It's All About The Scrub

Summer is coming, no more thick socks and closed toe boots!  Scrub is a must when trying to get ready for the pretty sundresses and trendy sandals.  The traditional scrub is oil base.  It's basically liquid oil and butter mixed with either salt or sugar as exfoliant, serves the purpose of polishing off the dry dead skin on the upper layer but leaves a layer of greasy oil no mater how many times you try to rinse with water.  I'm not a fan of traditional scrub because it leaves my shower floor oily and slippery.  I've been modifying it to the emulsified version and loving it much better.  An emulsified scrub is a tradition oil scrub with added emulsifier.  Why do we need emulsifier?  We all know that oil and water don't get along.  In order to cut down the grease and for easier rinse off we need an emulsifier to act as a binder between these 2 elements.  The emulsifier also acts as a suspension for the heavier solid exfoliants to disperse evenly and not sink down at the bottom of the jar like the traditional oil scrub.  Here's my new sea salt scrub:

I have to made this emulsified "lotion" first:

Then add different exfoliants:

Some people find salt to be abrasive and can sting cut and scratches.  This is definitely not for sensitive skin but it's by no mean coarse.  If you have a cut on your skin everything is going to sting.  I love using this on my feet and elbows.  Salt can soften the top layer of dead skin and does not melt as easy as sugar under hot shower.  And many people might have forgotten the fact that salt is an anti-inflammatory, a bonus!

But, if you still are not convinced that salt scrub is the way to go, let's talk about sugar scrub.  It seems like people prefer to use sugar scrub as an overall body scrub.  I love the idea of combining cleaning and scrub together, no need to do it in 2 separate steps!  This is foaming sugar scrub, using mild surfactant based cleanser cream together with exfoliants.

When I make scrub, either salt or sugar, I like to layer my exfoliants, like a system.  I use combination of different size particles from fine powder like pumice (volcanic ash) to dust size ground apricot seed to either finely grind sea salt or raw sugar (I don't prefer the white table sugar) and finally to large round poppy seeds.

Some of you might raise your eyebrow about using surfactant because it's not natural.  Chemically made surfactants are often misunderstood as being harmful to human skin, which is not true at all.  Carefully chosen surfactants can be milder than natural soap because the pH level is much closer to our skin.  Surprised?!  Natural soap is high in pH, somewhere around 9-10, and guess what our skin pH is?  It's around 5.5!  Anyway, for people who insist on using natural soap, I also made a cream soap version.  If you wonder what cream soap is, you can read this post: Making Cream Soap

If I didn't use a different pipping tip, would anyone be able to tell which one is natural cream soap based and which is surfactant based?

It's been more than 17 weeks since I made the cream soap, it's now much milder than fist made, so glad.  I think it's almost ready!  Now, who want to be my scrub tester?  I will select first 5 who commented under this blog, US only, each will receive 3 samples of scrub: emulsified salt scrub, surfactant based sugar scrub and cream soap based sugar scrub.

Cream Soap - Part II, 10 Weeks Later

This is the continuation of my previous post about making cream soap the first time.  If you missed it, here's the link: Making Cream Soap
As I mentioned in that post, cream soap needs to "rot" for at least 6 months, almost like aging the wine.  Since this is my first time, I'm curious on how fast (or should I say slow?!) the soap quality and feel changes over time in order to understand the need to "rot" that long!  Here I am, 10 weeks later, checking up on my container I hide away in a dark cabinet.
My first impression is how dense it became, as if it got dehydrated.  There is a pearl sheen on top, but the soap is turning a little translucent.  It is very hard to scoop it out, almost bend my stainless steel spoon!  It's not hard as rock or anything, just very sticky like chewy taffy.  I went ahead and mix a bucket of aloe juice from my aloe 200x concentrate and kept on adding to the cream soap while attempting to whip it with my handheld electrical mixer.  By the time it is fluffy just like the way it supposed to be I think I've added just about 1:1 ratio of aloe juice to cream soap base.

I have no idea if this much of liquid added would cause any volume collapse, highly likely.  But it still got a long way to "rot", maybe it would get dehydrated again by the end of 6 month rotting period.  We shall see.  For now, I want to test it to see how it can perform.  I scooped a small portion and added some exfoliants like sea salt, walnut shell powder, and jojoba beads. 

  Nice and thick and creamy.  I used some right the way just to see how it feels.  I was a little disappointed.  It got the job done, exfoliated my hands and washed clean, but squeaky clean, which means harsh.  No soap should be squeaky clean, that is a scam from big commercial companies who make chemical body wash.  A good soap should clean but still leave your skin feel comfortable, not tight.  I'm only a little disappointed because the result is expected, I knew it is too young still to judge it's full potential.  Until next time, I have high hope still.

Making Cream Soap

What is cream soap?  It is not solid bar soap most of us use daily, not liquid soap either, rather in between, more like shaving cream but it is soap!

How is cream soap made?  We use sodium hydroxide to make bar soap, potassium hydroxide to make liquid soap.  Cream soap is a hybrid of the two, made using both sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide, together, to make soap staying at cream consistency.
Making cream soap is more complicated than making bar soap and liquid soap.  I have to admit, after researching on and off for a year, I'm still pretty confused and cannot in the life of me figure out how to formulate by myself.  But with help from one of my soapy friends, I took the plunge and made my first batch, a small one, just too experiment.
It took quit a while to get traced then it got sticky, like thick caramel, the kind that always get stuck in your teeth when you eat the chocolate.  So glad I took the stick blender out earlier or it would get stuck in the mixture, that's how sticky it got.

After the sticky caramel stage it took very little time to turn into dry mashed potato.  Then I put it to cook for 2 hours and mixed every 30 minutes while cooking.  Gosh it got so hard to mix my hand hurt so badly after cook.

After adding the super cream I let it sit in the pot over night to rest.  The next day it relaxed a bit.  I broke the mess into little portions and attempted my first whipping.  Oh boy, I almost burned my hand held mixer, it's too sticky and hard!  I then mixed in aloe juice little by little and it finally got loosen up, it turned white and had this pearlescent appearance on top.

The one thing I don't like about cream soap, the one thing that made me so hesitated to try in the first place, is the fact that it needs to "rot" for a long time, 6 month in average!  What's rotting?  It's not going bad or growing nasties or fermenting.  It is a process to break down and transform to final fluffy cream soap it's meant to be.  Don't ask me why people call this stage "rotting" stage, we the soapers have weird terminology I guess, LOL.   It has been only 4 weeks since but I already peeked more times I can count!  I need someone to hid it where I can't find it or the curiosity is going to kill this cat here!

If you are interested about the result, look out for another post few month from now.