a clean feeling soap? I think all I have used do that, but here's one I really enjoy:

Egg Yolk Soap with Milk
(5% superfat; SoapCalc's default lye concentration)
(I love the bubbles & lather of this soap & the natural color of it is a deep sort of dark mustard-like yellow) I don't add fragrance to this one because the first time I made it I wanted to see how it smelled and since then am fine with fragrance-free. No added color needed unless you don't like the deep yellow it becomes, which I think is pretty nice.

Olive oil: 31.25% 283.5 grams
Coconut Oil, 76 degree: 31.25% 283.5 grams
Crisco, new w/palm: 31.25% 283.5 grams
Corn Oil: 6.25% 56.7 grams (hold this out to mix with the egg yolks)

2 egg yolks (to be mixed with the corn oil)
frozen whole milk cubes for lye solution

Liquid for lye solution: 12.16 ounces or 344.73 grams
Lye: 4.6 ounces or 130.27 grams


Slowly add lye to frozen milk cubes, stirring slowly to prevent burning the milk. Keep in an ice bath if you choose, but not necessary if you mix the lye in slowly and keep stirring. (If the weather is very hot, you may need the ice bath anyway.)

Hold out corn oil to mix with egg yolks (at room temperature).
Melt other oils, and cool to room temp. When all are at room temp, temper yolks with a bit of mixed oils (just in case they are hotter than the egg yolk mixture), then mix that into the rest of the oils.

When both mixtures are close in temperature, slowly add the lye solution to the oils stirring gently. Stir or stick blend to medium or thick trace and pour into molds. Cover & wrap with a towel or blanket and allow to gel overnight.
~ ~ ~ ~

This recipe was adapted from Anne Watson's Egg Yolk Soap recipe here. I did not have and did not want to purchase some of the ingredients in her original recipe, but I did want to make Egg Yolk Soap and I also wanted to use Milk. So if you are interested in doing so, as you know, it's pretty easy to change things around in SoapCalc.
 
Thanks everyone for all the help and responses! I am going to try a batch tonight and see how it turns out.

Also - is there a facebook group associated with this forum?
 
The soap now has cured for 4 weeks and have been using it and it doesn't feel like it rinses completely clean. It leaves almost a slimy, filmy residue that leaves you feeling like you need to rinse your hands more but you'd be standing at the sink forever.

I am leaning with others saying that it could be from a high olive or other single oil recipe. That would be the first thing I'd check. It sounds like you were given a base mixture to which the only other oil you only added was shea or cocoa butter -- is that right? I encourage you to contact your instructor to find out the exact recipe you used (or at least the base recipe), as that is key here.

Next, I'd wonder if you have very soft water. That can lead to slippery-feeling soap, but I'd think you'd have noticed that with your shampoo and previous soap too. Did you move recently and now have a different water source?

I think the other replies about a hard water culprit were in response to your use of the word "filmy." Hard water has high amounts of calcium or magnesium that causes formation of soap scum, which is a film/deposit that many describe as feeling "squeaky clean". But you said your film was slimy, so I don't think that is coming from hard water.

Good luck to you and welcome to the forum. Hope you check back on this thread as you sort the slime out for yourself. This is a great place to bounce around questions, ideas, and observations. And don't forget to post pics!
 
I would suggest checking out Soap Queen TV on youtube.com for a good beginners tutorial on soap making basics.
 

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