I had an idea to make a western-style wanted poster for each of my soaps. I started following one tutorial, and went to hunt down some fonts, when I found the wonderful Design Instruct website, with a tutorial by Nikola Lazarevic.
After a few modifications, I have this:
Sweet.
When I was single, I did a lot of journaling. I guess living alone in a one-bedroom apartment in Miami, listening to Tori Amos and wishing I was in Seattle led to a lot of navel-gazing. Being an only child may have had something to do with it, too.
For whatever reason, if I were to make a chart of my journaling habits since being with Jay, it would look a lot like a patient taking a really long time to die – flat line…. sharp spike…. flat line…. flat line… flat line…. sharp spike…. flat line……………………….
I am glad to have this blog to keep track of the way my thoughts, ideas, and actions change over time regarding this business. My initial concept was a line of strictly unscented soap using only herbal teas coupled with an infusion of white elm mushrooms, and that’s it. I never thought of making bath and body products, or ever using fragrances, even naturally derived ones from essential oils. Like many people, I have very sensitive skin, and can only put perfume on my wrists – if I even put it on my neck, it causes a rash. I never use scented soap and rarely use scented lotion.
However, as a librarian, I learned that a well-rounded collection must take into consideration the needs and wants of the entire community. If it were up to me, a library would be nothing but cookbooks, graphic novels, and YA fiction. But it’s not my job to buy what I want – it’s to provide what the patrons want.
As a soap maker, I’m figuring out that selfish motives are okay to begin with – I want to make soap for myself because I believe I can make something better than the average drugstore bar – but if I want to convince you that it’s the best soap you’ve ever used, I have to make sure it appeals to you.
I’m expanding my options, allowing myself to consider things like scented lotions, flavored lip balms, and maybe, maybe one day, scented soap. I think soap will be the last thing I add scent to. And maybe I’ll go back on all of this. Part of me, the minimalist-oriented part, likes the appeal of limitations, the strictness of staying within the self-prescribed lines of unscented.
But the librarian in me, the part that loves research, is finding that the right scents can be very beneficial, and that I would perhaps be detrimental to limit myself prematurely. I’m still learning, after all.
I wonder how long some of my favorite soap makers spent dreaming up their lines… I know it’s an ongoing process, but at what point did they decide, okay, this is it, this is where I’m going to start?
I’ve been using Google Docs to keep my ideas, formulas, batches and more organized and easy to access. I’m a huge Dropbox fan, but realized that having to move to another program, like Word or Excel, outside of my browser was slowing me down.
Well, even though organizing things has been my career for the last 10 years, I find myself overwhelmed by the sheer number of thoughts that go through my head over this venture. I’ve never had a problem sleeping before – never, it’s like my defense mechanism or something – but now I find my mind races at night and it’s all I can do to keep my head on the pillow and not make a desperate grab for my laptop.
But there’s a certain sense of finality to making things public – even though I can erase this post at any time – and I think that committing some ideas to this blog may help me disentangle them, help me to decide where to focus all of this energy.
Initial product line
Also in the works
I’m really keen to explore the natural colors that clays can provide in CP soap. There are several French clays – red, green and yellow, Rhassoul clay, and sea clay. For greens, there’s also different varieties of seaweed and kelp, although I’ve read that some can leave a faint fishy smell behind.
Finally, there’s the whole reason this company is named White Elm Soap Traders – the white elm mushrooms, hypsizygus ulmarius, my husband grows have anti-inflammatory properties. Dr. Andrew Weil even uses them in a line of products for Origins. I’m working on the best way to extract the polyphenols from the mushrooms without losing the beneficial properties to the saponification process.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who constantly tweaks formulas. Yesterday I played with the sea salt bar, Briny Deep, and the deep cleaning, scrub bar, Pay Dirt.
I added some white pumice to the salt bar, and I really like the look of it now. It’s taken on a faint greyish cast, like foam on the sea.
Again, apologies for the quality of the photos. Any advice on a better camera is welcome and appreciated.
I also modified the Pay Dirt formula. Last week I did the first run with coffee as the liquid, and it came out nice and dark.
