Soap makers include natural supplies and ingredients in soap products to add an attractive look and provide skin-soothing qualities. They add gentle exfoliation, moisturizing, and deep cleaning qualities to the soap products. Like other soap making supplies, these ingredients should be added correctly and in the right amounts to create high-quality soaps. Here is how to include these natural supplies and ingredients in your soap products:
Selecting Natural Oils and Butters
Natural oils and butters form the base of the soap recipe. They give the soap its cleansing and moisturising properties and will determine the soap’s ability to lather well in water. Common natural oils and butters included in soap recipes are olive oil, coconut oil, sweet almond oil, and cocoa butter. Mix these oils to enhance the hardness of the soap and its ability to lather.
Utilizing Essential Oils for Fragrance
Essential oils are plant chemicals that manufacturers obtain from fruits, leaves, bark, and flowers. These concentrated oils may serve as an alternative to synthetic fragrances in providing a scent to your soap. These oils also offer therapeutic benefits and are used to provide a tint to the soap. Common essential oils that individuals will add to their soap include eucalyptus, lavender, tea, and peppermint. Essential oils should be added in small quantities because they may cause skin irritation if added in large proportions.
Adding Natural Colorants
Natural colorants help to infuse color into the solution to give color to the soap. They act as an alternative to artificial dyes in providing soap products with beautiful hues. Common natural colorants include clays, turmeric, activated charcoal, mica powder, madder root powder, indigo powder, and spirulina powder.
Clays are stable and come in various colors. While these natural colorants are also beneficial to the skin, you need to add them in moderate amounts. They can be added directly to the lye solution or added with distilled water and then mixed with oil. You may also use botanicals such as calendula, madder, coffee, indigo, tea, and turmeric to add color to your soap.
Using Botanical Decorations
Use botanicals like dried flower petals and leaves to decorate the tops of soap bars. Use these decorations with a light touch, sprinkling them on the surface to add texture to the soap. Botanical decorations are optional and can be excluded if individuals only want soaps with a smooth texture.
Incorporating Exfoliants
To add texture and gentle exfoliation to your soap, include exfoliants such as oatmeal in your soap making supplies. Other exfoliants that can be added to soaps include ground coffee, poppy seeds, ground pumice, and shredded coconut. These natural ingredients can improve the ability of the soap to remove dead skin cells. The degree of exfoliation varies across exfoliants, and care should be taken when adding them to soap products. Adding small amounts of these exfoliants can create gentle yet effective soaps.
Using Silk and Salt
Silk contains natural keratin that can add a silky texture to your soap products. You can add silk to your soap recipe in the form of liquid silk or silk fibres. The silk fibre is dissolved in the hot lye solution while the liquid silk is added to the trace.
Add salt to soap recipes to create salt bars or harden the soap products. The salt bars help in treating acne. Salt also exfoliates and can affect how the soap lathers. For hardening purposes, an individual can add salt to the lye in the form of brine or seawater. The presence of salt speeds up the soap hardening process. This is useful for soap recipes with high amounts of liquid oils that take a long time to harden.
Add Unique Ingredients to Your Soap Making Supplies
Natural supplies and ingredients are readily available and purchasing them in bulk quantities may help reduce the cost of your soap making supplies. These ingredients add a natural touch to your soap and can improve its ability to lather and clean. These ingredients also add health benefits to the soap, such as addressing acne and eczema or providing more moisture to your skin. Contact a trusted supplier today to help you select natural supplies and ingredients for making your desired soap products.
