Month: February 2013

Yummy Soap

Posted on by Dana

RaspberryI have to admit I have a personal preference for two types of soap: lavender-scented and food-scented. I don’t go in for the perfumy soaps as much, though I do make them and enjoy them. My favorites—the ones I can’t stop smelling myself while they’re out on the curing racks—are the foodie ones.

Back when I regularly bought Bath and Body Works, my absolute favorite scent was Sun-Ripened Raspberry. I also love their Warm Vanilla Sugar for winter. In fact, I love most of Bath and Body Works’ foodie scents. I also liked their Velvet Tuberose and Japanese Cherry Blossom, which are floral scents, but for the most part, the kinds of scents I tend to like best are berry scents or vanilla scents.

The last issue of Saponifier had a great interview of Jo Lasky by Beth Byrne called “Creating a Scentsational Product Line.” Jo covers a great deal of ground in the interview, including what happens in the olfactory receptor neuron and the brain when we smell an aroma, the difference between fragrance oils and essential oils, the top ten list of best-selling scents for 2012 as voted by readers and her thoughts as to why those scents moved more products, fragrance trends, and advice for soap/candle/bath suppliers looking to put together an appealing scent line. If you are soapmaker, it’s worth the price of the magazine subscription to access this article alone.

For the first time since the inception of the annual survey of top ten best-selling fragrances, lavender was not number one in 2012—it was vanilla.

Vanilla Sugar Cane
My Vanilla Sugar Cane soap

I found this revelation interesting, particularly as vanilla products seem to be gaining more traction in recent years in stores like Bath and Body Works than some of their traditional scents. Sun-Ripened Raspberry used to be one of their most popular fragrances, if not the most popular of all, but it has been discontinued in stores and is now only available for purchase online. My personal opinion is that it was replaced with Black Raspberry Vanilla, which has a similar scent, but with the vanilla base, which also eventually went to “online exclusive” only. Bath and Body Works’ website reports the following are their most popular scents (they do not specify if this is in order, but it is probably not because the list is alphabetical):

  • Aruba Coconut
  • Bali Mango
  • Berry Flirt
  • Daisy Dreamgirl
  • Forever Red
  • Honey Sweetheart
  • Japanese Cherry Blossom
  • Moonlight Path
  • Rio Rumberry
  • Sweet Pea
  • Warm Vanilla Sugar

Of the scents on this list, my guess is that Berry Flirt is probably the closest to Sun-Ripened Raspberry because it is described as a blend of red berries and blond woods. However, I haven’t smelled it, so I can’t be sure it’s close at all. I am not surprised to see Japanese Cherry Blossom on the list, as it has been a good seller for a few years now. I am surprised that of the rest of the list, the only ones I’m familiar with at all are Sweet Pea and Warm Vanilla Sugar.

I am sure Bath and Body Works likes to change up their scent line so that they can stay fresh and competitive, but I have always thought they risk alienating customers when they do away with popular scents, which they seem to do regularly. I have certainly found that aspect of their business model frustrating. On the other hand, who is to say that my notion of what was popular was actually moving off their shelves? They may be discontinuing scents I like, but that others don’t seem to buy.

If you are trying to decide which scents to use, it is a good idea to do your own market research. Make products that appeal to you and watch to see how they move. Keep track of which scents are requested. My biggest mover is Lemongrass Sage. I was recently asked if I did a lavender scent, but at the time, I hadn’t used it. I now have two different lavender soaps—Provence and Lavender Spearmint. Take stock of those scents that people request, and watch what moves in bath and body stores like Bath and Body Works, Victoria’s Secret, and Lush, but ultimately, use your own common sense as a guide. I think a great deal of success in soapmaking depends on your own intuition about what kinds of oils to use, what kinds of fragrances, and what kinds of designs will work. I also think you tend to create more loyal customers than big bath and body stores, and they will seek out their favorite products over novelty.

