Chemical of the day: Salicylic Acid in CP soap

Have you ever heard of Salicylic Soap? Salicylic Soap is said to be used against wrinkles and acne. Salicylic acid is a type of hydroxy acid that "works mainly as an exfoliant. It causes the cells of the epidermis to become "unglued" allowing the dead skin cells to slough off, making room for regrowth of new skin." -Dermatology.about.com

It also is a great way to improve lightening of scars.

So how do we incorporate this in our soap? 

First of all, you might ask: CP soap has a high ph level, therefore, wouldn't the salycilic lose its power in the saponification process? Well, there are a few things we may add to improve the power of the Salycilic acid in a cold process soap. 

1. Add EDTA (I will talk about this soon)

EDTA is used in soap making to prohibit the formation of DOS or Dreaded orange spots. It also is used to give more power to any chemical additive in soaps. 

2. Add Citric Acid. 

Citric Acid will lower the ph level of the soap and make the CP soap more on a translucent color. (I will experiment on citric acid on cp soap soon)

So now we can add our Salycilic Acid in CP soaps by adding both EDTA and Citric Acid. 

How do we add Salyclic Acid?

Things to remember:

1. Use Salycilic acid not more than 5% in soaps. 

2. Please dissolve it in oil. Never in water. Here's what happened to me:

In the picture above, I attempted to dissolve the acid in water. Salycilic is poorly soluble in water. Salycilic acid can disslove in water if assisted with heat. You can heat your water to reach a high temperature enough to dissolve the Salycilic Acid. But make your life easier and dissolve this on oil instead. Look below: 

See? Its soluble in oil. Its as easy as that.

Where in the process do we put our Salycilic oil? 

Place this on trace. Use 1/2:1. 1/2 part Salycilic to 1 part oil. 

x soap authority

Experiment: Cetyl Alcohol in CP soap

In a research conducted by Sir Kevin Dunn, a chemist with a wide knowledge on soap making as a science, he said that adding Cetyl Alcohol to cp soap is like adding Jojoba oil. 

Cetyl Alcohol is used in lotions as a thickener and adds slip and glide. You can research more about it to know its uses in lotions and creams. 

I took my time to try it after a couple of experiments. 

Sir Kevin Dunn suggested its usage at 5%. I modified my recipe of a 32 oz. oil batch to contain the 5% cetyl alcohol as part of superfat. My recipe was:

Oil Phase

27 oz Coconut Oil

5 oz Shea Butter

Superfat

1.6 oz Cetyl Alcohol (5%)

But I paused here and thought 1.6 oz is too much so I tried my first experiment at 3%. So my superfat is:

Superfat

.96 oz Cetyl Alcohol 

+ .64 oz Mango Butter

(to compensate for the 1.6oz total Superfat)

How do you add it to your batch?

Heat the oils along with the Cetyl Alcohol.

  Do not add Cetyl at trace. Cetyl tends to solidfy at room temperature and below making your soap batter consist clumps of cetyl. It will also tend to disperse unevenly throughout the batter. 

The .64oz Mango butter is for adding at trace. 

It's easy as that. 

Experiment:

L-soap with Cetyl Alcohol. R-soap without Cetyl Alcohol. 

Both soaps have the same recipes, amount of colourant, superfat, ingredients. 

Properties of the soap with Cetyl Alcohol

1. Color

Cetyl alcohol gives the soap an opaque color which tends to give it a 'lighter' touch of color. See picture above. 

2. Lather

The soap above is the soap without Cetyl Alcohol. As you can see, it gives quite a creamy lather and bubbles are small & minimal. While the soap with CetylAlcohol  (below) gives bigger bubbles but not a creamy lather. 

3. Slip

The soap with Cetyl Alcohol has a slip that a normal cold processed soap does not have. I don't know if its a good thing or a bad thing but I like it. 

