Dishwasher Detergent

So I am trying to make most of the things we usually buy at home.  Sometimes it’s worth the trouble sometimes I chalk it up with a learning experience.  I have been researching dish detergents for a while now.  I love using organic detergent without all of the nasty chemicals in them but they get so expensive.  I finally came up with a recipe with help of many blogs and forums and decided to give it a try.  What would it hurt right?

Here’s the recipe I used:

1 Cup Washing Soda (NOT baking soda, totally different)
1 Cup Borax
1/2 Cup Sea Salt (I used fine grain)
1/2 Cup Citric Acid
40 Drops Lavender EO
45 Drops Grapefruit EO

I put everything in a mason jar and shook it well to combine.  I just ran my first load and … It works great!  No residue, no food stuck on anything.  I am impressed.  We also do a vinegar rinse in our jet dry thing since we have hard water.  It didn’t cost me much… I had the washing soda and borax already from making my own laundry detergent.  You could use whatever EO’s you wanted but I chose mine because of their specific properties.

Lavender EO: Lavender is known to have antibacterial, antimicrobial, antiseptic, and aromatic properties (mountainroseherbs.com)

Grapefruit EO: Grapefruit is known to have antibacterial, antiseptic, and astringent properties (mountainroseherbs.com).  The citrus also helps cut grease which is nice for dishes as well.

I am surprised it worked out so well.  Usually things have to be tweaked a bit because of things like the type of dishwasher you have, type of water you have, etc.  I love it when things work out, don’t you!?!

 

Look at my newest batch

This is my newest creation, Tea Tree Bastille Facial Soap (though you can totally use this on your body too!).  What is Bastille soap?  It is soap where the main ingredient is Olive Oil but also contains other oils as well.  Mine has Olive Oil and Castor Oil.  Castile Soap is Olive Oil only though many companies out there don’t follow this rule (ahem Dr. Bronner).  Anyways what’s in my soap that makes it great for the face (and body too!)?

Olive Oil: This creates a mild soap great for sensitive skin.  It’s highly conditioning and is said to also help with dry skin, minimizing scars, helps eczema and psoriasis, and rashes and it helps the skin hold in the moisture.

Castor Oil: Helps add lather to the soap while still adding conditioning properties.

Calendula:  has anti-inflammatory qualities that can prevent infection in minor skin wounds when applied topically. It can reduce itching, redness, pain, and swelling of insect bites and rashes. It is soothing for sunburns, cuts, scrapes, dry and chapped hands, and minor burns.

Spirulina Powder: is a type of blue-green algae that is rich in protein, vitamins, minerals, and carotenoids (a type of antioxidant that can help protect cells from damage). It contains nutrients, including B complex vitamins, beta-carotene, vitamin E, manganese, zinc, copper, iron, selenium, and gamma linolenic acid (an essential fatty acid).

French Green Clay: French Green Clay (Also Known as Illite Clay or Sea Clay) is very absorbent, and literally “drinks” oils, toxic substances, and impurities from your skin.  Its toning action stimulates the skin by bringing fresh blood to damaged skin cells, revitalizing the complexion, and tightening pores. Mined from bedrock quarries in France, it is sun-dried, completely natural, unscented, and fragrance free.  Green clay is a bio-mineral, and contains decomposed plant matter as well as many trace minerals, such as: silica, aluminum, magnesium, calcium, iron, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, copper, zinc, selenium, cobalt, manganese, phosphorous, silicon, micro-algaes, kelp, and phyto-nutrients. Green Clay has analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties which make it beneficial for muscular pain, swelling, and arthritic or rheumatic conditions. Cosmetically, French Green clay is revered for its ability to stimulate blood and lymph circulation, remove dead skin cells, absorb impurities and fats, and tone and strengthen connective tissues.  After using French Green clay, skin feels fresh, smooth, radiant, and soft.  French Green Clay is also marvelous for helping to clear problem skin areas, and is gentle enough to use weekly, or even daily on problem spots. (mountainroseherbs.com)

Coconut Milk: According to OptiDerma, coconut milk can treat a variety of skin ailments when applied topically. Coconut milk’s moisturizing properties soothe the symptoms of psoriasis, dermatitis and eczema. It also prevents wrinkles, sagging skin and age spots. The natural fatty acids found in coconut milk make it an excellent topical treatment for dry, irritated skin, according to CareFair.com. These fatty acids allow coconut milk to remove harmful bacteria from your skin without overdrying. (Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/132040-home-skin-remedies-that-use-coconut-milk/#ixzz1X847fDQk)

Tea Tree Essential Oil: Has healing properties as well as being an antifungal, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and antiseptic.

