DIY Gemstone Soap

Gemstone soaps are gorgeous. Not as entirely easy to make as your typical melt and pour soap (where you just melt and pour into molds, wait for them to harden and then, they’re ready to use), but definitely worth the extra effort!

The following videos are two tutorials on how you can make your own gemstone soap at home. We’ve tried both of them and found them easy to follow 

1. GEMSTONE SOAP D.I.Y. by mimi’z world 

2. How to Make Melt & Pour Gem Soap by Soap Queen/Bramble Berry 

The basics ingredients you’ll need:

1. Crystal Glycerin Soap Base
2. Soap Pigment (you can get them here)
3. Stirrer
4. Silicone Mold/Container
5. Knife
6. Essential Oils (you can get this here).
7. Cosmetic Grade Mica (optional, you can get it here)
8. Cosmetic Grade Glitter (optional, you can get it here)

Pssst, we're also available at Craftiviti.com!

How to Make ‘Cold’ Flower Infused Oil

Infused oils are simply carrier oils that have been permeated with herbs (that is, any plant with leaves, seeds, or flowers used for flavouring, food, medicine, or perfume). (1) They are suitable alternatives for certain herbs that don’t have or don’t produce enough essential oils for extraction.

However, it should be noted that the ‘feel’ of infused oils depends on the carrier oil used. Infused oils also are not as concentrated as essential oils, and they—like carrier oils—can go rancid. (2) To know how long your infused oils will last, simply follow the expiration date of the carrier oil used to make it.

To make your own ‘cold’ flower infused oil, you will need the following ingredients:

1. Dried flowers (we used Calendula here, which you can purchase at our store)
2. Your choice of carrier oil (we used coconut oil, which you can also purchase at our store)
3. An air-tight, glass container

Instructions:

1. Ensure that the glass container is thoroughly clean.

2. Fill the glass container with dried flowers. You can fill up 3/4 way or until the container is full.

3. Fill the container with your choice of carrier oil. Try to pour in as much as you can before it overflows. This is to ensure that the flowers will be as entirely covered as possible with the carrier oil so that bacteria can be prevented from entering it.

4. Screw the lid onto the container afterwards. Make sure it’s tightly shut!

5. You can store the infused oil wherever you’d like (either exposed to sunlight or hidden away in a cool and dark cupboard) and leave it alone for 4 to 6 weeks. It is not necessary to swirl the infused oil every few days.

6. Once it’s ready, strain the flowers from the oil. Make sure that there are no petals whatsoever in the oil. Store the oil in a new and clean glass container. Store in a cool, dark cabinet until needed.

Some crafts in which you can use infused oils:

1. Soap making
2. Skincare products making (such as balms and lotions)
3. Other bath products (such as bath bombs and scrubs)

 Also, here’s a little extra information for you about some benefits of…

Calendula Flowers

• beneficial for dry skin, cracks, eczema, scrapes, minor burns and sunburns, rashes, chapped lips, and even bug bites (3)
•  helps to reduce inflammation and promotes wound healing (3)

Coconut Oil

• is high in antioxidants so it assists in repairing free radical damaged skin (4)
• also prevents further degeneration of the skin, a.k.a. skin aging (4)

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Email us if you have any enquiries at enquiry@craftiviti.com or pop by Craftiviti Craft Store at 10 Boulevard, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.

If you found this post useful, please join us on Craftiviti Facebook or Instagram for more updates and demos!

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References:

1. Hornby, Albert Sydney, and Margaret Deuter, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Of Current English (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2015).
2. “What Are Infused Oils? | Aromaweb”, Aromaweb.Com<https://www.aromaweb.com/articles/whatinfu.asp> [Accessed 19 December 2018].
3. Ferment, Grow, “10 Ways To Use Calendula Infused Oil”, Grow Forage Cook Ferment <https://www.growforagecookferment.com/10-ways-to-use-calendula-infused-oil/> [Accessed 19 December 2018].
4. “5 Surprising Coconut Oil Uses For Your Health”, Medical Daily<https://www.medicaldaily.com/coconut-oil-uses-5-surprising-benefits-coconut-oil-your-health-310158> [Accessed 19 December 2018]

Pssst, we're also available at Craftiviti.com!

