Help!

[meganpenny]

Hiya, just wondering if someone could give me a hand! Im quite new to soap making and desperatly want to try making a honey and oatmeal bar! Looking around online I have found a few different recipies but I am completly confused...some say to add the honey like an additive, at trace but one recipie also included almond milk and said to add both honey and milk before you start mixing it and reduce the amount of water used in the lye mixture as the honey will effect this!! And will using honey in the normal recipie give the scent of honey at all? I have recently bought a lovely bar of honey soap and it smells divine, Im not sure if this is achieved with essential oils :S As you can tell..very confused! So any help/adivce would be fantastic thankyou

 

[melstan775]

Hi there, if you are new, the members of this forum suggest making a few simple batches with one oil or at least no additives and/or fragerence before you try to cook up a "full meal" if you will. This is because soap is a chemical process and you need to understand what is going to happen. It's very easy to screw up soap if you don't know what to expect. PS - run your recipe through a lye calculator to make sure it's correct! A number of recipes are incorrect, even ones made by soapmakers!

I personally suggest a one-oil soap with no additives. olive oil works well as it is a pure castile soap - the worlds oldest soap formula!
After that, maybe add fragerence or color. then fragerence and color. then try oatmeal and honey. You can one tablespoon of honey to your recipe. If you want milk, reduce your water by 1/2 but use the same amount of lye. Then use the almond milk for the remaining 1/2 water due, added to your oils. Chill it out first, milks are prone to burning when lye is added. you won't get much scent out of the natural honey, so I suggest purchasing a fragerence oil to kick up your smell factor. Good luck.

 

[Cherry Bomb]

I made my first batch with a simple recipe and it turned out great. I only added a FO and learned quickly about ricing!!! I was able to fix it thank goodness!!! I agree with Melstan775. Make your first recipe simple so you can learn the process. My second recipe was 100% Castile Soap. I used 50 oz Olive Oil, 6.4 oz lye and 16.5 oz of distilled water. turned out lovely and also learned that it takes olive oil a little longer to trace when it's acting alone Always run your recipe through a lye calc. Finally, I have seen several FO's of oatmeal and honey. A great web site will give you info on how well a FO will react in processing and if it speeds up tracing or not. Good luck to you!!!

 

[Genny]

The scent is most likely a fragrance oil. The smell of the honey doesn't usually stick around after cure.

If you're just looking to make a honey & oatmeal bar, without any milk, then I would just add a small amount of honey, like 3% ppo. I heat my honey up a little so it's more fluid & then I add it at light trace. Then I add finely ground oatmeal at trace.
If you're just adding just honey & oatmeal, there is no reason to discount your water. I actually use full water when using ingredients that tend to overheat, it helps keep the soap from overheating. I also put those types of soaps in the freezer for a couple of hours & then transfer them to the fridge for a few days.

 

[Cherry Bomb]

Hiya, just wondering if someone could give me a hand! Im quite new to soap making and desperatly want to try making a honey and oatmeal bar! Looking around online I have found a few different recipies but I am completly confused...some say to add the honey like an additive, at trace but one recipie also included almond milk and said to add both honey and milk before you start mixing it and reduce the amount of water used in the lye mixture as the honey will effect this!! And will using honey in the normal recipie give the scent of honey at all? I have recently bought a lovely bar of honey soap and it smells divine, Im not sure if this is achieved with essential oils :S As you can tell..very confused! So any help/adivce would be fantastic thankyou

Guess what the fragrance of the month is at WSP? Yup!!!! You guessed it! Oatmeal, milk, and honey!

http://www.wholesalesuppliesplus.co...ce™+Oatmeal,+Milk+and+Honey+Fragrance+Oil+114

 

[Shannon_m]

It's the FO of the month at Bramble Berry as well.

The poster didn't say this was their first batch, however I can see how introducing yourself as quite new might give off that impression. I wish I had some advice for you on OMH soap, however today I will be making my first batch of it, so I guess I can tell you my own experiences with the ingredients.

 

[Lindy]

Honey does add a subtle sweetness to the soap but not really all that much. I love oatmeal & honey soaps, I make mine with goat milk.

So here is how I do it. I add the honey with my oils to melt. You're not going to be using enough to affect your water, however if you are using a milk (Almond or whatever) this will get deducted from your water. If you are not replacing all of your water with the milk then make sure you have enough water to mix your lye with. That would be an equal amount of lye and water. The almond milk can be added just before you add your lye water. I find it easiest at that point, but I know others do it differently.

After that, have fun.

 

[green soap]

This is how I do it: dissolve honey in weighed water (about 1 tbs honey PPO). Freeze into ice cubes and use when I want to make 'plain' honey oatmeal soap.

To make goat honey oatmeal soap I dissolve the honey in a weighed amount of goat milk, then freeze that in ice cube trays. Bag and label.

When it is time to make the soap, add lye to frozen cubes and stir very diligently.

 

[nebetmiw]

I know many to prevent seepage add honey to lye mixture. This works well in preventing honey from not mixing in. But you will need an FO to get the scent.

 

[melstan775]

The reviews for the OMH oil at WSP I'd that it is more like almonds or almond cherry, not many of them say they smell much like oatmeal at all. Anyone tried BB's?

 

[Genny]

Anyone tried BB's?

I've tried their cybilla OMH, it's almondish and sweet. Not unpleasant, but not oatmeal & milkish either.

 

[melstan775]

I've tried their cybilla OMH, it's almondish and sweet. Not unpleasant, but not oatmeal & milkish either.

Any suggestions for a truer OMH scent? Maybe a honey and milk one? What do you think?

 

[Genny]

Any suggestions for a truer OMH scent? Maybe a honey and milk one? What do you think?

Sweet Cakes has a delicious OMH. To my nose, there's no almond.
They also have a very nice honey fo.

 

[Shannon_m]

I have Bramble Berry's OMH and I happen to LOVE it! It smells like Oatmeal with a touch of cinnamon for me.

 

[judymoody]

Daystar's Got Milk is supposed to have no almond notes. Peak Wild Mountain Honey is straight honey. AHRE makes a similar one but I forget what it's called.

I add my honey to my lye solution after it has cooled down to about 110. It will heat up again and then when it has cooled back down I make my soap. This tends to eliminate overheating in the mold.

If you are new to soaping, I would recommend a 2 or 3 oil soap. (Castille takes forever to cure and I don't care for the lather, personally. You could try 75% OO and 25% CO, or 50% OO, 25% CO, 25% PO. Soap at about 100-110 degrees and 7-8% superfat and you'd have a very nice soap. I would forget the milk (not likely to impart much scent and in the short term it can smell a bit funky) and I would use honey at 1 T PPO and ground oatmeal at 1 T PPO. It will probably smell faintly like bread or graham crackers if you don't add any additional scent.

 

[meganpenny]

Thankyou for all the help, the tip about freezing and adding to the lye mix is definatly something i will be trying! I have made several batches of soap before, simple ones with a few additives and oils but wanted to adventure into something a bit more exciting And very grateful for the fragrance recomendations!!