It’s now cut and currently on the drying rack to sit for a few months.  It will then be a gentile moisturizing facial soap. Can’t wait!

This and That

Every Sunday I go out and sell my soaps and such at a Farmer’s Market.  This is my first year doing so and I can say I have learned a lot.  For example, I need to have far more stock before the season starts.  Right now I am making soap every couple of weeks or so to keep up.  Because of this my CP soap making has been put on hold because I don’t have time.  I have been trying out a few bases from Bramble Berry.  I recently got LCP base.  I have heard that this one can be slightly drying than the others so I have tried out a few new additives such as coconut oil, avocado oil, palm oil, and honey.  So far I like the experimentation.  Here’s a few pics of my table at the Farmer’s Market and my newest creations:

Passionfruit Rose Guest Soap
Pineapple Cilantro Guest Soap
Oatmeal and Honey (Unscented)
Gardners Soap (Tea Tree, Lavender, Peppermint)
Lavender Love

I want to get back into making more CP soap but I think that is going to have to wait until I have a bit more time and it’s a tich cooler since we really don’t have any a/c.

Rosemary’s Perfect Cream

I love lotion and creams but I don’t really enjoy the fragrances that are out there. In my family we are trying to take out the artificial fragrances and preservatives that are just not needed. Now I know for lotion and cream that a preservative is necessary for long-term storage. This recipe that I got from Rosemary Gladstar is just for my family and I and because I know we will go through it I don’t feel we need a preservative. I am sure there are some of you out there that think I am crazy (and I might be, who knows). But I am going to trust in this recipe until I find out otherwise. If I were going to sell this then I would definitely use a preservative (so you can all take a sigh of relief and not send me e-mails screaming about mold). I know all about it. Trust me. Please.

I like how with this recipe they give you a range of beeswax to use. I stuck with a middle amount since this was my first time trying out this recipe. I am not into really watery lotions/creams. I like mine to have a bit of body to them. Also for this recipe I used what I had. When I am playing around and trying things out I try not to buy too many new ingredients and instead make them more my own. This recipe does allow you to do that rather easily. What makes this one tricky is getting the proper emulsification since you are trying to get oil and water to play nice with each other. So here’s the ingredients I used:

Beeswax and Coconut Oil Sweet Almond and Grapeseed Oil

Chamomile and Lavender Infused Water (seeped for about 10 hours today)

Plus tea tree and lavender essential oils

So I bet you are all wondering how it turned out. Well, I think rather well. I used my immersion blender for this (which in my opinion has far more power than a regular blender and is easier to clean as well). What do you think?

Total Product Ingredients:  Chamomile and Lavender Infused Water, Coconut Oil, Sweet Almond Oil, Grapeseed Oil, Beeswax, Lavender Essential Oil, Tea Tree Essential Oil

Soapy Saturday

Got my supplies all out and ready

Got my colors all mixed in some glycerin

I made a 4 lb batch of soap that I split into 2 batches.

This one is Plain Jane.  Unscented and not colored

This is the one I used all the colors on.  This one is also scented with a blend of Sweet Meyer Lemon Fo, Moroccan Mint FO, and Cedarwood EO.

Soapy Sunday

Yesterday was a soap day for me.  I had a few ideas going through my head and some new scents I wanted to try out.  I decided to make 3 batches.

1 batch was a 2 lbs loaf with a blend of Capri Olive and Basil, Sage, and Mint.  I added tomato powder to this one as well as some soap balls I made from some of the extras of an older batch.  So far it’s still too soft in the mold to try and get out so I have it sitting on the curing rack for a few days and then we will try again.  This batch had lard, coconut oil, olive oil, and castor oil.  I am finding more and more that I really like lard soap.  I cannot wait to cut this batch and see how it looks.  For some reason it turned out much lighter than my other batches (I only had dk olive oil on hand).

