Soap Advisor

Re-inventing Hair Pomade

Well, I am putting the ‘natural Vaseline’ idea on hold.  I think I need to play around with something else first.  Pomade.  At least that’s what we used to call it, back in the 60s.  And only people of color and the white guys we called ‘greasers’ used it.  It is now a new millennium and we all use it.  But we now call it ’sculpting cream’ or lotion or whatever.  At any rate, they have so much garbage in it these days, I thought it was time to take it back, way back, to pre-1970.

My first goal is to just get an idea of how much wax to put in it.  So I’m only using almond oil and beeswax.  I heated it to melt the beeswax. It sure cools down fast.  I was surprised.  But then, so does lip balm and this is really just a big ol’ lip balm for the head, huh?

I really need to get a good prototype done today.  I’m out of hair goo.  I put a little orange liquid colorant in it to gussy it up.  It is a very pretty peach color.  Why the liquid colorant mixed right in with wax+oils, I have no idea.  It shouldn’t have.  But it did.  I’m a happy mixer.

Stay tuned.

Once I get this right, I think I can move on to the natural Vaseline idea.  That is a similar product, just not as stiff and sticky.

UPDATE: not enough wax in the formula.  I put a couple drops to the side, let them get cold.  Then tried to spike my hair.  It didn’t spike, just sort of made it oily.  I may have fixed the fake Vaseline….. LOL

UPDATE:  I think I am really close. :D  I put some on and when I went outside and saw myself in the rear view mirror, it was WOW.  My hair was so incredibly shiny where I put this stuff.  Cool.

You know when you make a sauce and you taste it and it is just ever so slightly wrong?  Like it would be so much better if you added that one thing.  What’s the thing, you ask, what does it need?  In this case, I’m thinking candelilla wax.  I’ll swap out some of the beeswax with candelilla wax and then I think its going to be perfect.

UPDATE:  Bingo! I do believe I’ve got it.  :D  I will use it this weekend and see if I find any problems, but so far, it is  pretty cool!  And I like how if you put scent in it, you’re like a little puff of perfume where ever you go.

Creating a new version of Nature's Jelly

We do currently sell this product as “Nature’s Jelly” on SoapCrafters.com.  However, we do not make it ourselves.  We have been purchasing it from a manufacturer who is pretty far away.  It never occurred to me to make it ourselves until the other day.

Today I’m playing around with a recipe to see if I can improve upon it.  Not that the product needs improving, but I just can’t help myself.  I must tinker!

I’m using only bee’s wax, soy oil, and palm oil.  I have it all melted and blended and I’m emulsifying it now and then as it cools.  It is still too warm to have anything interesting to report.

My hope is that it will be just like Vaseline Petroleum Jelly when I’m done, but made only with oils and bee’s wax, instead of whatever the heck is in petroleum jelly.  The name alone suggests some byproduct of fuel, haha.

I shall report back.

UPDATE:  It is a few hours into the cooling and I’m not so sure this is going to work with the recipe I came up with.  Seems to runny to me.  I might have to use a tougher wax to get the job done.  I dunno…  still waiting until its cold.

UPDATE:  Well, eh hem.  If you use palm oil to make this stuff it will be solid white.  Really, it should be translucent, you know?  It was almost thick enough after sitting for the weekend, but I scrapped it.  I need to use a liquid oil that is see through.

The batches I made yesterday are doing great!  They are still foamy and haven’t shrunk at all.  There appears to be no color bleeding at all so far.

I made my 2nd formulation to improve lather.  It didn’t improve it all that much unfortunately.  I was looking for oodles of lather and got good lather still.

I thickened up the 2nd formulation and it looked fabulous!  Nice and thick before whipping.

Then I had this brilliant idea.  I’ll add some citric acid to lower the ph and finally we’ll all have a low ph soap!

Ut-oh.  It totally turned it to soup.  Apparently, if you thicken something with sodium cloride then you cannot stay thick when adding citric acid?  Who knew?  Everyone but me, apparently.  At least that is what I think is the conflict.  Could be something else, I dunno.  No more lowering the ph in this stuff regardless.

Now my way cool batch of whip soap is dish soap.

Sigh.

Gotta start over.

It is much stiffer now

Okay, I’m making some progress.

I got it to stiffen up some and I think this might work.  But I think my customers are going to want a lot more bubbles.  People just love oodles of lather.  This has just a nice lather.

I am re-writing the formula and changing out the detergent additives to another one to get oodles in the lather dept.

I still don’t see any signs of color bleeds.  Cool.  Really bleeding happens over a couple of days, so we’ll see on that.  So far, so good, though.

A New Parfait

Soap Whip Experiment

I’m playing around in the lab today trying to come up with one of those Soap Whip soap bases I’ve been hearing about.

I look forward to days like this, just playing around like I’m an actual chemist or something, which I’m not!

So far I’ve got a soap that whips and has a nice, thick lather but not bunches of bubbles.  It is really moisturizing on the skin, doesn’t leave you dry feeling at all.

I’m afraid it needs to be thicker and more stiff though.  I don’t think my whipped soap is going to stay whipped.  I’d like to see it a lot stiffer after whipping.  I think I’m going to have to tinker some more.

I’d hate to cut back on the Shea Butter I put into it.  We’ll see what I can do.

I’m testing it to see if our liquid colorants will bleed into each other if you layer it.

I have had only one disaster so far.  The mixer fell into the huge pot I’m using and it got soaked in foamy soap.  I dunno if it is going to be the same….

A Soap Whip Parfait