Lip Balm Ministry

Lip balm anyone?

At our last women's ministry meeting we were discussing ways to earn money to help support our ministry.  I'd been thinking about offering to making lip balm to sell and the proceeds go for one of our church ministries so why not one I belong to?  Our Pastor and the ladies liked the idea so I went to work and I'm happy to say it's been a great success.  I need to make more lip balm very soon.

There are four "flavors", I designed a label using our church logo, added a Scripture verse and the name of the flavor.   When I delivered them I told our director I thought they'd be a nice ministry tool, stocking stuffer, etc.  I use lip balms with my Sudz n' Hunni Soaps labels as a gift with a tip when we go out to eat quite often.  Or if someone that waits on me in a store that's especially friendly and uses lip balm I'll give them one.  I think it's a nice way to let people know you appreciate them in a very affordable way.

Sudz n' Hunni Soaps Lip Balm

Happy Thursday!  I've been working on Lip Balms for a few days now, they are a popular item for sale at our local swap meets in our Sudz n' Hunni Soaps booth.

This little tub holds a combination of Vanilla Cream & Cocoa Butter (just plain) lip balms.

Next we have Coffee House, one of my personal favorites!

Pomegranate is a fan favorite that I had to make again this season.

And of course the plain Jane Cocoa Butter for people who don't want any flavorings or frills.  I've actually been using my Cocoa Butter Lip Balm on the aftermath of a hangnail & it's healing nicely.  I've infused the Rice Bran Oil in my recipe with dried Comfrey & Plantain Herbs for their believed healing properties.  My lip balm recipe also calls for lanolin which gives it amazing staying power along with its own moisturizing properties.  Good stuff!

Where can you get this amazing stuff?  You can leave a comment here and I can ship to you or if you are in western Arizona we are at the La Paz County Swap Meet at La Paz County Park on Saturdays from 8 AM-2 PM and in Lake Havasu at the London Bridge Swap Meet on Sunday's from 8 AM-2 PM.  They sell for $3 each.

Sudz n' Hunni Laundry Soap Experiment

I've been needing to make more laundry soap, have all the supplies and a few minutes this morning. In this photo I've been combining the lye/water solution with the Coconut Oil and d-Limonene.

My initial soap recipe uses 100% Coconut Oil at a 0% super fat for extreme cleaning power.  I used SoapCalc to formulate my recipe, it will give you the correct weights in ounces or grams to make your recipe and it also tells you how cleansing, conditioning, bubblie, hard your soap will be.  If you are making your own soaps and/or laundry soap please use a lye calculator.  

The soap batter has reached a nice trace and I've poured it into my 2 lb. acrylic mold and had a little more than I'd planned so I grabbed my guest size mold. Who knows maybe they'll be samples? Not for bathing though, dishes?  Dishes with gloves, a 0% super fat with 100% Coconut Oil would be super drying on our skin! 

An up close of the soap in the molds. There are a few more steps to laundry soap, in about 24 hours I can un-mold my soap, cut it and grate it using my Salad Shooter, then I'll add other powdered ingredients like washing soda, borax, etc. 

I really like my own laundry detergent, this 2 pound brick of soap can make A LOT of laundry detergent.

In formulating my recipe I went for cleaning power and that's also why I added the d-Limonene.

d-Limonene is reported to be a powerhouse of a natural cleaner. 

Here's what the Green Terpene website says about their product: GreenTerpene™ d-Limonene "Orange Terpenes" Food Grade All-purpose cleaner cuts grease, grime and dirt with ease! Our d'Limonene is extracted from Florida Orange Oil. Its 100% natural, biodegradable, safe, and non-toxic. Contains over 95% d-Limonene.

I've had a hard time getting the d-Limonene here, it ships from Florida and the first try came by USPS, the empty box sure did smell good...

Green Terpene's customer service is excellent, I let them know what happened along with photos. They shipped out a new product via UPS for me. It took awhile to arrive and I'm excited to see how it preforms in my laundry soap experiment!

This Coconut Oil soap was ready to un-mold and hard very quickly.  I cut it into chunks so I could put it through the Salad Shooter.

Shredding soap with the Salad Shooter.

View from the bucket...

I ended up with a bucket full of shredded soap, next I poured it out onto large baking sheets to dry out for about 48 hours.