The second and third batches I used one of my favorite molds.  I really need to get more of these.  I love that I don’t have to worry about cutting these.  They are already a perfect size.  I made a 2 lbs batch of coconut oil, olive oil, and castor oil soap and split it into 2 batches.  The first batch I used Mandarin and Myrrh FO which will discolor to a light tan.  I added a bit of coral mica to 1/2 of this batch in hopes that when it discolors that 1/2 will look slightly different.  We’ll see how that works.  It smells wonderful and right now I get a lot of the citrus notes.  I cannot wait to try this one out after curing!  The other batch I didn’t color because I used Caramel Sundae FO which will discolor to a dark brown.  I love naturally colored soaps due to the FOs.  This one smells just like Caramel too!  For some reason it made more bars than the other batch (even though I weighed it out) but oh well.  🙂

I still have some oils left and lard so I am thinking I might be able to get one more 2 lbs batch in possibly tonight maybe tomorrow.  I have this Carrot Cupcake FO from Nature’s Garden that I want to try out.  It was one of my best sellers in my MP soaps and I would love to see how it behaves in CP.   I also tried to get some more stuff together for a small little craft show I am doing on Saturday at the local elementary school.   So what have you all been up to this past weekend?

Soap Making Frenzy

I am loving this cold process soap making.  I think eventually that will be all I do.  I love being able to control absolutely every ingredient I put in it.  For example in a basic bar of Dial there is:

Active Ingredient: Triclocarban
Inactive Ingredients: SOAP (SODIUM COCOATE*, SODIUM PALM KERNELATE*, SODIUM PALMATE*, SODIUM TALLOWATE*), WATER, TALC, COCONUT ACID*, PALM ACID*, TALLOW ACID*, PALM KERNEL ACID*, PEG-6 METHYL ETHER, FRAGRANCE, GLYCERIN, SORBITOL, SODIUM CHLORIDE, PENTASODIUM PENTETATE, TETRASODIUM ETIDRONATE, TITANIUM DIOXIDE

In my cold process soap there is:

OLIVE OIL, COCONUT OIL, SODIUM HYDROXIDE, CASTOR OIL

interesting in the differences huh.  I only use essential oils for fragrance and natural colorants (ex. tomato powder, french green clay).  This last weekend I made two more batches of soap.  Mint Mojito (can’t wait to try this one out!) and Star Anise.

Mint Mojito freshly poured into the mold
Star Anise freshly poured into the mold

The mint mojito has french green clay (great for oily skin), lime essential oils, and peppermint essential oils.  It smells sooooo good!  The star anise has unsweetened cocoa powder for the brown color and anise essential oil.  If you like black licorice this is your soap!  Here’s what they look like now:
on the left: Mint Mojito
on the right: Star Anise

They are curing for 6 weeks and then I cannot wait to try them out.  I am going to try a tomato powder soap this weekend I think…

Castile Soap

I decided to try out one more type of soap in my CP (cold process) learning.  Since I am out of coconut butter I made castile soap.  What is Castile soap?
Castile soap is an olive oil based soap that once originated from Castile, Spain.  It produces a very hard bar of soap that is extremely gentile on the skin.

I wanted to make a bar that would help with acne and was gentile enough to be used on the face as well the body.  To do this I used a blend of essential oils that have acne fighting properties (spearmint, tea tree, rosemary, and lemongrass) and french green clay (which is good for oily skin.)  I also wanted to try to not gel this batch.  Because I live in cold Wisconsin, I placed my soap out in the garage. 

In theory if this soap works out, though I am pretty sure it did.  I will have a very hard bar of soap that is gentile on the skin.  It smells fantastic and has a nice sage green color.  This batch will cure for 6 weeks so I can test out 1 bar and the rest will cure longer.  It is said Castile soap needs a longer curing time to really become wonderful.  Patients is a virtue in soap making.

More new soaps!

I just finished adding in all my new soaps on my etsy account.  Here’s a few pics to delight you! 🙂

all can be purchased at my store… so feel free to visit and look around for more info on each soap.

New items up on Etsy!

I just posted 3 new soaps on my Etsy Store!  Check them out!  2 use essential oils and 1 uses 2 kinds of fragrance oils and all would make great gifts for Valentine’s Day!  Here’s a picture preview:

Each bar is 4.5 to 5.0 oz!  Pick the design you like before they are all gone!  Each one is scented with Lavender Essential oil 🙂

Each bar is around 4.5 to 5 oz and uses essential oils that are great for the feet (they have anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties) plus this one has apricot seeds for scrubbing!

These ones are great for a gift because you get 2 different kinds of soap with 2 different scents.  They are cute too (in my opinion)!