4. Hardness

The picture above is the soap w/out Cetyl. As you can see, I placed pressure in the middle of the soap and there was quite an impression in the middle. But below, you'll see that the soap with Cetyl Alcohol didnt even have an impression. The soap is actually hard. 

These are the properties I would firstly want to share with you. I'll talk about Cetyl Alcohol more soon!

Hope you got a few pointers! Keep in touch and let me know how yours turned out too. 

xSoap Authority

Soap forensics: CRACKING

Have you ever experienced your soap to crack after molding in a couple of minutes or so? 

Take this picture for reference:

Reference: www.lovinsoap.com - They have a lot of information on troubleshootings in soap making. 

The cracking is caused by OVER HEATING. Culprit? High temperature. 

How does over heating happen in soap making?

1. High temperature lye solution

It is, indeed, important that after you have mixed your sodium hydroxide to your water, you must let the solution cool down. The ideal temperature of the lye solution upon mixing with the oils is at ROOM temperature. 

Just by touching the container of the solution, you will be able to know if it's cool enough to be emulsified with already. 

Why does this make sense? But then the batter really heats up to complete saponification, right?

The batter does heat up to a point where the temperature rises quite high but not high enough to make the soap crack in the mold. The additional temperature from different factors are the culprits to over heating then cracking. 

So,

Aside from a high temperature lye solution, what else leads to overheating?

2. Over insulation

If you are a new soap maker, you may have come across articles that suggest insulating a soap in a mold. Yes? If so, a thick layer of an insulating material may cause temperatures to rise. This is quite important for soapers living in cold areas. Since I live in the Philippines where it is actually hot, I do not find insulation important. 

Why is insulation important anyway? Insulation is important to aid in the gelling phase of the saponification process. Without gelling, the soap may not achieve the ideal color you wanted. Gelling helps in a better color but it is not really necessary. Although gelling is really part of the saponification process, a partial gel may occur if you did not insulate, which is not aesthetically appealing. It's really subjective though. 

What is partial gelling?

Photo Reference: http://gowestsoap.com/?p=182

Here above, is a product of partial gelling. It is when you stop the rise of temperature in the gelling phase by not insulating the soap in the mold or by placing the batch in the refrigerator. 

Back to the topic.

Insulation rises the temperature of the batter, which in turn, may result to cracking. 

A lesson is to not OVER INSULATE. Especially if you live in a warm area, insulation isn't necessary. 

3. Additives:

A. Sugar

Anything with sugar upon heated contributes a higher temperature. Even in cooking, caramelizing may reaaaaally burn due to the heated sugar. Temperature is at tops. So, if you add sugar to your lye solution, make sure your lye solution is still at room temperature. 

B. Fragrances

Some fragrances contribute to a lead on high temperature in soap. Choose your fragrance oils carefully. 

4. Palm oil

Many soapmakers claim Palm Oil to contibute to cracking or overheating. I'll have to experiment with it soon. 

So there. Keep these things in mind and avoid the crime of overheating! A soap crack is hard to mend. So, avoid it. 

Til the next post!

x Soap Authority

Just a note

I am not deeply enthusiastic on the artisan side of making soap. I concentrate more on the quality of soap. The posts I'll be concentrating on are the things you can add to make a better soap. 

But I will be posting the design elements of soap that can help you in an easier manner. :) 

More power to you, guys!

x Soap Authority

Foam boosters in CP soap

NATURAL POST #1:

Alternatives to surfactants in CP soap

In the previous post, I talked about CDEA as a foam booster for CP soap.

I expect some people would be skeptical about it as handmade soaps

are typically promoted to be the natural side of soaps. So, here

is a post I made to give natural alternatives to

surfactants as foam boosters.

First of all, why do we want to add foam boosters to our soap?

Okay, soap makers. Admit it. Not all CP soaps lather much that is why we put

surfactants to promote the lather. So here are natural alternatives

to it:

1. Castor oil 

Let me rate this to you in a scale of 1 - 10 (with 10 being the highest) to be 5.