I know of some soapmakers who eschew fragrances, but given the popularity of scent in soaps, I would recommend treading very carefully if you choose not to use a fragrance at all. The first thing people do when they see my soaps out on display is pick them up and smell them. I do the same thing when shopping for handmade soap. It definitely makes it tougher to move soap online—obviously customers can’t smell soaps in my Etsy store, but I think there are some smart techniques soapers can use to increase online sales. Celine Blacow’s videos seem to help her move products. I know watching a video about the making of the very soap I bought is a little bit exciting. As soon as I can make my work area presentable, it’s something I’d like to try. I just ordered some Lavender Song and Adam and Eve soap from Celine, and I can’t wait for it to arrive. I so enjoyed both of the “making of” videos, particularly Lavender Song, which I have watched several times now.

I also think that sometimes customers don’t know what they want until you make it. Steve Jobs famously said, “[F]or something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” This is true of soap, too. Customers might not think about a certain fragrance as something they’d like, but if they smell it, they like it, or if your description on your online store or video is good enough, their interest is piqued to try it.

Ultimately, I think as a soapmaker, choosing a scent I like is part of the artistry, and though I pay close attention to what my customers like, I tend to make soaps that I know I will like. However, I highly recommend reading Beth Byrne’s article, and think about designing a product line with the most popular scents.

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Do You Know What’s in Your Soap?

Posted on by Dana
Clean Hands
By Arlington County on Flickr

Handcrafted soapmakers have some choices about how they describe ingredients, but commercial soapmakers are bound by stricter conventions and must list the ingredients according to INCI (International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients) regulations because many of them make cosmetic claims about their soap. As a result, consumers often don’t realize what is in their soap because they do not know the chemical names for the ingredients.

The FDA does not require labeling on soap. If a soap is marketed only as soap and makes no claims about other cosmetic concerns—for example, that it moisturizes or exfoliates—then technically the maker does not need to label the ingredients in the soap. It’s a good idea, however, as so many people have allergies and would appreciate knowing what they are putting on their skin.

Before I started making soap, I was a huge fan of Yardley’s English Lavender soap, widely considered to be a good soap. It smells wonderful—best-smelling commercial lavender soap, in my opinion.

Here is a list of the ingredients in Yardley’s English Lavender soap:

  • sodium tallowate
  • water
  • sodium cocoate
  • glycerin
  • fragrance
  • lavandula angustifola (lavender) oil
  • sodium chloride
  • titanium dioxide
  • tetrasodium EDTA
  • iron oxides

Ingredients are listed in order of amount—the first ingredient listed makes up the largest percentage of the soap, and the last ingredient makes up the smallest percentage. I am not going to take the usual tactic of pointing out that the names of the chemicals are unpronounceable and therefore bad for you. Everything is chemical and has a chemical name. Butyrospermum Parkii sounds horrible, doesn’t it? It’s shea butter, which is valued for its moisturizing properties.

So what exactly are these ingredients in Yardley’s English Lavender soap?

Sodium tallowate is the name for the chemical that results when tallow (beef fat) is combined with sodium hydroxide (lye). Sodium cocoate is coconut oil and lye. Glycerin is produced when the oils and lye combine. It is a byproduct of the soapmaking process, and many commercial soapmakers take it out of their soap, which is one reason commercial soaps can be more drying than handcrafted soap, which retains all its natural glycerin.

The fragrance is probably a synthetic fragrance oil. Lavender oil is also used for fragrance, which probably explains why Yardley’s smells so good—it has real lavender essential oil in it. Sodium chloride is just salt. Titanium dioxide might sound scary, but it’s just a natural white pigment that you will find in everything from food to sunscreen. Tetrasodium EDTA is a chemical that makes hard water softer. It helps make a stronger lather and reduces soap scum. There is some debate about how harmful it may or may not be, especially to the environment rather than to our skin, but the Cosmetic Ingredient Review evaluated tetrasodium EDTA and concluded it was safe in moderate amounts. Iron oxides, like titanium dioxide, are natural colorants. They are simply a combination of iron and oxygen. Rust is one form of iron oxide, but there are many kinds.

