Emulsified Sugar Scrub / Γαλακτωματοποιημένο απολεπιστικό ζάχαρης

‪‎Χειροποίητο‬ Sugar Scrub με άρωμα white musk. Γαλακτωματοποιημένο απολεπιστικό ζάχαρης είναι διαφορετικό από το κανονικό scrub ζάχαρης με τον τρόπο που σχηματίζει μια λοσιόν σε επαφή με το νερό και η σύνθεση, αν και ενυδατική, δεν αφήνει το δέρμα σας υπερβολικά λιπαρό όπως κάνουν μερικά scrubs. Βασικά, αυτό είναι λοσιόν, καθαριστικό και απολεπιστικό, όλα σε ένα. Μπορείτε να το χρησιμοποιήσετε στο σώμα και στο πρόσωπό σας. Περιέχει: Καστανή ζάχαρη, λάδι καρύδας, ελαιόλαδο, αμυγδαλέλαιο, έλαιο από λιναρόσπορο, βούτυρο κακάο, κερί μέλισσας, απιονισμένο νερό, υγρό σαπούνι, γαλακτωματοποιητή, εγκεκριμένο από ECOCERT συντηρητικό και άρωμα.

Handmade Face Cream / Χειροποίητη Κρέμα Προσώπου

*μετακινηθείτε προς τα κάτω για να διαβάσετε στα ελληνικά

Night cream with Lavandin and Juniper EO
Κρέμα νυκτός με αιθερία έλαια Λεβαντίνης και Αρκεύθου 

Last few months, aside from making soap, I've been anxious to try something new, something else that I could use without waiting for the curing time to pass. I wanted to make a face cream for some time now, but I didn't have the necessary emulgators, thickeners and preservatives. To tell you the truth, I was a little unsure if I could handle the process, but after reading a lot and asking my friends who are face cream veterans the right questions, I ordered the supplies and gave it a shot. Here it is, my first face cream. It turned out to be somewhat heavy for my skin (combination skin), . Of course, I couldn't stop at one, so others followed. Next step was an emulsified sugar scrub, but more about some other time...

 Recipe

Phase                Ingredient                        %                   

                          

                         Olivem 1000                        7                           

A                      Shea Butter                        10

                         Grape Seed Oil                  10
 -----------------------------------------------                    
                        Glycerin                               2
B                     Xantan Gum                       0.2
                  Geranium Hydrosole           ad 100%
------------------------------------------------
                      Lavandin EO                       0.2
C                   Juniper Berry EO                 0.3
                      Geogard 221                       0.4

Το Σαπούνι ξυρίσματος

Για όσους από εμάς που είναι ερωτευμένοι με τη σαπωνοποιία, δημιουργία ενός καλού σαπουνιού ξυρίσματος είναι κάτι σαν την αναζήτηση του Άγιου Δισκοπότηρου, ή το να φιλάς ένα μάτσο βατράχους για να βρεις τον πρίγκιπα σου (καλά, δεδομένου ότι δεν είμαι λάτρης της αριστοκρατίας, ας πούμε απλά "έναν άνδρα των ονείρων σας").

Η καλή μου φίλη Δάρα από τη Σερβία με έσωσε από το φίλημα πάρα πολλών βατράχων και ήταν τόσο γενναιόδωρη που μοιράστηκε την συνταγή και την εμπειρία της μαζί μου και με καθοδήγησε βήμα βήμα, και έτσι αυτή η πρώτη προσπάθεια, αν και είχε κάποιες αναποδιές, στιγμές με άγχος και αμφισβήτηση(γιατί ποτέ δεν είχα φτιάξει σαπούνι με θερμή μέθοδο), αποδείχθηκε αρκετά καλή. Έτσι, μπορώ να σας παρουσιάσω το πρώτο μου σαπούνι ξυρίσματος!

