Hair care pantry raid!

While surfing the net I came across some fun home hair care recipes. With the fun of summer and heading to the beach and pool you will need to give your hair some extra love to keep it from becoming too dry and damaged.

There are many items that you will find in your kitchen that can provide some great nourishment and only take a few minutes to make. I found a nice one on youtube that includes one of my favorite ingredients, avocado! I love all things avocado, I love to eat it, put the oil in my soap and wear it in my hair. This fruit has so many benefits it's crazy, another blog I came across described it as the world's most complete food. Avocados are deeply penetrating and rich in vitamins A and D, lecithin, potassium as well as vitamin E

Here is the recipe for the whipped avocado hair treatment:
1 pitted avocado
1/2 can coconut milk
1 oz coconut oil
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp honey
2 oz pure aloe
1 tsp castor oil (you can sub almond, grapeseed or more olive oil for castor if you don't have any)

Place all ingredients in the blender and whip until it has the consistency of a mousse. Once that is complete, you can put treatment in your hair, using a comb may help. Leave on for 10-15 minutes, put hair in plastic shower cap if you have one, then rinse out in lukewarm water, you can shampoo if you'd like to or skip the shampoo and simply condition for the ultimate treat.

A really simple treat that you may like is an olive oil mask. That's it, just olive oil, warm it slightly (not hot) and start at the ends of your hair working to your scalp. Give your scalp a good massage and leave the olive oil on at least 15 minutes but you can leave it on up to an hour before rinsing out, shampoo and condition as normal.

Have some hair product build-up? Mix baking soda with some water and rinse through your hair. About 1 1/4 tbsp per 1 c water should do it, you can clean and style as normal.

*This was part of my original blog notes from 2011. Since then I have learned more about the hair and it's pH. I left the note in for people to read but no longer recommend alkaline products for haircare (anything above a pH of 7, including handmade soap). The hair is typically an acidic pH in the 4.5 to 5.5 range. Unlike the skin it cannot adjust it's pH if it is taken out of range. For this reason I recommend Hair Care products that are properly formulated for hair or ingredients that fall within a pH range that will compliment the hair. ~April 26, 2020

Do you love eggs......from your head down to your legs? Well maybe you will after this treatment. Eggs are packed with nutrients, protein and lecithin all ingredients that your hair wants and needs. I found a couple of treatments using eggs to help make your hair shiny and beautiful, a couple of sources also sited that it will make your hair grow faster but I have my doubts since hair growth and hair patterning is genetic and body dependent.

This simple recipe calls for 1-2 egg yolks (depending on hair length) and 1 tbsp of honey. Honey is a humectant and will draw moisture to your hair, this is not great for all hair types because some hair will just become puffy and frizzy, usually hair with tight spiral curls will become too frizzy, you can just skip the honey and do the egg portion. Work the egg mixture onto your hair massaging your scalp well, rinse off after about 10-15 minutes make sure to use warm water so to not cook the eggs (yikes!) Shampoo and condition as normal, this can be done as often as once per week.

Some essential oils can be added to any of these treatments, some that are great for hair are tea tree, rosemary, peppermint and lavender, click here for more information on their benefits. When using essential oils it is important to know that they should never be used directly on your skin, always mix with a carrier oil. Also some essential oils should not be used on people with certain health conditions, including pregnancy and epilepsy, please consult a physician with questions.

Alright, go raid your pantry and have a good time!!!

Yours in shiny hair
~Soapsmith

Cold Processed, milled, and rebatched soaps, what's the difference?

We have run into questions on different soap making processes a few times so I thought it would be nice to put a post together about the differences.

cold process soap

Cold process soap is soap made without adding much additional heat in order to reach saponification. Once the soap goes through saponification and cools off (24-48 hours) it is ready to be cut and then cure for anywhere from 3-6 weeks depending on the recipe and climate in which it is curing. Before I get ahead of myself saponification is the chemical reaction in which oils (acids) and sodium hydroxide or lye (the base) mix together into an emulsion to become soap. The soap making process creates its own heat in an exothermic reaction, it's really neat to put a fresh batch of soap into a mold and check on it a little later, sometimes it gets REALLY hot and sometimes not so much, again it all depends on the recipe and other variables. I really enjoy watching a creation incubate into the final product.

French milled soap

Milled, French milled or hand-milled soap is something different. We have all most likely seen milled soap before, it is generally a very shiny hard bar. Milled soaps are not the same as a basic cold process soap. The maker takes fresh cold process soap and the natural glycerine is removed from it and it is processed through a large machine in which rollers flatten the soap into paper thin pieces. Next it is shredded and put through the rollers multiple times so that all the shredded pieces are ground back together. This mixture finally goes through an extruding machine which finally spits out a bar of compacted soap flakes. If you are looking for a natural product, this is not for you. Milled soaps are made primarily with beef tallow as many commercial soaps are as well as added synthetic ingredients which helps to give it the pretty shiny appearance. The synthetics also give it flexibility so that it can survive the rolling machines. The glycerine, which is a natural by product of soap making, is removed because it would gum up the equipment too much. On it's best day hand milled "soap" is nothing more than a laboratory imitation of the real and good thing.