Yardley’s English Lavender is a pretty good soap. There are not really any scary chemicals or horrible carcinogens in it. Handcrafted soapmakers use most of the ingredients in Yardley’s (with the exception of tetrasodium EDTA). As commercial soaps go, it’s one of the best you will find.

What about Ivory soap? It used to be billed as 99 and 44/100% pure. What was in it?

  • sodium tallowate
  • sodium cocoate
  • sodium palm kernelate
  • water
  • sodium chloride
  • sodium silicate
  • magnesium sulfate
  • fragrance

Sodium palm kernelate is palm kernel oil and lye. Sodium silicate is commonly known as liquid glass. It makes soap last longer and increases its detergent qualities. Magnesium sulfate is an inorganic salt. It is often encountered in the form of Epsom salt. One could argue about whether or not some of the ingredients are necessary, but Ivory was essentially pretty good soap, too. Nowadays, Ivory may also contain palm oil, palm kernel oil, and tetrasodium EDTA. It is no longer labeled as “soap.”

What about Dove?

  • sodium lauroyl isethionate (a detergent that has actually been known to irritate or dry out skin)
  • stearic acid (a fatty acid common in animal fats and some vegetable fats, such as cocoa butter and shea butter)
  • sodium tallowate or sodium palmitate (palm oil and lye)
  • lauric acid (a fatty acid)
  • sodium isethionate (a synthetic detergent)
  • water
  • sodium stearate (stearic acid and lye)
  • cocamidoproply betaine (a synthetic surfactant) or sodium C14-C16 olefin sulfonate (also a synthetic surfactant)
  • sodium cocoate or sodium palm kernelate
  • fragrance
  • sodium chloride
  • tetrasodium EDTA
  • tetrasodium etidronate (another water softener that helps prevent soap scum and helps boost later)
  • titanium dioxide

Dove is actually a less pure soap than Ivory or Yardley’s. Dove contains a lot of synthetic detergents rather than natural oils and fats. Dove is widely considered to be gentle and moisturizing, so what gives?

In fact, if you look at Dove’s packaging, you’ll notice that it’s not even labeled as soap. It’s called a beauty bar, a cream bar, a beauty cream bar, a cream beauty bathing bar, and a number of other variations on the same. They even market the product by deriding pure soap as bad for your skin: “Soap strips your skin of its natural moisture.”

As you can see, however, Yardley’s, Ivory, and Dove all contain synthetic detergents to boost the lather, and all three also contain tallow. There is nothing wrong with tallow per se, but if you are a vegetarian or vegan and avoid other animal products like leather or fur, you should also avoid commercial soaps with beef tallow, which can be difficult, as the vast majority of commercial soaps are tallow-based rather than vegetable oil-based.

Why do commercial soapmakers use tallow? It’s cheap. Vegetable oils like olive oil are more expensive. Tallow is a perfectly fine soap ingredient. It’s been used in handcrafted soap for centuries. The only drawback it really has is that it’s an animal product.

So do any commercial soapmakers make all-vegetable oil soap?

What about Burt’s Bees Baby Bee Buttermilk Soap? Surely that’s gentle and animal-fat free. It’s for babies!

  • vegetable soap base
  • fragrance
  • buttermilk powder
  • oat flour
  • titanium dioxide
  • limonene (a chemical found in citrus peels; used as fragrance and cleanser)

Which vegetable oils? We don’t know, and vegetable soap bases are made with a very wide variety of oils and fats, though we can assume here that there is no tallow or lard, as the base is vegetable. However, some vegetable soap bases contain surfactants and emulsifiers in addition to vegetable oils. I looked at ingredients lists for several vegetable soap bases on the market, and the most common oils appear to be coconut oil, palm oil, and safflower oil. You can buy olive oil bases, but my guess is that Burt’s Bees Baby Bee Buttermilk soap is made from a base of the more common vegetable oils, as they are less expensive than olive oil. Still, the ingredients in the soap are natural enough and are probably familiar to handcrafted soap makers. But you can do better than Burt’s Bees with handmade soap.

Why? What is in handmade soaps like New England Handmade Artisan Soaps?

