Teach Soap

I have a couple questions about making bath salts. My recipe uses Epson salts, Dead Sea salts, baking soda, and powdered goat milk. Do I mix the essential oils into the salts or the baking soda? The salts, right, & THEN add the baking soda and powdered milk AFTER the EOs have been mixed into the salts? Ok, so do I need to blend the EOs into a carrier oil before I mix it into the salts, and if no, can you tell me why not, please? I don't understand why EOs mix into salt safely. How much EOs can I add to the salts without risking sensitization? Does the IFRA publish maximum usage rates for EOs for bath salts?

Essential Wholesale sent me a sample of their 'Goat Milk Bath Soak', which I realized after reading the ingredients is just an EO-scented salt bath plus baking soda and powdered milk. The exact composition is baking soda, ingredients sea salt, powdered goats milk, lactose, and essential oils. Anybody know what the lactose is for? For ya'lls information in case anybody else is interested according to the recipe they sent me, they are blending 1.68 fl oz (0.105 lbs) of Geranium essential oil with 3.3 lbs of 'Goat Milk Bath Soak', which seems like too much EOs to me. I didn't have any geranium so I used eucalyptus, tea tree, and lavender and it make my skin tingle a little too much.

Does 1.68 fl oz of EOs seem like too much essential oil to mix into 3.3 lbs of salt bath mix to you guys, and do you think I should I mix the EOs w/ an equal amount carrier oil like jojoba before mixing into the salts?

I mix the essential oils into it after everything else has been added. Essential oils vary in strength. There is no one size fits all.
You would need to research each essential oil individually.
The lactose likely comes from milk.
I don't use any oils in my milk bath. It makes the bath slippery and can leave a bathtub ring.

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

Well, if you could tell me how to research maximum EO usage rates for bath salts I'd appreciate it. This is what I've been using: a table on the EFFA Sensitizers that seems very easy to read to me, breaking everything down into percentages of chemical constituents then giving it a sensitivity score from 1-100 w/ 0 being the least risk of an allergic reaction. I have been trying to use EOs that are known to be skin safe, such as lavender. However, according to this chart lavender is not as safe as I thought it was, scoring a 47.1 out of 100 due to the high levels of the chemical constitutent 'linalool'. I thought lavender was so safe it could be applied 'neat'. Does this mean I am pretty safe using any EO in my bath salts that score a lower score than lavender, ie 47?

https://www.nhrorganicoils.com/uploads/ ... 20oils.pdf

Also, I notice that the geranium Essential Wholesale used scored a 60 out 100, so that is a little high for me. Although everywhere I read including WebMD.com they say geranium EO is supposed to be great for the skin as a topical application. I'm surprised EW used geranium EO in their bath soak with that high of a sensitivity score. What do ya'll think?

From now on i always mix my EOs into an equal amount of olive oil then mix into my bath salts.

Bath lotion recipe: mix EOs into olive oil. Mix scented olive oil into castille soap so that the soap eats all the oil up. Mix thoroughly w/ steel knife. The next morning it looks like Oil of Olay and yo that stuff is awesome in your bath after a long day of working construction.

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

Yeah i know I'm going to buy that book soon. It ain't cheap. And his first book The Art of...


I found that file on the Yahoo Natural Perfumery Group. Lotsa helpful stuff over there even for people that don't make alot of perfume. I only make very simple perfumes after I messed around with it for awhile. But I'm not about to go back to spraying chemicals on my skin anytime soon like the stuff they sell at department stores. I am content with the simple accords I have come up with. There's a couple good perfume recipes in the bible just google it i tried'em and they're legit the frank/mhyrr/lavender/ cinnamon bark recipe smells GREAT Exodus 30:22-33

No, but seriously, even tho it isn't really lotion it is wonderful stuff. It has both liquid soap (from my room temperature glycerin recipe) and olive oil, and thus is both cleansing and moisturizing simultaneously w/o leaving you sticky. I call it,'bath mud' can bc it kind of looks like creamy mud after mixing enough soap into the EO scented oil to eat up all the oil. It fully dissolves in about 3-5 minutes, releasing a wonderful scent, and when you get out of bath skin feels incredibly moisturized for many hours. The smell remains on your body all day. I took a bath in the morning recently then i was at IHOP at midnight and someone asked me what the delicious fragrance was the person smelled coming off me. Swear to God. The reason I made it was I couldn't get my peppermint EO to stay blended in my liquid soap that I was using to pour into my bath water, so to avoid sensitization problems I mixed the EOs in olive oil first and then mixed that solution in plenty of soap.

Soap absolutely does eat up oil. That's what the soap molecule does, chemically. Hang on a sec while i pull out my college chemistry textbook. The soap molecule has a dual nature- one end is ionic and dissolves in water while the other end is a hydrocarbon and dissolves in oils, thereby 'eating' the oil by dispersing the it into tiny drops dispersed throughout the solution. So one end of the soap molecule picks up the oil while the other end binds with water allowing it to be washed away. The (olive) oil and water (or EOs) form an emulsion, with soap acting as the emulsifying agent combining all players into one substance.

If you add enough castille soap to absorb the olive oil and stir it up real good it turns into a very nice bath lotion overnight, or an Oil of Olay-like mud of an incredibly pleasant consistency. In the bathwater it is complimented by 2 ounces of salts/baking soda in a 1:1 ratio. Add some powdered goat milk and lactose to it like Essential Wholesale's 'Goat Milk Bath Soak', but those ingredients kinda expensive & unnecessary. The salts and baking soda mix fabulously with the bath mud. I like to scent the salts w/ lavender/tea tree/frankincense/myhrr and then put a bunch of peppermint in the bath lotion. It smells like heaven. I also like using either geranium or eucalyptus in the bath salts and peppermint in the bath mud. That's a great combination. I recently mixed up some bath salts for my mom using patchouli, burgemot, and a lot of ylang-ylang. Generally put about 1.7 ounces of skin safe EOs (ie, dont use clove or wintergreen, smartbutt) in 3.5 lbs or 56 ounces of salts/baking soda, and go heavier on the bakingsoda than the dead sea and epson salts bc salts are irritating tothe skin whereas baking soda is soothing. The patchouli and ylang SO good for the skin. Bergamot yea i know it can cause sun sensitivity so i just used a little.
If anybody makes either of these products from the instructions I'd love to hear how much you love it.