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Soap Making Overview
In lotion / cream production there are few ingredients as important as emulsifying wax. It is so vital because it binds all the rest of the ingredients and doesn’t let them disintegrate. Basically, there are two main components in lotion, and that’s oils and water, but if you leave it just there they easily fall back into oils and water again whereas wax doesn’t let this happen.
How does it work? The answer is hidden in the structure of the emulsifying wax which binds the core ingredients i.e. water and oils together. This bond is due to emulsion, a system of liquids dispersed into an immiscible liquid e.g. oil and water. Immiscible is a complicated word with a simple meaning – not compatible or, not able to be mixed.
But there is another purpose for emulsifying wax in lotion. Wax doesn’t only bind soap components but also gives them conventional density by thickening the ingredients in the substance to conventional standards. Otherwise, we would only have a substance similar to liquid but without its ability to be used in a meaningful way.
There is another interesting question that you have probably been asking yourself all along. How on earth can oil mix with water? That’s again thanks to emulsifying wax with its incredible characteristics.
Emulsifying substances react on molecular level. They attract water and oil to opposite poles at the same time. Water being a polar substance, just like other substances of this type, is also called a hydrophilic material. Substances of this type get in reaction with water and form firm bonds.
To the other category belong non-polar materials, such as olive and other kinds of oil. These types of substances are called hydrophobic substances. Emulsifying wax is both hydrophilic and hydrophobic and it can bind form bonds with both oil and water. In other words, emulsifying wax can structurally attract both of these components. Certain particles of the structure react with oil while others act like a sponge and absorb liquid water. Moreover, because the oil stays in the water, the emulsifying wax helps the oil to get to skin and in through it. Thus, the oil moisturises the skin while bathing.
The fact is that there is no need to be a chemical expert or a scientist to produce soap, creams and lotions of your own making! Besides, you are aware now of why wax is a crucial component in you soap and hoe exactly it works to bind the material together. This knowledge will not just help you make your soap and lotion but you can always tell others about it and show them that you are no fool but know how things work!
There are lots of emulsifying waxes at the market available to both professionals and novices. To find the right one can be hard but if you research all available you will be able to select precisely what you need. Some examples are: Ceteareth 20, Emulsifying Wax NF, Cetearyl Alcohol, Glyceryl Stearate, Polysorbate 20 etc. It is, of course, helpful to understand the differences before you actually go and buy some of these waxes.
Ceteareth 20. It is mainly used in oil-and-water emulsified mixtures and guarantees rather stable character of the final emulsion when you add other waxes e.g. glyceryl stearate.
Emulsifying Wax NF, You will want to use this emulsifier to get your water and oil together. The amount of this emulsifier you use will be determined to a large extent by the mixture and quantity of thickeners you have added. Still, something around 3 to 6 pre cent of the overall weight of your substance will be optimal. Because it is not too difficult to use this emulsifier many home soap producers rely on it.
Cetearyl Alcohol. It is greasy alcohol that is extracted from natural oils and natural fats such as cetyl and stearyl alcohol. Cetearyl Alcohol is used for thickening and stabilizing ready formulas. It feels emollient when applied to skin while its recommended concentration reaches from1 to 25 per cent.
Glyceryl Stearate. This substance is both an emulsifying wax but it is also a stabilizer. It is used quite often with other waxes – polysorbate 20 and cereareth 20. Normal usage is from 1 to 2 per cent of the total weight of the mixture.
Polysorbate 20. This was is perfect for oil-and-water emulsifying. The result is a perfect solution that is used in skin cleaners, sprays and body mist. I would suggest a ration of 25 or 50 per cent of any type of oil – essential or fragrance – this wax.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of waxes and emulsifiers. However, these are easily available and used by many people who have made home soap production their full time hobby. You will find tons of soap recipes with the ratio for usage that will include some of the above-indicated emulsifiers. When you learn what kind of substances, and at what ratio, are used it will take away from the mystery of soap production and make you more self-confident when you’ll want to practice it yourself. This basic understanding will open for you new vistas for experiment and success.
Colours of Soap
You have probably seen soap of almost any colour and it is no secret that soap factories add to the soap colouring substances in the production process. Some of them are micas, oxides, dyes and ultramarines. “Why not use just dyes?” you’ll ask but let us look deeper into all of these and try to understand the difference.
#1
Dyes
Dyes jut change the colour of the soap and are the simplest among any other types of colouring substances used in soap production. You’ll never need to worry about clumps and if you add them into a transparent soap substance like Melt or body Spritz they will keep their transparent quality.
At the same time, you will find that there are many chemical components in their composition that are not exactly stable on numerous Ph factors. This can lead to you adding one colour substance and coming up with something very far away from it.
Dyes that didn’t undergo a rigid testing process should be considered with caution and not introduced into cold process soap. Dyes are good for melt and pour. They tend to fade in the sunlight and do that rather rapidly though. Such colours like blue are especially difficult to work with and easily fade because of their instability. Red is another tricky colour because it tends to bleed. That is if you have a red and white soap, overtime red will mix with white and eventually you will have pink soap as the pattern with dissolve. Of course that are many techniques for preventing this “bleeding” but you will never be too sure about the final colour of you product!