Χειροποίητα‬ Lip Balms για τις κρύες μέρες που έρχονται

Ενυδατικό, θρεπτικό βάλσαμο για την περιποίηση των χειλιών σας από λάδι ελιάς και άλλα πολύτιμα λάδια και βούτυρα, εμπλουτισμένο με μερικές σταγόνες αιθέριο έλαιο. 

Μπορείτε να επιλέξετε ανάμεσα σε αυτά τα δύο, για τώρα. Σύντομα θα υπάρξουν περισσότερες επιλογές.

1) Cranberry & Λεβάντα με βούτυρο καριτέ, αμυγδαλέλαιο, λάδι από κουκούτσια σταφυλιού, το μελισσοκέρι, βιταμίνη Ε και αιθέριο έλαιο λεβάντας.

2) Σοκολάτα & Μέντα, με βούτυρο κακάο, αμυγδαλέλαιο, ελαιόλαδο, καστορέλαιο, μελισσοκέρι, σκόνη κακάο και αιθέριο έλαιο δυόσμου

Έκανα αυτές τις ετικέτες μόνη μου, χρησιμοποιώντας το PicMonkey. Μου αρέσει να πειραματίζομαι με αυτό, δημιουργώντας μια διαφορετική ετικέτα κάθε φορά. Αυτό μάλλον θα πρέπει να αλλάξει όταν θα έχω να κάνω μεγαλύτερες παραγγελίες, αλλά μέχρι στιγμής είναι διασκέδαση και όχι αγγαρεία.

Butterfly Swirl Gallery

And something quite unexpected...instead of a butterfly I've got a Happy Feet :)

Few words about handmade soap

I started writing a post on my Facebook page that turned out to be long-ish, so I'll just write it down here and update it whenever I feel the need to add something.

Let's be honest: Soap is meant for cleaning, polishing and skin care.

It is not a "natural" product, as some soap makers claim. It is not a medicine either. Although using quality handmade soap can benefit your skin a lot. Why is that? Because our skin was exposed to commercial soaps, which are basically detergents that have dried out our skin over the years. Using a good handmade soap will recover our skin to it's natural state and that is why we say it benefits your skin. Also, commercial soap manufacturers remove the glycerin from the soap to make it cheaper and to use the glycerin in different creams and lotions that, after using a commercial soap, you will most definitely need. So basically you have to buy a soap and a lotion separately. That is not the case with handmade soap, where glycerin is still present.

Coconut Oil Soap

Ever since I first read about properties of different oils for soap making and found information that even though large amount of coconut oil in soap can be drying for the skin, it is still possible to make a good, nondrying Coconut oil soap, I wanted to try making one myself.

Some of my soap making buddies even make 100% Coconut oil soap without lye discount and they swear that it's the best soap for the laundry. I didn't want to use so much Coconut oil for a laundry soap, because it's not a very cheap ingredient here in Greece, but I decided to make a small batch of Laundry soap with 50% Coconut oil and 50% Lard. While I was at it, I figured i could try making a small batch of 100% Coconut oil soap with the remaining 250 g of oil I had left.

How to Prepare Lard for Soap Making

Why Lard?

As you probably know, I live in Greece, in the beautiful peninsula called Halkidiki. I would say the nature has been very generous here and provided us with sea, long sand beaches, clean drinking water, mountains covered in Pine, Oak and Chestnut forests. Hills and valleys are mostly covered with olive farms, some Apricot orchards and livestock farms that supply local butcher stores with meat. Halkidiki is also known for its tradition of beekeeping, which is mentioned by Aristotle in 4th century B.C. Today Halkidiki holds 10% of Greek honey production and it is most densely populated area in regards to beehives. There are 84 beehives per square kilometer in Halkidiki, while the average density of beehives in Greece, which ranks first in Europe, is only 11 per square kilometer.