5, because Castor oil doesn't give that big fluffy lather we want

like CDEA offers but the lather is really stable. Meaning,

castor oil does promote a consistent medium lather

in contrast to the big ones we get from surfactants.

Keep note that too much of this in the oil phase may cause the

bar to be soft. Allow only 10% of total oil phase.

2. Sugar

Soap makers claim sugar to give an increase in lather but 

in my experience, I only find it to give more "slip" to the soap 

and it actually gives a glide once showered upon the skin.

But, one fascinating thing I've experienced is that

the lather of the soap with added sugar is consistent. Meaning,

it does give a stable lather. If you want to add

sugar, you can add it by doing the following:

1. Add at lye-water solution
2. Dissolve in water, add at trace

Recommended usage will be 1 tsp per 10oz of oil

(Spec: 1/5 part tsp per 2oz of oil)

3. Exfoliants

Why exfoliants? Due to the friction of the exfoliant and your skin, bubbles 

are formed because a lot of the soap's surface contact to your skin

are available due to the dispersion of the exfoliants.

What exfoliants are good for soap? There's coffee, apricot seeds,

poppy seeds, jojoba beads, walnut shell powder, sand, etc! Small embeds of soaps can work too.

4. Beans, Peanut & Soy

Well are you surprised? 

Why can we add these things though?

Beans, Peanut & Soy contain saponins. What the hell are saponins, eh?

Saponins are soap-like substances characterized 

by their ability to create foam in water. 

This ability to behave like a detergent is due 

to their chemical structure, with one end binding 

easily to water and the other to cholesterol and fat.

The saponins are able to contribute lather to the final soap.

(I will post my experiment on this soon)

First of, how do we add Beans, Peanuts or Soy to our soap?

• Make them into powder form.
• Infuse the powder. 
• I tackled this in my previous blog: Infusion

5. And lastly, a lengthy time of CURING.

Curing helps the lather of a soap. 

The longer time, the better!

Company Appreciation: Essential Depot

I just want to take this time to give so much appreciation to Essential Depot and their RED Silicone Mold. The mold was designed to withstand a thousand uses. The thick silicone mold is perfect for soap makers. Although, a little support from a wooden mold or the box that comes along with it would be a big plus as the mold is too flimsy to stand on its own. But even then, this product is such a good investment! 

Check Essential Depot's website for orders.

x Soap Authority

CDEA: foam booster

I know I said I will talk about this so, let's start. Before I tackle what it really is, I want to emphasize what a surfactant is. 

I won't be too technical about this. I'll be so layman, I'll explain this so simply. A surfactant is used in a wide array of skin-care products as it is used to promote the cleansing power of the product and provide good foam. What are the surfactants famous, or may I say, infamous to the skin market?

• SLS (Sodium Lauryl Sulfate)

• SLeS (Sodium Laureth Sulfate)

• SCS (Sodium Coco Sulfate)

• SLSa (Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate)

• Cocamidopropyl betaine

• CDEA - Coconut Diethanolamide

These surfactants boost the lather and foam of skin and hair products. But many have accounted it to be dangerous to the skin. In my opinion, the latter statement is only true if high amounts of the danger-contributing ingredient are incorporated to the product. As an acting manufacturer, you only add too little enough to get the foaming power of a surfactant. Although, there are a lot of other surfactants that are being produced which are claimed to be more on the "natural" side. 

For example is the launch of Sodium Coco Sulfate. It is said to be a replacement of the ever infamous Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS). SCS is a derivative of coconut. But other researches have found that SLS is also derived from coconut. Maybe the concentration of the SCS is somehow lesser of an irritant to SLS? 

But anyway,

There are some more sufactants that actually increase the MILDNESS of another surfactant. For instance, Coco Betaine. 

In our cold process soaps, we want to greatly differ from those of commercial soaps. Adding a surfactant is just an option. In commercial soaps, a pack of numerous surfactants are contained in one bar. In our handmade ones, we only put one surfactant that is in fact, so mild it can even possibly increase the mildness of Sodium Hydroxide. But if you're skeptical about it, I will be tackling alternatives of surfactants in my next post.