Four Butters You Can Add to Your Melt & Pour Soap

If you are a beginner, making melt & pour soaps is a good choice to start with since it’s safer, easier and less time consuming. It takes less than a day before a melt & pour soap bar can be used whereas most cold process soap bars require 4+ weeks to ‘cure’ (a.k.a. the saponification process during which fats, water and lye turn into soap). Moreover, there are many options when choosing a melt & pour soap base. You don’t have to come up with your own soap base recipe until you’re confident enough with your soap making skills!

Why Add Butter?

Butters like shea butter, cocoa butter, mango butter and kokum butter (all of which are available at our store) have moisturising and nourishing qualities. They make soaps more luxurious, though we recommend not adding more than a teaspoon of butter per pound of melt & pour soap. This is because too much butter will make the bases oily or soft, or cause them to crack or feel brittle/waxy.

Types of Butter and Some of Their Properties

Shea Butter

1. Extracted from the seeds of the fruit of the Shea (Karite) tree
2. May reduce inflammation and help avoid skin mutations
3. Aids the skin’s natural collagen production
4. Comes in either raw (ivory/gray in colour), natural (yellow), and bleached (white)
5. Has a softer texture than cocoa and mango butter, but is slightly firmer than avocado and coffee butter
6. Suitable for all skin types

*You can buy our ready-to-use, melt and pour shea butter soap base here.

Cocoa Butter

1. Extracted from cocoa beans
2. Antioxidants may help fight signs of aging
3. Comes in natural or deodorized
4. A type of hard butter
5. Contributes firmness to soap
6. Most suitable for dry and combination skin types

*You can buy our Pure Prime Pressed Virgin Cocoa Butter (Unrefined) here.

Mango Butter

1. Comes from the seeds of the mango tree
2. May help ease dry skin conditions and help slow down degeneration of skin cells
3. Most mango butter on the market is refined and deodorized to remove scent and colour
4. A type of medium/hard butter
5. Contributes some firmness to soap, but not as much as cocoa butter
6. Suitable for all skin types

*You can buy our 100% Mango Butter (Refined) here.

Kokum Butter

1. Comes from the fruit kernels of Garcinia Indica.
2. Extremely good for damaged skin since it’s super moisturising.
3. Has a high stearic acid content of around 40-45%
4. It is the most stable and hardest exotic butter.
5. Contributes firmness and also helps thicken products
6. Suitable for all skin types

*You can buy our Unrefined Kokum Butter here.

NOTE: All of these butters contain moisturising and nourishing properties.

Email us at enquiry@craftiviti.com if you have any enquiries or pop by the Craftiviti Craft Store at 10 Boulevard, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.

If you found this post useful, please join us on Craftiviti Facebook or Instagram for more updates and demos!

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References:

1. “All About Butters In Bath & Beauty Products”, Soap Queen<https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/all-about-butters-in-bath-beauty-products/>.
2. Gardenofwisdom.com
   <http://www.gardenofwisdom.com/butters.html>.
3. “How To Use Kokum Butter”, Soap Queen<https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/how-to-use-kokum-butter/>.
4. “Shea Butter Vs Cocoa Butter Vs Mango Butter: Which Is Best And Why?”, DIY Natural<https://www.diynatural.com/shea-butter-vs-cocoa-butter-vs-mango-butter/>.

Pssst, we're also available at Craftiviti.com!

Make Shower Time Great Again

The thing about shower time is that it isn’t fun when all you do is simply clean. It’s functional but not fun-fun in the many ways bath time can be. Like, watching bath bombs dissolve, building bubble kingdoms or simply relaxing in warm waters with essential oils, clays and whatnot. Your only options for fun in the shower (short of bringing not exclusively shower-related activities like singing and attempting to skate on soapy floors without falling) would most likely be selecting your soap/shampoo for the moment, giving yourself bubbly hairdos and maybe a bubble beard or mustache or two, and just getting clean.

Fortunately, now that Shower Jellies have gotten viral, we now have the option of jiggling jiggly goodness while lathering ourselves up! And, to make things easier for all of us who want to DIY our own shower jellies, Stephenson Personal Care has come up with a super easy and convenient melt-and-pour Crystal Jelly Soap Base.

