New soapmaking stuff

Finally I did it. Ordered soap stuff from abroad, that is. A few different fats, e-vitamin and rosemary for preserving stuff and mineral colours. I also bought a surprise package of 10 different soap moulds and I got everything from Christmas moulds to basic square moulds. Have to try them next time!

I've been having soap making evenings for my friends at my home, and you wouldn't believe the urge I get when I look at other people doing soap... Cause naturally, I cannot do anything myself when I'm controlling and checking that the first-timers do everything right. The next day I have usually been very productive. :)

Tar soap

I love the smell of tar. It reminds me of Finnish summer, sauna, relaxing by the lake in the light summer evening with a can of Lonkero... Tar soaps seem to be disappearing (some EU-legislation that's come in the way) so I decided to try to make my own. I got a big bottle of tar as a Christmas present, 100% tar from pine tree. Googled a bit for a recipe but could not really find one, so I made up my own. Just cut the soap log, it was sticky as h**l but smells so lovely. Tar is a sticky thing in itself and a messy one, it messes everything that it touches, so next time I will just pour the tar from the jar (oh, that rhymes!) and not measure it with a measuring spoon or two...

190 g water
68 g lye

290 g canola oil
150 g coconut fat
30 g castor oil
30 g peanut oil

1 tbsp tar
11 drops of Savuyrtti-fragrance

Soap looks more like chocolate pudding

Interesting surprise when I cut the soap, whole soap had marmorized itself

Soap

I've been making soap. Yes, right from the scratch. I became addicted after the very first batch, it is so fun and easy and it is absolutely rewarding to see how the end product becomes. I made the first batch a month ago, so now it is about time to try out the first one. They will still need more time to become more gentle and better, but I cannot wait to try..

If someone else interested in trying out soapmaking, here are some links that I have found useful (not in English, I'm afraid). And of course, Google is our friend here as well. :)

In Finnish:
Good ideas and recipes
The best guide for beginners can be found here
In Swedish: Gorgeous pictures and lovely ideas

From upper left corner: hairsoap with birch and argan oil, olive oil soap with green tea, kiddie soap (the white stars and flowers), and coffee and chocolate soap

The first soap I did was the olive oil with green tea -soap. I made some minor changes to the recipe, that is that I used green tea instead of chamomile tea. And I sprinkled some green tea into the dough before pouring into the moulds. This soap was easybeasy to do, it contains so much liquid fats and water that it is easy to handle.

Kiddiesoap looks fantastic, so lovely white and the seeds make a nice touch. The original recipe can be found in Finnish under the name "muksusaippua". I made some changes and had lard instead of "munkinpaistorasva" and different seeds, because I did not have poppy seeds home. :) Here is my version.

300g Olive Oil

100g coconut fat

50g lard

50g Canola oil

-> all the fats are put into SoapCalc, which counts how much water/liquid and lye you need.

Finally adding to the dough:

1 tablespoon potato flour or corn starch

1 tbsp linseeds

In Finnish recipes you can very often find "munkinpaistorasva", which is a solid mixture of vegetable fat for frying doughnuts. There is no exact substitute for it in Sweden. We have here "frityrolja", which means oil for frying, but it is liquid and the contents are not the same (I suppose, am not sure because I could not find ingredients for munkinpaistorasva, even though rumours says it contains mainly palm oil and palm oil is used for it in SoapCalc). But, what we have here in Sweden in all regular grocery stores, is lard. I noticed (from SoapCalc) that the qualities for palm oil and lard are almost exactly the same, so I have been using lard instead of doughnutfat. The difference is of course that if you want 100%vegetable soap, this won't work, but I do not mind using animal products. I love animals so why not use them to the full and make soap out of them as well! ;)

I'm so excited about this and would love to buy loads of soaprelated stuff (in the net there are loads of lovely places you can shop in...), all exotic fats and lovely scents and colours. The postage is usually so huge that I have so far refused myself on making an order. Maybe someday...