~♥~ A Soap Update ~♥~

Hey,

Well I posted a new video of my most recent soaps. The most sought after information is probably the info on my first liquid soap. And as you can see in the video it didn't really turn out. It's unfortunate. I think that the recipe is a good one and just needs a little tweeking. It probably would have made an ok hand soap. I was too grossed out by the layer on top and worried that it may contain some little "friends" to use it though.

After more research and some new purchases. I'm going to add some preservative to the next batch. I bought one that is paraben free and all the ingredients come from natural sources. I believe anyway. More research is probably needed on that.


Also I found some very useful informations concerning shampoo's in general, which are very helpful. I found out that the lower the pH in the shampoo it will be healthier for cleaning the hair and better at it. A shampoo in other words needs to be more acidic than regular soap to wash away the dirt. Plain distilled water is a pH(Potential Hydrogen) of 7 and anything from 7-10 is considered good for a regular soap (7 is better for more sensitive types like me) And My soap has tested a 7 with a paper pH tester kit. Rain water is even less than this. It is a 5.5 on the scale. And is the perfect pH number (5 to 6) for a shampoo. As you can see from this picture to the left. (I copied this photo from the Killerstrands blog page. I hope that's ok. ) So I think that by lowering the pH of my liquid soap recipe to about 5.5 and by using more potassium hydroxide like recommended in the book "Making Natural Liquid Soaps" I may end up with a Shampoo that I will love and will not dry out my hair like regular all natural liquid shampoos and shampoo bars. (My fingers are crossed.) I also plan on adding a preservative(as mentioned above) and panthenol. Panthenol being Vitamin B5 which is one item on the ingredients list of your shampoo that actually penetrates the hair shaft to moisturtize your hair. Along ofcourse with any oils.

Now you may be asking yourself how I'm planning on lowering the pH of my liquid soap. I'm going to use rain water instead of disstilled water. As much of it as possible for the dillution part of the liquid soap. I'll boil it and strain it to make sure there aren't any little hitch hikers of course. This, unfortunatly will involve me waiting for it to rain. :0P LOL Also though you can use a citric acid (Vitamin C) solution to neutralize and lower the pH of your liquid soap down to as low as a 4. So if I don't have enough rain water I can always add more citric acid solution. In an effort to be as natural as possible. I will start collecting rain water. So I don't have to add as much citric acid solution. Cool eh? :)