According to Stephenson Personal Care, this Crystal Jelly Soap Base…

1. Is vegetable based
2. Can integrate with other Crystal melt and pour bases
3. Sets to form a jelly-solid product
4. Has fantastic transparency which enables bright colours and also superior colour stability even if kept at a high temperature for extended periods
5. Has good foaming
6. Has excellent moisturising from a high glycerine content
7. Has neutral odour
8. Is ideal for pouring and moulding
9. Can Be Sliced

Here’s their guide recipe on how to use their product:

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Tips from the Craftiviti Team:

1. We strongly advise to use a double boiler/bain maire instead of the microwave (as suggested by some online) because we’ve found that although microwaving reduces the time taken for the jelly soap base to melt, it increases the air bubbles in the base which cannot be removed and thus, compromises the stability of the soap.
2. Using mica powder or soap dye is fine for this jelly soap base, but use as little as possible! Otherwise, the colours will bleed through.
3. The jelly soap base hardens quickly so you’ll have to act fast! However, multiple reheats after it hardens is fine.
4. Make sure to pour the required amount of jelly soap base into the mould in one go or it will harden in layers that can easily be separated.
5. The jelly soap will eventually lose it’s shape, no matter how careful it’s handled. We recommend keeping it in containers similar to it’s shape if you’d like for it to retain the shape.

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You can purchase Stephenson Personal Care’s Crystal Jelly Soap Base at our store here!

Pssst, we're also available at Craftiviti.com!

Mixing Lye for Beginners

Making Cold Process Soap is one big step up from Melt & Pour.

I have always been a M&P fan. I like the fact that M&P soaps have no curing and waiting time. I like how creative it can get with M&P and how vibrant the end colors look. I also like how convenient and easy it is to make soap with Melt & Pour Soap Bases.

But most importantly…

I like the fact that I don’t have to deal with Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) because M&P Soap bases are already pre-prepared for instant use.

But the curiosity of working with lye kept bugging me. Every day I meet soap makers who had graduated from M&P and were still alive after moving onto lye so I thought to myself ‘How bad can it be?’

I read all the notes and did plenty of research. I also spent hours watching different YouTube videos on the proper way to mix lye (every instructor has a different trick to it).

It took months of research before I mustered up enough courage to add Sodium Hydroxide to water (NEVER THE OTHER WAY AROUND).

But even with all my research, my very first experience mixing lye was very unnerving for me.

If you are reading this and expecting something bad to happen at the end SPOILER ALERT – nothing horrid happened but here are the more important DON’TS coming from a paranoid beginner.

DON’T forget your gloves and wear a long sleeves to protect your arms from any splashes. I remembered the first two but didn’t think safety glasses and a facial mask were necessary. Trust me it is. Because when the lye starts fuming, the vapors can sting which brings me to the next DON’T.

DON’T mix lye indoors. Even if your kitchen is well ventilated like mine is, the fumes did get to me and I started worrying if my ceiling would start to corrode. I ended up moving my lye outside to the balcony which was a very dangerous thing to do especially when the lye was so hot. It is best to begin the mixing outside and to leave the whole darn thing outside until it cools. However, remember to warn your entire household that you are mixing lye so they know not to touch anything that looks like water until the coast is clear.

DON’T use any other glass cup and especially not a plastic mixing cup to mix your lye. Always use a high grade science beaker or a stainless steel mixing bowl and a glass or stainless steel stirrer. NaOH in water can get very hot so you don’t want it to melt your cup or break it (my digital thermometer clocked 84.3 Celsius!) .

DON’T let any pets and kids hang around no matter how cute they are. EVERY instructor in EVERY video I watched mentioned this but I ignored this golden advise when it came to my 2 cats. I figured I would just shoo them if they got in my way. But when my beaker got really hot, I started freaking out. What if the cats tripped me and I fell onto the beaker? What if they jump on the counter and dipped their paw into it?! What if they knock over the camera that was hanging over the beaker and the beaker explodes and everything MELTS! Not worth the anxiety. So just keep all pets and kids away.

Here’s my beaker safely out in my balcony. You can’t see the fumes but it’s THERE. By this time, I had locked my cats in my bedroom and I also did a quick prayer that no bird or falling leaf would come near that beaker.

But all in all, making a lye solution was not as dangerous as I thought it would be. Aside from the fumes which caught me by surprise, everything  was actually quite easy, which brings me to my last and most important advise…

DON’T try this on your own for the first time. It is always best to make your 1st batch with an experienced CP soap maker or learn it from a professional instructor at a workshop before attempting to work with Lye. Looking back, if I had someone watching over me instead of doing it on my own, I wouldn’t have gotten so paranoid.

Check out my next article on how to make a basic CP soap with this lye solution.