 This area has also been blessed (or cursed) with the presence of gold, silver and magnesite, and therefore we have several operating mines as well as one (at Skouries location) that still haven't started mining, because they have been strongly opposed by our local community for years, due to immense danger they pose for our lives and the nature of Halkidiki, but also because of numeral transgressions by the company that has bought the mine for dimes with the help of corrupted politicians who were in government at the time. So, we try very hard to preserve the nature here, nature's balance is not just some abstract concept for us, it's literary the foundation of our survival, because everything, from olive farms, beekeeping and livestock farms to tourism depends on that balance. Our economy is mostly based on agriculture, beekeeping, fishing and tourism. You can imagine how the pollution or lack of clean water would affect those, not to mention air pollution.

So, I can say that yes, I am interested and invested personally in environmental issues. Having said that, I am not by default a vegan, and I'm not opposed to using lard for making soap. I've read a lot about lard before trying to render some myself and I am convinced that this is an amazing, cheap ingredient for soap.

Soap Adventures of last couple of months | Photo Gallery

Here are some pics of my latest soap adventures that I still haven't had time to write about. Coloring soaps using Alkanet root is definitely something worth writing about and I intend to explore this more. I've already experimented with different alkanet oil infusions and got some interesting results that vary among light green to dark purple, but more about it in some future post.

Using Alkanet root to color soap

This particular soap was named "Lavender Crocus" by my friend Carolyne because of some interesting swirls that resulted in something resembling Crocus flower in her opinion. It was colored with Alkanet root infused in Almond oil and TiO2. More about it later.

This soap was inspired by Lemon Poppy Seed soap by Soap Queen, except instead of using Lemon fragrance for this project, I've used Silk Melon Fragrance and Spearmint EO. My friends said it reminds them of Lemon Merengue and we ended up calling it Melon Merengue. The bottom half is colored with just a few drops of Carrot infused Olive oil and I added TiO2 to the upper half. The final touch were poppy seeds which I added for exfoliation as well as esthetic reasons. 

Recycling the used cooking oil

I hate to waste stuff, especially oil, so I always try to find another use for stuff that is considered waste. Here in Greece we often use Olive oil for frying and since my husband loves fried potatoes, there's a lot of frying going on in our kitchen and I always feel uneasy about discarding it after use. I mean, what do you do with it once you have fried those potatoes? Do you dump it in the sink? That doesn't seam like a good idea. Dump it in the garbage? More likely, but how? Some people pour it into plastic bottles before dumping it. I didn't feel good about any of those options, and I wanted to find a way to reuse it, but not for making body soap, because I like to use clean Olive oil for that (even though I know some companies recycle waste oil and make soaps for hands and body). There is a company here in Greece that recycles oils and trades them for laundry detergent or soaps and they pass by my house sometimes, but not regularly and I still haven't pinpointed their schedule. 

Last Minute Birthday Gift

Hello Everyone! I know it's been awhile...almost four months since I last posted here, but that doesn't mean I haven't been soaping. Because, well, how can you abstain from soaping for four  months really? I've made seven batches of cold process soap since my last post and I've been reading and watching videos on how to make liquid soap. I must say that my friend Darinka from DI Prirodni Sapuni was instrumental in braking my resistance to spending four hours or so cooking soap, but more about that when I buy KOH and get to business.

For now I just thought to say hello and post some pics of this DIY box I made following this Soaping 101 video and tweaking it a bit to fit my needs.

The thing is, my kids had, not one, not two, but four (what is it with the number 4 in this post anyway...) birthdays to go to last week and while they did shop for some gifts earlier, they didn't find gifts for everyone and I had to save the day with soaps. So I took a large sheet from my daughter's aquarelle block, folded it so that one side is about half a centimeter larger than the other and cut it where it was folded.

New Soaps and lots of New Ideas...

The swirl in this soap is made by taking some of the soap and
 adding Vanilla fragrance to it. The rest is colored with Titanium Dioxide

I'm back, with some new soaps and lots of new ideas. I hope I'll manage to give life to those ideas and share some of my enthusiasm for handmade soaps and soapmaking with you.

These are two new soaps I made couple of days ago. I've changed the dimensions of soap so it would fit better in hand. New dimensions range from 5cm x 2.5cm x 6cm to 6cm x2.5cm x 7cm, and they weigh 90-100 gramms each. These soaps need to cure for at least 4 weeks, but I was pleased that someone couldn't wait to get their hands on it, so I've already sold some of them.

