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 "Pic-Of-The-Week" Homemade doughnuts by AL |
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"Pic-Of-The-Week" Homemade doughnuts by AL |
Sufficient Self ForumLiving a more Self Sufficient & Sustainable Lifestyle |
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Ok, so I've heard enough about salt soap and never paid much mind. Well, finally I got sick of hearing about them and decided to make a batch for myself. This stuff is WONDERFUL!!! For SS folk, you could make it with cheap table salt to decrease the price, and since they last SOOO much longer than regular soap, you'll be saving a ton in the end!
Salt soap
Soap with the bag of mineral sea salt above it
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Soooo other than having salt in it, what is different about it?? Very curious!
Looks neat!!
PS - your inbox is full Dear!! 
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Inbox is fixed.
As for the soap, it's simply wonderful. Mine isn't technically ready yet, but I've been using it anyways (I wonder if I'll ever play by the rules?). As of right now, it's very exfoliating. I LOVE a good scrub, but for some people, at this point, it might be too much. Anyways, according to most people who make it, it becomes much less abrasive with a proper cure (3 months, gasp!). Supposedly, with a full cure, it feels just like rubbing a polished river rock on yourself. It's VERY, VERY sudsy and super silky feeling. You must use a high coconut oil content (other oils don't suds well in salt/saltwater), so make sure you make up for it with a high superfat (saving money on lye if you want to look at it that way, lol). I've been cranking out the salt bars (they're actually pretty fun to make), so eventually I'll be able to send some samples out to people to try them out for themselves.
ETA: It's also supposed to be healing. A lot of people swear by salt bars for facial soap. I've been using it for a short while, and I truely believe it is helping to clear up my acne. I'd like to give it a go with shaving, since it's so silky feeling. I want to see if it burns like the dickens during or after shaving. Oh, and some may think it'd be very drying, but if you superfat your coconut oil at 18-20%, it combats the drying powers of the salt and makes it very nice. After the shower, it feels like any other bar of soap without goats milk. That squeaky clean, yet soft and not dried out feeling. The goats milk definately makes you feel fifty times more moisturized than water. I might make some salt bars with goats milk with regular sea salt (without the red specks of minerals), but wanted to keep this stark white so the minerals showed through better.
Last edited by Bettacreek (03/04/2012 8:25 pm)
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OMG when you have samples I would love to try!
I do want to get into soaps at some point, but I am starting with lotion bars. 3 ingredients, heat, mix and pour. LOL I think I can handle that! 
Then I might try lip balm, and then move on to more challenging things.
Someday
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Lol! Ironically, I started out with soap. After years of reading about it and never doing it, I finally dove into it. Now I'm working with easier products, like the candles and lotion bars. Heck, even straight up lotion is super easy to make. The soap is probably the hardest to actually develop a recipe for, but even that isn't so bad once you actually get the ball rolling. If you ever need any help with making soaps, feel free to ask questions, I'll help you out as much as possible.
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What's the recipe?
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MyKidLuvsGreenEgz wrote:
What's the recipe?
times 2!
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Well, it depends on what you want. You use coconut oil as your basic oil. You should use at least 75% coconut oil for the oils, and then anything else added in there to your taste. I personally use 100% coconut oil. You can use any amount of salt, from 0-100% of your oil weight. The more you use, the harder/crumblier the bar will be, and the more difficult to unmold/cut.
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So it's just mixing coconut oil with salt?
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Gah! I always forget about that. It needs sodium hydroxide. I always assume everyone knows everything there is to know about soap when I post. Sorry about that!
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