The ingredients in my soaps vary, but the first ingredient is usually the liquid I use to mix with the lye, whether that’s water (distilled water, though I don’t usually specify that it’s distilled), coconut milk, aloe vera juice, goat milk, buttermilk, tea, or whole milk. If I use yogurt, this ingredient will not be listed first because it must be combined with water, and therefore is not the largest percentage of the soap.

I use olive oil in all of my soaps. I also use coconut oil in all of my soaps and palm oil in most of my soaps. The bulk of my soaps also contain either shea butter or cocoa butter in amounts varying from 5-20%, depending on the recipe. I also use castor oil to boost the lather in my soaps rather than synthetic surfactants and detergents. I also use moisturizing oils like avocado oil, sweet almond oil, and apricot kernel oil, which I was unable to find in the ingredients lists of commercial soaps. All of my soaps are vegetarian-friendly, but some contain milks and honey and are not, therefore, vegan-friendly. However, I have a wide variety of soaps that are vegan-friendly.

After I started using homemade soap for the first time, I could tell the difference. My skin just felt better. I had fewer problems with dryness or oiliness or acne. The tone evened out (I used to be prone to some reddish spots on my face). As a result, I can use less makeup to even out my skin tone.

Homemade soap is a little more expensive than commercial soap—that’s true. But it is affordable as luxuries go. If your skin is the largest organ on your body, and the one that protects you from the outside elements, why not treat yourself and use the good stuff?

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New Soaps

Posted on by Dana

I bought a new soap cutter (it’s fabulous!), and I have been having too much fun making new soaps. Lavender SpearmintLavender spearmint might be my new favorite. It smells divine (a mix of lavender essential oils and spearmint fragrance). I love lavender, but somehow, this soap smells better with the addition of spearmint. My theory is that the spearmint complements and anchors the lavender.

Lavender SpearmintLook at those swirls! I used a drop-swirl technique. I poured a layer of white soap in the mold, then held the purple high over the mold so that it would penetrate the white layer. I repeated with the other purple. Then I spooned another layer of white into the mold and repeated the process. I like this technique and used it again tonight in a soap I made.

Angel WhiteI like how this one came out. I decided to call it Angel White. I wanted to create a pure white soap, but I couldn’t resist decorating it with some pink. The fragrance I used actually temporarily turned the soap a creamy yellow color, but it turned white again. I have never had a fragrance oil do that. Sometimes fragrances discolor soaps, but it either tends to darken them over time (in the case of fragrance with vanillin), or it gives them a yellower cast that pretty much stays that way. I have never had one turn yellowish and then revert to white. It is Amazingly Grace from Nature’s Garden, if you are curious. It’s a great, light, clean scent, and I had no troubles with it.

Romeo and JulietI am calling this one Romeo and Juliet. I made it with a hanger swirl and scented it with Loving Spell by Nature’s Garden, a scent similar to Victoria’s Secret’s Lovespell. I cut it too soon because I was impatient, so I wound up streaking the soap a little.

Guinness BeerThis soap is made with Guinness Extra Stout® beer and finely ground oatmeal. I scented it with a fabulous beer fragrance. Smells like the real thing!

Cranberry Fig YuzuAnother soaper thought of this first, but this one reminds me of Katniss Everdeen, the “Girl on Fire.” I scented it with Bramble Berry’s Cranberry Fig and Yuzu fragrances. The lather is a tiny bit pink, but it turned out gorgeous. It was also my first soap made with aloe vera juice. Some soapers claim they can’t tell a difference between aloe vera juice and water, but it felt different to me. It made a nice soap. I have noticed a white flaky substance develops when I mix aloe vera juice and lye. I strain it as I pour it into the oils and butters so that it doesn’t wind up in the soap, but I’m curious as to why that happens.

Anjou Pear BlossomThis is a tiger stripe swirl. I love how it came out. I had intended to make it with coconut milk, but I didn’t realize I had run out, so I made it with buttermilk instead. The fragrance is to die for—Anjou Pear Blossom. It is one of my favorite scents of all.

I was snowed in with the great blizzard Nemo and made four batches of soap, but no pics yet. I will try to post some soon.

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