Lavender & Mastic Soap: First time doing a Secret Swirl

Hello everyone! I've been busy soaping lately and I didn't have much time to blog about it. This is the soap I made back in March and it was the first time I tried the secret swirl or the so called "hanger swirl". It was also the first time I used Mastic in soap, but since then I wrote about couple of other soaps I made with Mastic, but forgot to write about this one that was actually the first.

I used Olive oil, Palm oil, Coconut oil, Shea butter and Castor oil for this batch of soap.

Mastic resins in the mortar

So, the first thing I did was to ground the Mastic resins in the mortar until it turned into powder. Then I set it aside and prepared my oils and lye.

Rose and Mastic Soap

Many months have passed since my friend Carolyne sent me a package of dried rose buds from London, allong with some beautiful hand-dyed silk crepe, and hinted that I might make some rose soap for her, but I was a bit anxious about this project and didn't really feel ready to give it a try until now.

Carolyne likes earthly, natural colors and fragrances, so I've been contemplating how to go about making a rose fragranced soap, how would I structure it, which colours should I use, which oils and butters, which essential oils etc.

Finally, I decided to use Rose Perfume Oil that contains some Rose essential Oil in it (because Rose E.O and Rose Absolute were way to expensive to use), Palmarosa E.O. and finally (after I tested the combination in my whipped body butter) Chios Mastic. 

Rose and Mastic Body Butter

For English, scroll down

Βούτυρο Σώματος με Τριαντάφυλλο & Μαστίχα 

Η εμμονή μου με Μαστίχα Χίου συνεχίζεται ... Σήμερα έφτιαξα λίγο βούτυρο σώματος με λάδι Καρύδας, βούτυρο Καριτέ, Αμυγδαλέλαιο και Καστορέλαιο, αρωματικό έλαιο Τριαντάφυλλου, αιθέριο έλαιο Palmarosa και Μαστίχα Χίου. 

Μαστίχα έχει τόσα πολλά οφέλη για το δέρμα, έχει αντι-μικροβιακή (υπό τη μορφή αιθέριου ελαίου) και αντι-φλεγμονώδη δράση, και είναι φυσικό αντιοξειδωτικό. Η έρευνα έχει δείξει ότι η μαστίχα Χίου συμβάλλει στην επούλωση των τραυμάτων και την ανάπλαση της επιδερμίδας.

Πέρα από όλα αυτά, έχει ένα πολύ ωραίο, φρέσκο ​​άρωμα που, κατά τη γνώμη μου, λειτουργεί συμπληρωματικά με το άρωμα Τριαντάφυλλου ή Λεβάντας.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My obsession with Chios Mastic continues... Today I made some Rose & Mastic body butter with Coconut oil, Shea butter, Almond oil and Castor oil, Rose perfume oil, Palmarosa essential oil and Mastic from Chios.

Greek Mastic, a natural fragrance for handmade soap

Handmade Soap with Chios Mastic
 Χειροποίητο σαπούνι με μαστίχα Χίου

I've been on a roll these last couple of weeks. Lots of ideas, energy and several batches of soap set to cure. What I want to write about today is my current obsession with Mastic and the first time I used dividers to make some color swirls.

Other than for its lovely fresh fragrance, using Chios Mastic (Mastiha) has some amazing benefits:

"Ever since antiquity, Chios mastiha has been well known for its medicinal and pharmaceutical properties. 
Nowadays, it has been gradually revealed by the scientific community, through accurate and scientifically acceptable methods based on laboratory research and clinical studies carried out by independent researchers in Greece and abroad, that natural Chios mastiha is gifted with unique beneficial and therapeutic properties, thus confirming what has been historically recorded over the past. 
To be more precise, scientific evidence has confirmed Mastiha’s beneficial action against disorders of the peptic system, its contribution to oral hygiene, its significant antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory action, as well as the fact that it constitutes a natural antioxidant agent. In addition to that, Chios mastiha contributes to wound healing and skin regeneration. " [LINK]

And it smells great! All in all - an ideal, natural addition to handmade soaps.

