Yay! Lemongrass is my total favourite! I followed your beginners guide to make my first ever loaf and used lemongrass (as i didn't have lavender) the video was so easy to follow . It is sitting curing and the whole room smells amazing. THANK YOU for sharing your knowledge and expertise; have a great day :)
Hi Joanne, so glad that you found our video easy to follow and you have successfully made your first loaf! Congratulations! Lemongrass is a fab choice and I hope once the soap has cured you enjoy using it :-)
Love it when I see a notification for one of your videos😍 I'm making a new focus for my business this year and it's all about everything clean and natural so this is right up my alley! Thanks a bunch🥰
Hopefully there will be lots more notifications over the coming weeks and months - we are determined not to let our channel sit dormant for so long this year! Clean and natural ingredients are always so popular so hopefully you will have a good year with your new focus :-)
@@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany Thankyou so much!! I really hope so! At the moment I'm obsessed with salt bars, just had a lovely shower with my new lemongrass & carrot sea salt soap actually haha, probably tmi sorry😆but it was so nice! And I am stoked to hear that you'll be doing more videos yay!! Best of luck everything🥰
Thank you so much for the wonderful and informative video. I wish all beginners will watch it before spending a fortune to buy essential oils. I only wish I had watched your video before making soaps with rose geranium essential oil. I had to scoop the soap batter into the mold. Or added orange essential oil, but ended up couldn't smell it at all 😢 Thank you for sharing. Love your videos😍
Essential oils can definitely be hard to work with when you are first beginning! Sorry to hear of the trouble you had with Rose Geranium and Orange. Rose Geranium gives such a lovely scent, but my goodness, it can be a pain to work with - especially if you aren't expecting it to thicken the batter so quickly! Thank you for your support and we are looking forward to making more videos this year.
Hello there! A scent I like is 50% spearmint & 50% rose. Thank you for this video. I'll see how the lemon grass works. Have you tried lemon grass lavender?
Really your videos are helpful I got an idea about what to get I love lavender and I bought cedarwood in small sample but it's strong scent I will work it out really your videos gave an idea thank you madam lots of love from myself and India ❤️
Although I'm in the US, I am VERY excited about this video, because I so rarely hear recommendations, from other soapers, about which essential oils work best in soap. I'm not wanting to completely cut out fragrance oils, I'd just like to cut back & add a lot more essential oils into my fragrance options. Thank you so very much for this video & info! ❤
You are very welcome Michelle. We started using only essential oils but we do offer fragrance oils now in some of our special edition soaps. There is definitely a market for both - some people prefer to stick to the natural essential oils but just as many like the variation of scents that fragrance oils can give, it is really all down to personal preference :-)
A follow up video is already on the cards! We really enjoyed making this video and have already had a request from someone else for a follow up too, so I think one needs to be made!
Castor oil "for internal use" is not only cold pressed but further treated with steam, in order to destroy the last traces of the extreme dangerous poison ricine.
100% thought the love it or hate it was going to be patchouli 😂 I’m fairly indifferent to lavender, use it blended with rosemary and also eucalyptus and lime.
Oh yes, you are spot on there! Patchouli is another that we find people adore or can't stand! We never used to offer a Patchouli scent but had so many people request one that we brought one out and it is very popular.
Hi, I'm just starting soap making but made already 5 different batches following recipes for soapery website with the idea of selling at a market. You mention about the % of oil and been tested. Can you advice where to get more info. I'm in UK as well. Thanks
Thank you for sharing your secrets! I'm a prof. soapmaker in Austria. What do you think about eo calc. Does it provide the usagerates we can use in Europe? Thanks
You are welcome Lena. To be honest, I don't use eo calc very often here but only because I tend to check the documents for the oils I use and work out my usage rates directly from them ( a bit more time to do it this way than using eo calc but I like to trust my own workings ) . I then run my blends and usage amount past my safety assessor who will pull me up on any that need slight changes (doesn't often happen, the last time was when they reduced the allowable amount of Lemongrass and I hadn't realised my blend still had the higher amount in it). I think that eo calc will probably work well as a starting point for those of us here in Europe as it seems to take account of the limits and give accurate figures from what I can see.