Well there is an advantage to using dyes for they come in wide range of colours. You might be tempted see some of those in your soap but you will always need to take extra caution using them.
#2
Pigments
Ultramarines and oxides belong to the category of pigments. Pigments are created in industrial laboratories. They have been available for use since 1970. In the beginning, these substances were evidently mined with the rest of minerals but at some point it has been demanded to stick to purity and scientists starting working on mass laboratory research and production of these colorants. Natural and lab-manufactured pigments have identical structure on molecular level but a different way to processing.
Actually, some of pigments such as iron oxide are still extracted naturally. Naturally here doesn’t mean clean for they are polluted with such heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium. That was the reason behind the shift to laboratory pigments. This regulation was issued by FDA and stipulated a certain level of toxins and heavy metals present in pigments that should be considered safe to use in soap production. As a result, in our country only synthetic iron oxides have been approved for cosmetics use.
What’s so amazing about pigments is soap is their stability and low cost. I will later on give some information on that.
A word of warning though: be careful working with pigments because they may lump and it could have an undesired effect.
#3
Mica
Almost anything that’s shiny has this mineral in it. Plastic, nail polish, glitter etc. The size of mica particles determines how sparkly an object will be. The bigger the particle, the more light is consequently reflected from mica into our eyes. If you want to have a blurred or pearl effect, smaller particles are used.
Naturally this mineral has silvery colour with some white shade but it is easily dyed and one can see many different shades of this mineral in soap colours. Because mica mineral reflects light it’s better used not in hazy soaps but in transparent products. M&P would be an example of such a product.
Before you decide to use mica as one of the ingredients, make sure that it is of cosmetic quality – there are so many different types of it because of its many uses. Some of them are even edible and are used in products like lip balm and lip stick.
Mica’s quality is defined by grade and dyes used in the product.
Mica is almost always fairly stable in high pH factors but you might want to check it out in small quantity before ordering a big supply.
# 4
Natural colorants
Natural colour is hard to define and even if defined it would be hard to justify that definition. According to the official FDA classification, there are certified and uncertified colorants. In the Encyclopaedia of Chemical Technology we can find this statement, “Exempt (uncertified) colorants are inherently neither more nor less safe than certified colorants". Many people view them as less likely to inflict harm because they are “natural”. But just like any colorants, being fabricated products, they are chemicals.
In the course of history many other things have been used for colouring – onions, grass and even bugs.
“Natural” products have an edge over other colorants from sales perspective – people sincerely believe that if there is a “natural” label it means that it is safer and, thus, better. Nonetheless, it is fairly hard to achieve the necessary result using just natural colorants. Some colorants and too bright, others too pale for what you want, or even too costly.
Soap Fragrances
The best thing about our own home-manufactured soap is that we can tailor it to our taste – its content, shape and colour. Fragrance is another trait of your soap that you can customize and, to tell you the truth, I think, it is the most significant and vital. It’s obvious that if a beautiful bar of soap is foul-smelling it is muck!
The oils that are used for scenting in soap making are normal fragrance oils. One can use them for bath salts, bath bombs and soaps. Fortunately enough they are absolutely inexpensive and available for sale 9 you can see some of them beneath)
Different Ways to Make Soap
Essential Guide on Melt and Pour Soap Manufacture
Any kind of home produced soap is, basically, glycerine soap. All the extra glycerine is removed from factory made soap (the method of cold process soap manufacture), but because we cannot harvest the by-produced glycerine at home it stays in soap making it glycerine rich soap.
This kind of soap is referred to as clear soap in nowadays market. The clear soap is extra rich in glycerine which makes it nourishing and moisturizing. Being a humectant, glycerine absorbs water and when you wash yourself with this kind of soap it leaves a film of glycerine on your skin, drawing to it more water.
One can buy massive blocks of clear soap base and melt it, adding colorants and fragrances. Then melted soap should be poured into specially molded containers to be given the expected form, and after that, cut to bars. That’s where this kind of soap takes its name – melt and pour soap. Melt and pour soap is becoming more and more in demand because it’s simple to use and you do not need to worry about any safety measures in production process. Just be careful with tools you use. Such soap manufacture is a great fun for kids, because even they can manage it and show their creativity.
On the other hand, there is no need to buy the soap base – you can go through the whole process yourself! You will need to apply some principles from cold process soap making and then proceed by adding alcohol and a mixture of glycerine and sugar for normal clarity. This step can get perilous for the alcohol fumes. There is a book by Catherine Failor for those who are set on making transparent soap which is called “Transparent Soapmaking”. It will be of help for all who want to whole way in home soap manufacture.
Cold Process Soap
Cold Process Soap is an old way of making soap that was widely spread a century ago. Quite often you can here it called CP soap. Making this soap, you add fatty acids to sodium hydroxide. You can use any kind of oil (because that is what fatty acids are) – from pig fat to olive oil. And there is a million ways of how to make it, and a million of recipes and proportions.