I purchased 10 g. package of mastic resins in my local super-market for aprox. 3.5 EUR.

First time I used Chios Mastic resins in cold process soap was a week ago, in my Lavender & Mastic Soap and I was very happy with the result. Although I used both Lavender and Palmarosa e.o., the aroma of Mastic was very distinct after the soap was unmolded.

Rebatching the Whipped Soap

As you could see in my previous post, I made a whipped soap, for the first time, couple of days ago. 

Due to different consistencies of white and pink part of the batch, I wasn't able to mix and swirl them as I intended, so I was not very happy with the result. 

I was afraid how the bar might behave once we use it, because those white pieces didn't look that well incorporated in the rest of the batch.

I figured the bar may crumble to pieces soon after being used for the first time and I didn't want all those precious oils and butters to go to waste, so I decided to rebatch.

My little girl liked how the first batch looked, so I saved a couple of bars for her and grated the rest of them in a big stainless steel pot. 

First Time Making Whipped Soap

Couple of days ago I decided to try making whipped soap. I read all about it on Nizzy's website, figured out a recipe that had 75% sold oils and had my old hand mixer ready. Because it was the first time I used that technique, I had my hands full and I didn't dare taking time to get my camera, so I had my 7 year old daughter come and take a couple of photos with my cell phone. I think she did a marvelous job, all things considered :) 

About the Recipe 

I Used 101 g. of NaOH and water 2.5 times the amount of NaOH. I added Strawberry FO and Coco butter FO for fragrance and used white Kaoilin and pink French clay for colour. I was going for light, dusty pink and I used one table spoon of pink clay and one tea spoon of white clay for aproximately 1 pound of soap. This was also the first time I used pink clay in my soap and I must say I liked the results.

Sapun od maslinovog ulja

Sapun od maslinovog ulja sa Halkidikija

Kada je reč o sapunu koji se pravi isključivo od maslinovog ulja, takozvanom Castille sapunu, mišljenja su podeljena. Neki se kunu u njegove prednosti i blagotvoran uticaj na kožu. Preporučuju ga bez rezerve za upotrebu čak i kod nege nežne dečje kože.

Drugi opet ne vole ovaj sapun zbog toga što nije dovoljno penušav, a u našem društvu penušavost je sinonim za dobar sapun. Neki ga opisuju kao gnjecav jer kada se voda ne iscedi dobro sa posude na kojoj ga držite, sapun omekša i deluje nekako gnjecavo. Međutim, iz mog iskustva to je nešto što se dešava sa većinom čvrstih sapuna, bilo fabrički bilo ručno pravljenih. Jako je bitno da se sapun drži na suvom kada se ne koristi. 

Сапун са босиљком, белом глином и есенцијалним уљем лимуна

Превод на српски чланка из 2013

Сапун са маслиновим уљем Халкидикија, кокосовим уљем, палминим уљем, есенцијалним уљем лимуна, сушеним листовима босиљка и белом глином.

Пронашла сам мало Есенцијалног уља лимуна и беле (каолин) глине у новој локалној продавници и желела сам да их искомбинујем са неким сувим зачинским биљем, па сам дошла на идеју да искористим босиљак, јер мислим да су лимун и босиљак просто као створени једно за друго. 

Остало је основни рецепт за сапун са маслиновим, кокосовим и палминим уљем који сам правила већ пар пута и била сам више него задовољна резултатима. Можете га пронаћи овде.

Сакупила сам мало кишнице пар дана раније и искористила
 је уместо дестиловане воде

Нисам до сада користила толико есенцијалног уља у сапуну, јер је прилично скуп додатак, али нисам могла да одолим идеји свеже, цитрусне мирисне ноте лимуна, када размишљам о савршеном сапуну за лето.