 For experience's sake, if you want to give it a try, I would like to suggest adding CDEA.

Chemical structure of CDEA. 

(I just wanted to add this to create a scientific vibe to you guys but I don't actually understand it. Haha)

What does CDEA or Coconut Diethanolamide have to offer?

"CDEA has good wetting, cleaning, dispersing, resistance to hard water and antistatic performances. CDEA especially has perfect thickening, foaming, foam-stablizing and derusting abilities."

Say what?

In other words, it is a great foam booster for cold process soap and other toiletry products. How do we incorporate this to our cold process soap?

•Add CDEA at trace.

•Always remember that it should constitute at least 30-50% of total superfat. Not the recipe, but the superfat.

• I suggest the soap maker adds Vegetable glycerin to the superfat along with CDEA if the soap maker is using 100% coconut oil for total oil phase.

Comment below. Have you tried it?

:)

x Soap Authority

Making Papaya Soap 3

Are you ready to find out how it turned out? 

Ta-daaah! It has a magnificent swirl! I know it isn't the prettiest, but just to give you an idea of how the soap turned out. Maybe you're wondering what those dots are? Those are the papain enzymes that weren't dissolved fully. You can avoid this by using distilled water in replacement of Vegetable Glycerin. If you don't know what I'm talking about, 
check out my previous post: Making Papaya Soap. 
(Here I will tackle how to make the soap additive for Papaya)

I want the effect of the undissolved papain enzyme as it also serves to be a mild exfoliator!

Just a recap:

To make the additive:

1 oz. vegetable glycerin

5 ml. Moringa extract

         Chamomile extract

2 oz. CDEA

To make my recipe:

1. Add 32 oz. Coconut Oil to your soap calculator. 

2. Make sure your superfatting level is at 5%. 

I am using Essential Depot's RED Silicone Mold and the recipe calls for 32 oz. Its just the way I like it. So the amount of oils will depend on what mold you're using. I'll talk about how you can determine how much oil you need with a mold you have. 

To make the design element:

1. Seperate soap batter into 2. 

2. On a third separate container, add 1/8 of the uncolored batter and set aside. 

• So now you have 3 portions of the batter. 

3. Color the 2 equal soap batters, orange & yellow, respectively. 

4. Pour the orange batter onto the mold as base color. 

5. Add the yellow batter in an "S" motion allowing the colors to swirl.

6. For the uncolored batter at Step 2, do as the same fashion as Step 5.

I haven't cleaned the aesthetic qualities of the soap so bare with the first outcome. :) 

This was straight from the cutter.

Hope you liked it! :)

x Soap Authority

Making Papaya Soap 2

Let's start making soap!

This is a batch for a 32 oz. Coconut Oil soap recipe. 

Punch the 32 oz. Coconut Oil on the soap calculator and you do the recipe. :) 

Make sure to do a 5% Superfat. 

Add lye to water. 

Mix 'til trace. 

Add your Papaya soap additive that you learned to make from the previous post on this blog: Making Papaya Soap.

ABOVE: Seperate batch to 2 parts and add an Orange colorant & a yellow colorant, respectively. 

ABOVE: This is how it should look like. 

(Left part wasn't really mixed well yet as i took the picture.)

This is the time you can add the fragrance oil. (When soap batch is separated into 2) adding it before coloring the batter may seize up the batch. 

*Always remember to add fragrance oils on the time you pour the batter in the mold.

Im using: Sweet Papaya FO & Pandan FO 

How to pour the soap batter in the mold:

1. Add the orange color soap batter first on the mold as the base of the soap. 

2. Then, in an S motion, add the yellow one. 

It should have a swirl effect. 

3. I left out a small portion of an uncolored soap batter from this batch and left it unscented. 

This uncolored batch will be poured the same fashion as Step #2. 

Keep in touch tomorrow to know what the soap will look like! 