The next step of the process is putting it all together.  I did put the shredded soap through my food processor so I had a course powder to mix with the other ingredients.  The end result is about a 6 month supply of laundry soap for $20.95.  I used an up-cycled kitty litter container for storage and a coffee can full for everyday use.

If you'd like to make homemade laundry soap here's a link to the original recipe. 

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Sudz n' Hunni Soaps Lavender & Chamomile

Hi blog friends!

I've been working on production and design of new soaps and getting ready for the up and coming holiday season.  Soap is beginning to take over our house and lives...  you can find it stashed here and there in different stages of the curing process.  You'll also find it wrapped and ready to go on a counter top and the collection is growing daily!

Today's blog post is mostly about attempting to make a ten pound batch of soap.  The first photo is two 5 pound soaps in their molds.  The second photo is a view of the bottom and sides of the soaps just out of the molds waiting to be cut.

As I was taking pictures my daughter came by to breathe in the wonderful aroma of Lavender & Chamomile.  

This was kind of an experiment for me.  The largest amount of soap I've made at one time so far is 6 pounds.  Actually two 3 pound batches made one right after the other.  It worked well so I thought I'd try making ten pounds of soap at one time.

I discovered a few things...  as I measured out my oils and put them into my largest crock pot to melt it became full.  To the top full...  I made my lye solution using a strong tea made from Lavender & Chamomile which was cooling in the sink.  As I pondered what I was going to do I decided to do some math and divide my recipe in half so I could just make two 5 pound batches back to back.

The above photo is the soaps cut from the five pound batch with more purple and white on top.

And these soaps are from the five pound loaf that had more yellow along the top, bottom and sides.

I had a lot of fun making the soap and everything turned out well.  I haven't decided yet if I should acquire larger containers to make soap in or just make two batches at once.  

Adventures in soap making!

The cure date on these is Octomber 10, 2013 and they will be available in my online store 

Sudz n' Hunni Soaps.

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Sudz n' Hunni Carnivale Stripe Handcrafted Soap

Hi blog friends, I have another experiment for you today!

I've been working on different soap techniques and swirls lately and my favorite 2 lb. acrylic mold has soap in it that isn't ready to be un-molded yet.  I just wanted to make a little (more) soap,what's a girl to do?!

My family is used to me saving boxes and containers (garbage to most people) for something I'm going to create in the future.  My husband will actually tell the kids - "You'd better put that away before your Mom makes something else out of it!"  

Anyway, I've been saving this Velveeta box... it's sturdy with the heavy cardboard on the inside, has walls that are straight up and down and holds 32 ounces of what ever I'd like to put in it!  I lined it with freezer paper just like a real soap mold and went forward with my experiment.

Here's a top view of my mold ready to go.

I mixed up my soap recipe, added Carnivale fragrance from Aztec, tried two new liquid colorant samples from Wholesale Supplies Plus and proceeded to try my hand at a tiger stripe technique.

The soap colors are Crafter's Choice Matte Teal Green Liquid Pigment and Matte Lavender Liquid Pigment.  I think I'll be buying the larger size sometime soon!

Here's my finished soap in the mold right after the pour.  Next it goes into the refrigerator because I want this one to be "un-gelled", in 24 hours it will be un-molded and then in another 24 hours I will cut it into slices.

I scraped the soap batter out of the bowls and had enough to fill my almost empty Guest size silicon mold.  I have plans for my Guest size soaps and I'll show you when I have it all together another day!

This is a picture of the aftermath of my soap making.  It's difficult but if I walk away and give it a few hours it's easier to clean up because what's all over the dishes has become soap.

Ohhhh the anticipation of waiting to cut this little loaf of soap!  It's un-molded but needs another twenty - four hours till I can cut it into bars.  

Sudz n' Hunni Sparkling Arizona Citrus Soap

I've been experimenting with a new soap recipe that is slower to come to trace so I can play with new techniques like swirls, stripes and other fun things.  I was reading the July/August issue of Saponifier Magazine and there are three soap artists that have picture tutorials and I want to try them all!

This is my first one, Celine Blacow a.k.a. The Soapstar on YouTube did a photo tutorial of a drop swirl or high pour that was featured in the magazine.  I have tried it before for my Arizona Back Country soap and it turned out nice but not as vivid as I would have liked so once again I'm inspired!