Cold process soapmaking is a combination of an art and science. The condensed version of this type of soapmaking is that there is a certain proportion of lye (sodium hydroxide) and water to fatty acids that forms a chemical reaction called “saponifaction.” During saponification, the oils and lye mix and become soap – the process takes approximately six weeks to fully complete.
Cold process soap manufacture is equally science and art! In short, you take some specific amount of sodium hydroxide and then add water to fatty acids to saponify. During this chemical process, the fatty oil and sodium hydroxide mix. It can take up to 5-6 weeks to fully complete.
For this type of soapmaking one will need to use lye and safety equipment. By safety equipment I mean gloves and goggles. Prior to making soap through this process scrupulously research the methodology. As the result you will get high quality hard soap. The soap bar that you get will either have high lather, by the way cocoanut oil is very good for lathering; have outstanding mildness, olive oil is of help here; or have a moisturizing effect. For the latter, you can add cocoa butter or shea with hemp oil.
Hot process soap
This type of soap manufacture, also known by the name of HP soap, has come to our days from the Middle Ages, the times when people would boil soap in bowls hanging over fires. The heat is needed when the trace stage is over. Heat then speeds up saponification until the process is over.
Bare in mind that HP soap is very difficult to take out from usually used plastic molds. You might want to try the wooden ones, just like in good old days, so that your battle with plastic is not lost! The reason for this terrible temperament of soap is exposure to the air when soap stays in the mold for several days. However you lubricate the mold, the outcome is the same – it sticks! There were several occasions when I had to break the poor mold.
Rebatching Soaps
This soap is a subtype of cold soap. When you make soap the way I explained above grating it and placing over heat in a bowl with water (or other liquid). The substance melts into a mess to which you can add colouring and fragrance agents. It’s good to go this way if one wants to keep odorous and healing features of essential oils.
Making Lip Balm
If you want to make your lips delicious and smooth and soften them – home produced lip balm is definitely for you. Lip balms can be infused with your best scented oils. You can take lemon, tangerine or even peppermint. After choosing the oil, you should customize the essential design of components that will have wax and unscented oils. Preferably, you would want to use some of the tubes and tubs displayed here, or cosmetic jars. You will approximately have half an ounce from this recipe:
Ingredients: 3 teaspoons grated unbleached beeswax; 5 teaspoons carrier oil (sunflower, castor, or jojoba); 6 or 7 drops essential oil; 1 teaspoon honey, for flavour
The essential recipe: take 3 teaspoons of grated and unbleached beeswax, 5 teaspoons of carrier oil (sunflower, jojoba or castor), 6-7 drops of essential oils, 1 teaspoon of honey. Honey is for flavour.
1. You should melt up the wax and carrier oil in the double boiler. Don’t forget to stir to mix everything up well. Then take it adding honey and essential oil after heating. You don’t want to have honey clumps in there so mix methodically.
2. To colour the substance, stir a small bit of lip stick in coffee stirrer. Then take containers and pour the mixture into them. Let it settle down for 20 minutes before you will be able to move or cover it. It you need more gloss in your balm, add 2 teaspoons of beeswax and 7-8 teaspoons of carrier oil.
Double Colour Melt and Pour Soap
You start off with the melt and pour soap making procedures.
Then you add the first layer into the container you want to fill. You can use either Pyrex dish or smaller tools for more exquisite patterns, spritzing the layer with alcohol and letting it harden. You understand that this first layer will be as thick as the amount of soap you poured in the container. Don’t make it too thin.
Then take your second colour and spritzing the first layer with alcohol again, slowly add the next one. Then you treat with alcohol this new layer. You need to keep in mind that some molds can’t be heated to more than 145 degrees F. Otherwise they can wrap. So if the base is hotter than that let it cool down and only then proceed.
Give it 2-4 hours to cool down and then extract the soap from the mold.
Bath Bombs
Bath bombs and bath fizzies are alka-seltzers in your bath. They will spin, swirl and whirl in you tub, releasing odour and softening your skin. Without these, bath would be boring indeed!
Essential recipe for bath bombs
First gather all the ingredients you’ll need:
- 2 parts baking soda
- witch hazel
- colouring of your choice
- 1 part citric acid
- fragrance oil that you like
- dome-shaped mold
I can’t stress it more but you need to mix up everything real THOROUGH. This part is crucial. If the particles are not blended well enough, you will end up having a grainy bomb. You can even use a mixer or similar equipment at this stage.
When you have it ready, you can pour the colorant. Fizzy colorants and dye pigments will be the best. But try not to overdo it. You will have a brighter colour when you add the witch hazel.
At this stage you may add favourite fragrance oils.
Here comes the hardest part; you spritz the witch hazel on your mixture and stir the whole thing at the same time. If you feel that your batch hardens or stick together, you take it to molds. Do not linger here! Timing is important! You wait – it hardens, you spritz too much – it will be too wet and start the reaction right there.
When you have put the bombs into molds, wait and take them out. They will air dry for several hours and then you have it! Beautiful bath bombs! The denser the bomb, the more durable and heavy it will be!