Original Pay Dirt:
This week I ran the same formula, but without coffee as the liquid, and with twice the amount of additives, including activated charcoal.
I hope you can tell the difference, but the second batch has a blue-grey tint to it from the charcoal. I like the color better than the coffee liquid bar, and I think I could stand to triple the additives. I’d like this to be an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink looking creation.
Pay Dirt, the Sequel:
One thing I’m definitely not the first to observe is how much cold process soap changes over the curing time.
One of my first shaving bars used Guinness as the liquid – that’s the one pictured in the lather entry. When I first unmolded that bar, it was soft and stinky! I thought it was a disaster, but knew that I needed to wait to see what it did.
Over time, as the moisture evaporates, the bar gets harder, and the scent has faded into a burnt caramel odor. I’m not that crazy about the scent, but my husband likes it. I’m planning another round of the shaving bar formula with a paler beer, to see what sort of color and fragrance I get out of it.
I noticed the same thing with the first coffee liquid bar I made. I used Cuban coffee – very dark espresso – and the bar was so dark, light barely escapes the surface. I thought it also stank like burnt coffee, but over time, it’s mellowed, and you’d be hard pressed to call it a coffee scent anymore.
Today I’m going to do a larger batch of the Gold Rush bar w/ calendula and coconut milk. It turned out beautifully, and doubt I’ll be tweaking that one much. Maybe I’ll add some jojoba, though…
“Last night, while I lay thinking here,
some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
and pranced and partied all night long
and sang their same old Whatif song…”
I’ve had Shel Silverstein’s poem Whatif memorized since I was about 8. The Whatifs were there before I ever read the poem, but I didn’t know what to call them. Shel gave me a name, and a way to cope – if this awesome guy who writes the best poems ever and draws really cool pictures gets attacked by Whatifs and lives to tell about it, then I can, too.
So the Whatifs have been visiting with some regularity most of my life. They’ve found some new things to wonder about since I started this venture, and I’m sorting through them, trying to turn doubt and fear into action.
See, I’ve been focused on keeping everything vegan, even though I’m not even a vegetarian. I’m an apologetic omnivore, but I am a careful eater – most of the time. Jay and I have been able to eat even more conscientiously and locally since we left South Florida, and I’m considering the options I have at my disposal now.
I could continue to try and formulate soaps and lotions with only vegan ingredients, which has limitations – there is no natural alternative to lanolin, for example, nothing that mimics the properties that this byproduct of boiled sheep’s wool provides. I’m frustrated by the quality of the items I’ve been able to make, although at this stage in my education, it’s hard to tell whether the fault lies with the creations or the creator.
However, I could choose to support local friends and farmers who are able to provide me with ingredients such as humanely raised goat milk and locally harvested beeswax for my products. I understand the vegan ethos and admire the do-no-harm aspect, but we pose the biggest threat to each other – the human animal – if we deny our connectedness.
As a consumer, I’m more motivated by actions that will do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Sustainable is key. “Local” means more to me than “organic,” since local often is organic by default, if not by USDA rubber stamp. Plenty of supermarket milk is certified organic, but you’d have to pry the Happy Cow Creamery milk from my cold, dead hands if you want me to switch.
As a producer, I’m even more aware of my ability to influence my small part of the world in a good way. Williamsburg County lost about 3,000 people between the 2000 and the 2010 census. It’s a good bet that many of those people left to find jobs. My goal as a small business owner is to provide jobs, to bring revenue into my county, to give people a reason to stay.
I’ll keep formulating, keep experimenting, but I’m going to allow myself to expand beyond the confines of one ideology. Because how can using local beeswax not be a better option for my community and the planet than shipping in candelilla wax from Washington state?
Here’s a quick preview of the label design.
Espresso Bar is probably not going to be part of the initial line up, though.
Right now, I’m looking at the following:
I’ve also got some body care products in the works, including a a lotion bar and a lip balm.
I’m beginning to research ingredients for a dog shampoo bar, too – picked up some pine tar at the local Tractor Supply Company.
A promising first attempt at using coconut milk and swirling – though my “technique” needs a bit of work.
