Fun with Hair Conditioner

Today’s project is: messing around with hair conditioner.

We sell hair conditioner that is in flake form and you mix it with hot water and it turns in to a wonderful hair conditioner. People keep asking me if you can add oil to it.  I am guessing that you can but the issue is, will the oil separate right back out?  Today I made some to find out.

The recipe I used is this:

1/2 ounces (weighed) of Soap Crafters Conditioner Flakes
10 ounces of water
5 ounces of Soap Crafters Aloe Liquid
1-1/2 teaspoons Soap Crafters Fragrance Oil
2 teaspoons Sweet Almond Oil

Put Sweet Almond Oil and conditioner flakes in to 160F degree water. Mix with a stick blender until smooth. Add the Aloe Liquid once the conditioner mixture is below 130 degrees. Add scent and color (if desired) to the conditioner. Mix well.

The end product is smooth and looks like it worked just fine.  I’ll let it sit around for the weekend and see if it stays emulsified.  So far so good!  I’ll report back.

UPDATE:  It held together great!  And it is REALLY nice on the hair. :)  Success!

Summer Pear Soap Recipe

This soap looks gorgeous and smells divine. Our delicate pear scent is teamed with pureed pears, pear juice and nourishing oils for a soap that is a treat to use. A must-have for those who like fruity smells that are not overly sweet.

The Key Oval soap mold
1 pound Basic Soap Noodles® Shredded Soap
1/3 cup whole milk
5 drops of Soap Crafters grass green liquid color
3 drops Soap Crafters yellow liquid colorant
enough Soap Crafters jade and cola liquid color to paint with
¾ oz Soap Crafters fragrance
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon avocado oil
1 tablespoon soy bean oil
1/3c unsweetened pear juice
1 ½ tsp pear puree
You can get this one of three ways;
1)Get a ripe pear, squeeze it and puree some of the fruit
2)Buy a can of Libby’s canned pears that are packed in 100% pure juice. Use the juice and mash up some of the fruit.
Or
3)Get some baby food. They should have pear juice and pears that are unsweetened.

Warm up your oven to 200 degrees.
Measure out 1/3 c of the milk and add the oils to it.
Pour this mixture over your shredded soap which you have placed in a n oven safe dish.

Cover and let it melt for 45 min to 1 hour.

While it is melting, add the GRASS GREEN color and lemon yellow color to the pear juice. Mix until thoroughly blended.

After 45 minutes to 1 hour, check your soap. It should look a little drier than usual because we’re not adding as much liquid as we usually would. Sir it well. If it looks fully melted at this point, continue to the next step.

If not and it is still really dry, add 1 tablespoon of milk and stir again. Let it melt for another 15 minutes. If it isn’t super dry, but still needs to melt a bit, stir well and let melt for another 15 minutes.
After soap is fully melted, add ½ the fragrance, puree, and juice/color mixture and blend well. After it is well mixed, add the rest.

Scoop into molds.

Put in a small amount of soap at a time and press the soap into the details of the mold. It is kind of like spackling a hole in the wall. You want to fill the spaces so there are very few air pockets. It helps to use a rubber spatula that has been coated with oil. After it comes out of the mold, use the jade green color to paint the leaves and use the cola to paint the stem. If you want, you can also use the cola to add the little brown spots that you find on real pears.

Put mold into freezer for 1-3 hours.  Pop soap out of mold and leave it on a shelf or rack to air dry for at least 4 weeks.  Then it will be ready to use.

If you have some soap left over that didn’t fit into the mold, pat it into soap balls and leave these out to dry also.  They do not need to go into the freezer.

I was lucky enough to get actor/comedian Jim Germano to agree to make soap and lotion for the first time right on camera.

We had a lot of fun with it and so did my parrot and my dog who bothered up all through the videos.  Hopefully, we went slow enough to show you what it is really like to make soap from scratch and lotion.  It is really pretty easy once you see someone do it themselves.

Here is the first in the “How to Make Soap From Scratch” video:

To see the rest of the soap making videos and the “How to Make Lotion From Scratch” videos.

How to make soap from scratch

48 ounces Lard
6.2 ounces Lye (Sodium Hydroxide)
18 ounces cold water
1 ounce Soap Crafters Green Apple Fragrance Oil

Equipment needed:
A digital scale that will weigh up to six pounds or more
A glass or stainless steel thermometer
A plastic pitcher or glass jar that can hold at least 22 ounces
A stainless steel pot
A stainless steel large spoon
Enough Milkyway Soap Molds to hold 4.5 pounds of soap
A stick blender (Emulsifying blender meant for home use, usually called a Hand Blender at the department store)
PH Meter for testing soap

All ingredients need to be weighed on a digital scale. These are not volume measurements.

Lard is rendered pig fat. It doesn’t sound so good, I know, but it makes the very best soap! And it is so inexpensive! The best brand I have found is the Amour Star brand. This is the best deodorized lard I have used. The others have an odor that is really difficult to cover up. The Amour isn’t so much. One issue I have found with all lard is that they put citric acid in it. Citric acid neutralizes lye. They put it in there to keep the lard from foaming in deep fryers. For us it means that make soap is just a little bit more difficult. You will have to stir longer than normal to get it thick enough.

Your first step is to put 18 ounces of cold water into a glass or plastic container. Slowly pour in 6.2 ounces of lye. Make certain you water is cold. If you add lye to hot water it will volcano. When you mix water and lye heat it generated all on its own. Cover it and put this aside to cool down. Keep it out of the reach of everyone and every thing. If someone or something drinks it, it will be deadly.

Put your lard in a stainless steel pot and heat it until it is just about melted. Remove from heat when there are just a few slivers of lard left solid in there. Stir until those are melted too. Let it cool to about 130 degrees.

When lye solution is less than 130 degrees and lard is around 130 degrees, pour the lye solution into the melted lard. Stir with your stainless steel spoon. Start mixing with the stick blender. Use the stick blender off and on. Use the stick blender for only about one minute at a time. They are not intended for long stirring times. If you keep it on longer than that at one time it will fry the motor.

When the soap solution you are stirring starts to thicken up to a pancake batter or pudding, it is ready. This is difficult to acheive if your lard has citric acid in it. You may not get that thick, but it will certainly be a lot thicker than you started. It will be about 50% runnier than pancake batter.

Hand stir in your fragrance, stir well with the spoon and then pour into your molds.

Leave your molds just as they are for at least 24-hours. They will be ready to remove from the molds after their 24-hours. You will notice that when you touch the sides of the molds in about one hour after pouring that they are warm. The warmth is from the saponification process it goes through to make soap. This is normal.

After the 24-hours are up, pop the soaps out of the molds and do a ph test on them. A soap that is safe to use will be under a 10 ph. The ideal rage for a soap is 7-9.

Leave the soap bars out in the open air to cure for 6 weeks. This is when the water that is left over from the saponification process evaporates out of the soap. The soap is safe to use after the 24-hours, if the ph is okay, but it makes a much better lather after the 6 week curing time. So, if you can’t wait, go ahead and use a bar, but leave the rest out in the open air to cure. When the 6 weeks are up, you can package them up for resale or store them.

For more information on how to make soap, please see our soap making step-by-step instructions.