Teach Soap

Tomorrow I leave for a Women's Retreat, so what am I doing tonight? MAKING SOAP! It's a sickness...

Hey, it'll be my last chance for the next 3 days!

I decided to try my hand at making a shaving soap, so I used kaolin clay for the first time tonight. Right away, I'm having major issues. I mixed the clay with a few spritzes of alcohol, I only used 1 Tlbs of clay. It seemed to blend together without any problem. And then I added it to the melted soap. Oy... Major major clumping issues! It just would NOT mix in no matter what I did. I even got out my immersion blender, and yet, still lots of clumps of clay. I wound up defiling my kitchen strainer (after saying "I'm sorry" to it 20 times) in order to get the clumps out. After that, it seemed good. Got the fragrance added and poured into molds without a hitch.

So what did I do wrong? I'd really like to use clay in my soap, and I have several ideas for batches that would involve clay. So I'd like to know what I should do different next time.

Try liquid glycerin instead. Alcohol evaporates too quickly to keep the clay clump free and in suspension.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

I agree about the liquid glycerine. Clay needs a little hydration before hitting the soap, and glycerine does that.

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Genny

Thanks, Ladies!

I'll try that next time.

Whenever I add powders to my soap (buttermilk, clay, cocoa powder), I blend them first in my Tupperware shaker. I can't say for sure how much liquid per powder I use, since it depends on a lot of factors, but I usually try to get a pretty loose mixture. I just add the liquid and powder to the shaker, and shake the soap out of it! This works sooooo much better than anything else I've tried!

PS-Here's a link to the shaker I mean...you can probably find off brand ones at local stores! http://order.tupperware.com/coe/app/tup ... 0068153000

In CP I "hydrate" my clays in a little aloe vera first, not sure this would work in MP?

But I can relate, the couple of times I've used bentonite in MP I had to give it a good spanking with a whisk to get it all mixed in.

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Laura<3

I've always used glycerin, never did me wrong!

I use a little bit of the distilled water (used for the lye solution) to hydrate the clay in. Got the tip from the SQ blog (the avocado facial soap post).

ok never mind...just realized this is the MP forum sorry, I was thinking CP!