Aside from the surprise soap look, we will talk about CDEA from the previous post and some possible alternatives to it. :)

x Soap Authority

Making Papaya Soap

Papaya has been in the Philippine market for so long with its claims of whitening the skin. Well, a whiter skin is not an interest of White Americans but most asians dream of it.

 If you live in a place with the market full of caucasians, I don't think this is a necessary soap to make.

 But you have to give emphasis on the fact that Papaya does not only whiten skin,

 it actually offers more than it. It is such a skin miracle fruit! 

The Papaya fruit is rich in Vitamin A. Vitamin A is known to reprogram a damaged cell. Meaning, Vitamin A normalizes skin functions back to normal. 

It also stimulates the Dermis where all important skin elements are. 

What else is in the Papaya fruit?

AHA is found in the enzymes of the fruit. 

AHA exfoliates the skin and exchanges dull skin for a more glowing one as it also lightens skin pigmentations. 

It is also known to have anti-aging qualities. 

Well, isn't the fruit a wonder for the skin? So, ask me. How do we incorporate this to a cold processed soap? But before I do teach you, do you already know the BASICS of making CP soap? If yes, let's start. 

In some soap and lotion craft stores,

 Papaya enzymes or "Papain" enzymes are a big hit. 

Well, this is in the Philippines. 

A Papain enzyme ingredient would look like this:

It is light-orange in color. It is supposed to be in a flowy powder form but my stock was exposed to humidity. So, lesson: Do not expose this ingredient in humid places as it forms clumps. But it still works fine. It is really smelly. This ingredient is WATER SOLUBLE. It is hardly soluble in oil. 

So, let's make your Papaya additive that will be incorporated at soap trace:

You will need:

1 oz. Vegetable Glycerin

5 ml. Moringa Extract

5 ml. Chamomile Extract

2 oz. CDEA (mild surfactant, foam booster)

This is for a 32 oz. Coconut oil batch.

First:

Here, I am adding 1 oz. Vegetable Glycerin. 

Glycerin is a hydrous ingredient. It is waaater. 

So the Papain enzyme will dissolve in it. 

Aside from Glycerin, I will be adding 5ml of Moringa Extract (whitening) 

& 5ml of Chamomile Extract (soothing). 

These are water soluble extracts. 

Now, dissolving the Papain enzymes 

could be tricky so just keep mixing it. 

After the papain enzyme has dissolved, 

add 2 oz. CDEA (I will talk about this tomorrow). 

Just to give a heads up, 

CDEA is a mild coconut-derived surfactant. 

It is a foam booster. 

Taaaa-dah! You made your Papaya soap additive. 

Check out the next post as we make the master batch of Papaya Soap. :)

References:

Papaya picture: http://www.nieceyroy.com

Welcome

Welcome to my blog! 

Whether you are a new or old soapmaker, maybe this blog can help. 

This is a continuation of my blog: www.howtomakeyourownsoap.blogspotcom. Ask me why I made a new one!

Well, I forgot what my password was in that blog soooo. Ta-daaa. Here's a newer and more updated blog. 

So, I'll skip the basics and concentrate on cold process soap making that is more on the formulation and beautifying side. Please take time to know the BASICS of cold process soap making then maybe you can understand the things I'm posting! But.

Wait. 

Who am I?

I am a soap maker from the Philippines - a land rich of coconut. Coconut oil, the virgin one, coconut juice to CDEA, Coco Betaine and everything coconut!!! I started making soap when I was 15 years old and I have accumulated much knowledge in the soap making world that I thought of sharing what I knew from the late night soap crafting, the soaps that were tossed to the garbage, the frustrations, the wrong formulations, everything! And I'll try to make sure you won't replicate all these mistakes. These mistakes led me to start my own soap business and now I am a half student and half entrepreneur! I hope you be one too! 

Well then, let me start my blog. I hope you enjoy my posts. 

Keep in touch, soaper! :)

x Soap Authority