This recipe behaved beautifully, I followed her suggestion choosing a fragrance oil in the citrus or fruity family to help slow down the trace and the only thing that happened with that was it turned my soap batter yellow...  since this recipe was slow moving I had time to go get my Titanium Dioxide and mix a little in a separate measuring cup to add to my base.  Normally I would be running if I even tried to change that at all.

I kept the extras in this recipe to a minimum, just a little Colloidal Oatmeal and Tussah Silk to start out with.  

I waited twenty four hours to un-mold my soap and then another 24 hours before I cut my soap.

Here it is being sliced using my wire soap cutter.

...and all the bars of soap on a piece of parchment paper after being cut into one inch slices.

I like the way each bar of soap is a little different making each one unique.

This Sparkling Arizona Citrus Soap will be on sale in my Sudz n' Hunni Soaps online store starting today!

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Essential Depot Soap Making Kits

I have a fun soap making project to share with you today!

I need to tell you up front that I'm NOT unhappy with the soap making kit I used from Essential Depot today, the problems you'll see pictured are from not completely evaluating and thinking through our Arizona spring and summer weather.

To get started with my story and project today a little background -

My friend Dagmar followed a link from my blog and was looking around online at Essential Depot, she came across their soap making kits and bought a couple of them.  When I visited her last she told me about the soap kits and asked if I'd make them up for her and I could keep the molds from the kits.  

You know I said yes!

She ordered these kits in the beginning of May, they shipped and arrived at her home in Arizona.  The next time I visited we opened them up and checked them out...

Oh oh, the butters had melted in shipping and were all over!  The one good thing was the included red mold, it caught most of the melted butters.

I scraped off all that I could from the containers, wrappers, etc. and put it all in the RED silicon mold.  I next put the silicon mold in my oven at 170 degrees and kept an eye on the butters, when they were almost melted I took the mold out of the oven and stirred until all the butters were incorporated.  I should add right here that I did add a tiny bit of Shea Butter I had to the recipe, I had a container that needed to be scraped out before tossing in the trash and thought the addition would help make up for what was lost in the kit.

For those readers who know me, you already know I'm not a "kit type" of person, I like formulating my own recipes so of course I had to deviate.  My friend Dagmar has been really sick this past year and fighting an unknown battle with her health, I wanted to do something with her soap that would make her smile.  Her favorite color is purple, so instead of having a plain cream colored loaf of soap I had to add color!  Above are the colors I used, a purple mica from The Conservatory called Cosmo Martini, Titanium Dioxide & Fizzy Lemonade from Brambleberry and my home brew of Annatto Seeds infused in Olive Oil.  

And I didn't use the RED silicon mold that came with the kit, I wanted to see "what's happening in there" so I used my 3 lb. acrylic slab mold.  This was a really nice soap recipe to work with, it didn't come to trace too quickly.  I had time to work with the colors making an in the pot swirl, then added more color to the top and swirling it with a chop stick.

Because this was a kit the soap making aftermath wasn't so bad either!

The soap making kit is called Bonnie's Triple Butter Soap and it's available at Essential Depot if you'd like to make this yourself.

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Sudz n' Hunni Hog Wash Bacon Soap

I asked my youngest son Michael if he'd like to create some Bacon scented soap with me, he was up for it!  I thought he might have fun pouring all the oils and doing most of the "making" process.

After he had all the oils weighed out and melted I took care of the sodium hydroxide and water solution, when the oils and lye solution were at just the right temperature I poured them in with the oils so the soap making could begin.  

Mike's blending the mixture together to a thin trace, we then added Red Moroccan Clay to half of the soap batter.  I'd never noticed how pink my stick blender was until my son is using it.  

It's time to pour the soap batters into the mold.  We decided on a Tiger Stripe technique to hopefully make our bars of soap look like real bacon.  Mike is pouring the layers of soap.

A close up view of the pour.

When the mold was full and burped of all the air bubbles we could get out of it, the mold went into the oven at 170 degrees for about an hour to help it go through a gel stage.  This is only the second time I've done this CPOP (Cold process oven process) technique and I really like it.  The soap colors come out nice and rich.

24 hours later we un-molded the bacon scented soap and I cut it length wise and it kinda looks like bacon!  It smells like bacon too =)

This batch of soap only yielded six bars of soap because of the way I cut it but I like the look.  If you'd like to try our Hog Wash Bacon Scented Soap there are 5 bars available at my Sudz n' Hunni Soaps online store.  UPDATE - only 2 bars left...

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