Amy's Soap Challenge #5 & Salt Bar Recipe

Lemon and Honey Salt Bars

Week 5 of Amy's Soap Challenge.. Mixing Fragrance
If you haven't been following along you can check out all the happenings at Great Cakes Soapworks by clicking here.
Ok... so this challenge really was a challenge for me. I honestly do not have the nose for it. I bought several essential oils a couple months back because I wanted to try mixing up some yummy stuff but most of them gave me a headache. In fact, pretty much all of the fragrances give me a headache or nausea because they are so concentrated.

Anywho... I wasn't going to let this challenge go by without giving it a try. I pulled out all my EO's and FO's that I thought might mix well. I even pulled out the EO's that I didn't like very much to see if they could be better if something else was added.

This is what happened....

The first challenge was the fact that I didn't have any pipettes to get the stuff out of the bottles without cross contaminating. After a couple of days of procrastinating, because I didn't have said pipettes, I remembered Amy mentioning something about using Q-tips and jars. By golly I had those!!

Mix #1- Patchouli + Raspberry = Not so much

Mix #2 - Ylang Ylang + Allspice = No!! (why does anyone like Ylang Ylang?)

Mix #3 - Jasmine + Lemon = Maybe

Mix #4 - Jasmine + Vanilla = Now your talking

Mix #5 - Sweet Meyer Lemon + Honey + Lemongrass = Winner!!

I have this really wonderful Honey FO that I am totally in love with. It soaps like a dream in CP. Very little acceleration, no ricing, and discolors to a light beige. My bathroom smells like Honey with the soap just sitting in the dish. My husband and my daughter think it is heavenly too. I will definitely be making some lotion and body butter with this one. The lemon fragrance is Sweet Meyer Lemon from Brambleberry. No acceleration, no ricing and discolors to a light tan. I only added a couple of drops of Lemongrass to kick up the lemon a bit. I used 3 parts Sweet Meyer Lemon, 1 part Honey (this FO is super strong) and a dash of lemongrass. I have no idea how many part of lemongrass I used because I weighed out an ounce of my 3:1 Lemon and Honey but decided it needed a bit more tartness so I dropped 3-4 drops of lemongrass in it. I was walking on the wild side.. ha ha ha

I have been researching shampoo bars and salt bars lately and since I have never used a shampoo bar I wasn't feeling brave enough to try that one yet. So the salt bars won out. I've never actually made salt bars either but how hard could it be? You just add salt to your soap. Right?

Since it looked like my soap would be doing a light tanish color, I chose lemonade yellow colorant. The weather has been warm lately so I think I was craving Lemonade... lol


Salt Bar / Spa Bar Recipe
80% Coconut Oil
10% Castor Oil
10% Shea Butter
Run through SoapCalc at 20% superfat
80% ppo of Fine Ground Sea Salt (you can use course if you want)
FO or EO as directed by manufacturers use ppo


Mix up your soap batch as usual adding colorants and fragrance before you add the salt. Your soap needs to be at a medium trace to suspend the soap throughout and it doesn't sink to the bottom of your mold.
I used individual molds for this project. I will try out a log mold tomorrow and let you know how it goes.


Note: It doesn't really matter what soap recipe you use as long as you have a high percent of coconut oil. I used 80% but I have heard of people using 100% as well. I use castor oil in all of my soaps. I like the extra conditioning it adds and the lathering as well. I also use shea in almost all of my soap recipes. It contains some unsonponifiable oil so that adds to the conditioning factor too. Also, I used 80% Sea Salt. I have heard of others using 50-100%. So experiment and see what you like. One more thing... Salts... do not use dead sea salt, or epson salt. Dead sea salt has something in it that messes with the chemical reaction of the soponification and renders your bar to mush. (This is what I have been told anyway) Epson salt is not actually really salt and can be very irritating if placed directly on your skin. Better to add it to your bath or foot soak.

Everything went well. I had heard that salt bars move quick once you put the salt in the mix. I think because I have survived a seized soap batch and lived to tell about it so these salt bars were a piece of cake. Not one issue. In fact, I am thinking I will try to make dual colored bars next time. IF they turn out ok. They are in bed and we will all see if Kim can mix fragrance and make salt bars tomorrow. I have my fingers crossed. Wish me luck :)