Making your own Tallow / Milk & Honey Soap

This week I rendered 12 lbs of beef fat and got just about 6 lbs Tallow out of it!

   

Tallow (as well as lard: pig fat) was used in soap making by the pioneers.

Although Tallow adds little conditioning to the skin it is definitely very mild.

Reading the ingredients on commercial detergent bars you will find it has 'sodium tallowate'

In it Which is the scientific name for saponified tallow.

Tallow makes small creamy bubbles, But when you add other oils to it the lather is incredible!

In the end you will have a very hard, long lasting bar of soap thanks to Tallow.

I made  

'Milk & Honey' Soap 

with Tallow in my recipe,

Tallow at: 23.53%

I added vitamin packed Olive Oil at a 50.98% amount.

Also added was:

 Cocoa Butter that has wonderful soothing & emollient qualities: 3.92%

Almond Oil has skin conditioning properties as well as vitamins & minerals: 5.88%

Castor Oil acts as a humecent by attracting and retaining moisture to the skin: 1.96%

Coconut Oil helps with lather and hardness of your bar of soap: 13.73%

*(you don't want to use much more than 20% of coconut oil in your recipe because it can tend to cause your skin to dry out)

19 oz Goats Milk
6.87 oz of sodium hydroxide
Fragrance oil I used (you can choose your own favourite) Oatmilk & Honey/Vanilla

I did not want this soap to gel so I put it in the refrigerator for few hours.

Cut soap the next day. (it was a little soft and could have waited another day or two, but I am like a little kid ......I have to see it now! LOL)

Now look at those bubbles!

Have a great weekend!

ValerieAnn

Jasmines Bloom

I am sure we all have ordered fragrance or essential oils that we intend to use sometime.

This was my 'sometime' for Jasmine.

I googled to find some pictures of the Jasmine flower to inspire me in making  this soap.

Most Jasmine flowers have white petals.

 

Some Jasmine petals had a bit of yellow in the center of them.

 

There were a few Jasmine that were yellow.

 

Then there was Jasmine that were white & with the Stamens that was yellow.

 

In the end I decided to make the soap two toned yellow soap with some white and a bit of green for the foliage.

I decided to make this a vegan soap. The oils I used were:

Cocoa Butter

Coconut Oil

Shea Butter

Soybean Oil

and Sunflower Oil

I used Arizona rain water

Sodium Hydroxide

and Jasmine Fragrance Oil from 'Essential Depot'.

The soap was at very light trace, and I could have waited a bit longer before I poured, but decided to just go ahead.

I did a layering pour where I poured a line of soap down the center of the mold, and then poured a different color down the center of the first color I poured and so on, until all was poured but a bit that I dribbled on to top it off. I spooned the edges toward the middle of the soap.

I added some sugar sprinkles on top and a bit of glitter.

                It comes out of the mold very soft, but hardens up great in the   

                                       four week curing time!

This is what the final bar looked like.

This was a four pound batch of soap, and

I used about 4 Tbsp on Jasmine Fragrance Oil. It was pretty strong. If you want a more mellow scent I would suggest using less, if you were to buy the fragrance from Essential Depot. 

Have a great Monday!

ValerieAnn