I believe it may have been the coconut milk that accelerated tracing and may experiment with the same recipe w/o the milk, to see if that slows things down long enough for the soap to remain pourable. As it was, I had to “glop” (professional soap-maker lingo, that) it on top of the plain batch and try to work it into the base.
It smells wonderful, though, and I think I really like calendula – it retains its lovely golden color through the saponification process.
Woohoo! This is just beautiful:
I unmolded it at 10:30 last night – just 5 hours after pouring!
Very pleased with the results. My camera skills aren’t so great, but this is a really, really white bar of soap and you can see the sparkly crystals of salt throughout the bar.
I also unmolded my shaving bar from yesterday. It appears unaffected by the near-miss with the castor oil, so it should cure well. This one has a stronger scent of cocoa butter, which is what I was going for.
Today’s goals are to work on that lotion bar since I didn’t play with any of it yesterday, and a calendula and coconut milk bar. This will be my first time working with milk, but I plan to add it at trace, not as the entire liquid, so it will have to be warmed before adding, rather than slightly frozen.
I can’t believe the lather on this soap! It’s not perfect – I’m not keen on the way it smells and need to work on using liquids besides water. The liquid in this case is beer. Guinness, which I also need to replace if I want to keep it vegan. But this is some ridiculously rich lather:
A brush really does make a huge difference. This is the vegan friendly Omega synthetic brush from Italy.
It even defies gravity!
I did make another shaving bar recipe today, slightly tweaked from the one above, and using only water as the liquid. It was almost a disaster, though. I forgot the castor oil until after I poured in the mold. Luckily I had only just poured it, so I poured back into the bowl, added the castor oil and remixed. It seems to be doing okay. I’m just concerned that it may have too much castor oil now. I went with the original measurement, though my actual amounts are off since I lost some of the soap to the liner when I poured it out. We’ll see.
I also made a salt bar – my first one. I’m glad I ran across this post from Ladybug Soapworks before I started, or I might have used Dead Sea Salt. It’s a bad idea in a salt bar – the high mineral content causes sweating. So I’ll have to figure out something else for the pound of Dead Sea Salt I bought.
On today’s agenda:
Can’t believe how cold it is this morning – 33 degrees (1 C)! It was 61 (16 C) a few days ago and I was able to run in light shirt. But then, this is my first time living somewhere with actual seasons, so maybe this is normal.
I’m curious to see how the change in atmospheric conditions will affect my soap. Locals claim it’s humid in the Lowcountry, but I’m from Miami. We moved here last July and thought it was beautiful. I actually had to use a moisturizer – in July! I didn’t know what was going on with my skin. I was so used to thinking it was oily, when really it was just the humidity in the air.
That’s actually what got me thinking about soap and body care products. Like many people, my skin is very sensitive to fragrance. Ages ago I found Kirk’s Coco Castille Soap, and kissed stinky bath gels – and inflamed skin – good-bye. A coconut-oil based soap works really well in Miami, where we have hard water. It lathers up and rinses clean. Here in Hemingway, it’s a different story. Soft water means you need to use far less soap to work up a lather, but twice as much water to rinse it off.
I knew my husband and I couldn’t tolerate heavily perfumed, detergent-based soap, so I started to look into how to make my own soap. My first bar, a basic 80% olive and 20% coconut oil formula, was promising. The difference between true soap and chemical detergents is astounding. My handmade bar smelled lightly sweet, had a beautiful vanilla color and in our water, lathered up well and left our skin conditioned.
I’ve been working on formulating a bar that will lather well in all types of water – sending samples to friends all over the country, from Florida to New Jersey to California. One that I’m pretty proud of contains no palm oil, but ridiculous amounts of mango butter and avocado oil. None of my soaps contain added fragrance or fake colors, either, making them well-suited to most skin types.
Finally, I’ve been striving to make everything vegan-friendly. It’s important to do as little harm as possible, and since I don’t have the will-power to keep my diet animal-free, it’s paramount that I keep my products cruelty-free. That said, the hardest product to get around is beeswax. I’ve been working with candelilla wax, but it’s tricky. I’ll keep documenting my steps, and I’m sure I’ll hit the formula through diligence.
