Helping soap and cosmetic handcrafters navigate the rules and regs.
Find out more about all aspects of soap and cosmetic labeling, regulations, legislation, and news!
Yesterday we went to the Oregon Country Fair. If you haven’t ever heard of it, it’s an amazing collection of people and events. I can only describe it as “21st century hippies meet the Renaissance Festival”. People in costumes, children, really cool buildings and art creations, nature, good food, incredible stuff to buy (all handmade…
Next weekend (the 17th), I fly to Dallas to be the keynote speaker at the Texas Soapmakers Convention. I’ll be speaking about the growth and development of the handcrafted soapmaking industry and soap and cosmetic labeling requirements. I’m excited about going and looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones. What I’m NOT…
I just got back from the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild conference in Palm Springs, CA. It was an awesome 3-day experience! Being the current President of the Soap Guild, I had responsibilities while there and was involved in the preparations (although Leigh O’Donnell, the Conference Chairman, was truly the mastermind behind it all). I loved having the opportunity to…
I’m off to the Handcrafted Soap Makers Guild 2009 Conference in Palm Springs bright and early tomorrow morning! Very excited about it – this will probably be our best conference yet.
Making cold process soap is a combination of art and science. Making swirled soap is particularly tricky. It’s quite a skill to get the colors to swirl in together and still keep them distinct. Every swirled bar is different–not only different from soapmaker to soapmaker, but different from batch to batch and every bar within…
In 1952, soap made it into the hit song parade! Johnny Standly had a mega hit song called “It’s In The Book.” The first part of it is a parody of Little Bo Peep in the form of a Southern Revival sermon, the second part is a song i called “Grandma’s Lye Soap.” I’ve edited…
I don’t follow the news much, so I missed the fact that Marilyn Chambers, star of Behind the Green Door, one of the first “main-stream” porn films, died earlier this month. I only found out when it was briefly mentioned in People magazine. What I found interesting was the note that before Marilyn made her…
Yesterday I got a call from the owner of our local Feed Store (capitalized because that’s actually the name of the store). Since it was 7:00pm on a Sunday evening, I knew something was up. Turns out that a woman in town, Carolyn, had become the unplanned foster parent of 11 mallard ducklings. The back-story…
Here are some more EO blends from The Manual of Toilet Soap-Making by Dr. C. Deite. The amounts given in the book are for scenting a soap batch using 50 kilos of oil; I’ve adjusted them down so the amounts shown below are for a soap batch containing 5 kilos (11 pounds) of oil. The…
As we all know, washing with soap and water is one of the very best ways to prevent the spread of disease, including colds, flu, and other illnesses. The CDC has long been promoting the benefits of washing with soap and water. But a survey by the The Soap and Detergent Association (SDA) and the American…
Back around the turn of the (last) century, synthetic fragrances were just making their debut. Soapmaking manuals and books for the time still gave recipes for scent blending based on essential oils. My Manual of Toilet Soap-Making by Dr. C. Deite lists a number of scent blends for what were “traditional” toilet soaps at the…
I found a reference in The Art of Soap-Making by Alexander Watt (1918) which describes “fulling soaps”. Being unsure of what, exactly, “fulling” really was, I wasn’t sure if the soap described would be suitable for washing woolens as well. Turns out not, but I did make some interesting discoveries along the way. And I…