Re-batched soap

Rebatched soap it sort of a marriage between cold process soap and milled soap. Rebatched soap is made when a soap maker takes a cold processed soap and shreds it up. There are no rollers or glycerine removal involved in this process. The soap is simply shredded, re-melted and remolded. There are various reasons why a soap maker would re batch a soap, sometimes the fragrance that they wanted to use is too fragile to with stand the soap making process or they want to use an expensive oil whose benefits would not be able to withstand saponification so they make their recipe then shred it down to add the extras.

So there you have it, three slight variations on the bar soap making process. Here at Soapsmiths we make cold process soaps from high quality oils, butters, essential & fragrance oils and other great skin loving additives, it's our favorite way to make a good quality product.

Toodles for now
~ Your Soapsmith

Resources: The Natural Soap Book, making herbal and vegetable soaps by: Susan Miller Cavitch

Why we exfoliate

This seems like a simple enough question but I meet so many people who ask me just this.  The question goes a little more like "why bother?" Or something of that nature.  While exfoliating may seem like a luxury or for some just an extra step in your skin care regiment, it is actually necessary and very helpful for your other products to do their jobs properly.

Let's go back to basics and look at HOW to exfoliate. Your face/neck area and the rest of your body need to be exfoliated differently as your face is more delicate and needs a gentler approach.  Typically skin cells reproduce about every 28 days and need to be sloughed off in order to keep pores clear, prevent ingrown hairs and give your skin the beautiful radiant glow it deserves.  Exfoliation also makes even makeup coverage easier to achieve since there are no uneven dry patches.

Ok, I got off track, HOW to exfoliate is easy fun and feels great on your skin and to the layers below your epidermis (some say it even stimulates collagen, who doesn't love that?!?)  My preferred method of exfoliation is rubbing the exfoliant in small circles beginning at the shoulders and working down to the feet (skip the soles if you are standing in the shower so you don't slip and hurt yourself.) I call this MY preferred method because the technical way to do this is to start at extremities and work towards the heart.  It helps with blood flow etc. and your esthetician should do this if you go in for a treatment but when I am in the shower I always work from top down it's just my preference.

Pay special attention to your elbows, knee areas, backs of your hands and cuticle areas, chances are they are the driest because your elbows and knees are always bending and stretching the skin and you most likely wash your hands throughout the day drying out that delicate skin. I have used both sugar and salt scrubs, I like them both very much and think that it's really a matter of what you like best.  You can exfoliate the soles of your feet (and they will thank you) but I recommend making sure you are sitting down because scrubs generally have oils in them.  You can do a nice sole exfoliation, rinse well, put your favorite cream on (peppermint is great for feet and legs) and cover your tootsies with cotton socks, seriously your feet will thank you!

Ok so WHY exfoliate? Why add this one more thing to your regiment? Well you need to exfoliate in order to remove those dead skin cells and make it possible for your new cells to be able to absorb your favorite lotion, cream, balm, etc. It will also help to prevent ingrown hairs (ladies, I kid you not when I say exfoliate your underarms if it is a problem area for you) You will also notice that after a good exfoliation your lotion will sink right into your skin.  Also certain types of salts (dead sea salt for example) contain a high number of minerals and help to clean out pores which is awesome and helps with that beautiful glow we all deserve.

WHEN to exfoliate.  This answer varies, three times per week would be a maximum, and maybe too much for some, I would say once per week minimum and twice is the sweet spot.  Don't overdo it though, too much will become damaging and create micro-tears in your skin and be irritating.

FACIAL EXFOLIATION.  It is not recommended to use your body exfoliant on your face and neck.  The skin on your face is more delicate and needs an exfoliant that is formulated for that area. Be sure to get a separate one and once to twice per week is more than enough for your face, our faces and necks take more abuse from sunlight, makeup, wind and many other elements that we need to treat it with care so we look fabulous long into our later years! A great way to exfoliate your face is to start from the top down, start with the forehead making small circles, work outward towards your cheeks then sweep in to your nose area and then down to the chin and jaw bone area.  The jaw bone is a great area to spend a little time on because that is where many of the sebum glands are and it helps to keep them flowing (we like that).  After the jaw bone, work down towards your neck but use light feather movements from your collarbone up to your jaw bone (help fight gravity!) You can also do your decollete with your facial exfoliant if you'd like, that skin is also very delicate.

One other area to exfoliate that is always overlooked is our lips. It may sound like a foreign concept but if your lips are dry and you keep applying lip balm you are only applying it to the dead skin and you are:
A. wasting your money and
B. trying to raise the dead, literally, you are trying to revive skin that is dead and not benefiting your new young skin below.  There are some great lip exfoliants out there that will make it worth your money because then your lip balm will work better and your lip sticks will glide on without clumping onto the dry skin.






Glow on my friends
~Your Soapsmith