You're right, thank you! I have just had a look and found it on there. Goodness me it is expensive! Would love to have a go with it but think I will wait until my bank account can handle the extra outlay!
@@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany I was about to mention The Soap Kitchen - I got a 30ml bottle of the 10 fold for the first time and used it about a month ago just to test it and the smell is just as strong as when I made it (2% Orange 10x, 1.3% Lavender and 0.7% Patchouli). Not sure it's worth 5x the cost of 5 fold.
Love this video…I have all those in my stash. I used to hate lavender until I bought pure essential oil…what a difference. It also blends well with peppermint, lemongrass, May Chang, orange. The only eo I haven’t tried is the cedar wood…must give that a try 😊
Thankyou, this is such a helpful video. I would welcome a follow up on other essential oils if you can! Some kind of help with how to understand the IFRA website would be and amazing help also! I have had trouble finding the information I need on there. I have relied on eocalc for a while, but they don't have all of the ones I want to use on there. Thanks again Ann!
Thank you for the lovely comment and we will certainly work on doing a follow up on other essential oils in the future. I personally don't tend to use the IFRA website as I find it hard to navigate. What I do is check the individual IFRA documents that are given by our suppliers and this shows the allowed usage rates. We can certainly do a video on how to check these documents and work out the allowed amount of essential oil from it.
@@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany Oh I'm glad I'm not the only one, and that would be so helpful as well if you felt inclined to do that sort of video about how to read the documents properly. Thanks for the lovely replies☺x Holly.
Thankyou for this one, great timing as I am looking into costings of ingredients tomorrow and deciding what and where I'm going to buy my ingredients from now I have decided on the recipes I'm going to use. You mentioned you wrap your soaps in paper, is that paper waxed? Also off topic of EO's can you use de-ironised water or should it be distilled? My supermarket sells de-ironised 🤷♀️
Good luck with your costings and purchasing your new ingredients :-) Our paper isn't waxed, but it is "food safe" (when selling in the UK, packaging used has to be classed as food safe). Very occasionally the paper will get marked (this is often when we have been in unfavourable weather conditions at an outside show) but on the whole it works well. When it comes to water, I know many soap makers use distilled however, we actually use tap water. We tested both tap and distilled and our tap water works well for soap making. However, this is dependent on the kind of water you have in your area. We are in a soft water area but if you live in a hard water area it may be that the tap water affects the soap a bit more. We are lucky that our water doesn't lead to dos or added soap scum, but not everyone in the UK will have the same kind of water as us! I am not sure how de-ironised water would compare but it may be worth experimenting with.
Random question, but was it you that did a downloadable sheet on how essential oils react differently, which ones accelerate, etc? I know I saw it somewhere but now I can't find it 🤦♀️
I wonder how these essential oils will work in hot process soaps? I usually don't do cold process for essential oils. Would the ones that misbehave in CP do well in HP? I've only experimented with peppermint and lemongrass, which work well.
Much as I love cold process soap and would say I understand it pretty well, I must confess to have never actually attempted hot process! I have heard that scents that misbehave in CP soap can work well in HP without so many problems so it would definitely be worth a go :-)
Goodness! I have never looked at prices outside of the UK before. These are all at the cheaper end of the scale, but I would certainly not want to pay twice as much for them!
This is very useful. Wish I’d had something like it when starting. I have a wonderful collection now all those included. I’ve not used lemongrass much. I make for personal use and friends here in Aus. Do they say why they change the usage rates in the YK seems odd to lower the amount previously used as safe. I love rose geranium one of my favourites Just a question why yours are in plastic and not dark coloured. Thank you.
I think the usage rates will periodically change when new IFRA amendments come into force. Lemongrass wasn't limited so much until a couple of years ago and it was a pain when the new limits came in! I think it is to do with the chemical make up of the oils and sometimes they will change the "safe" percentage of a certain chemical that is included in the EO makeup. If this happens it can cause the safe usage rate percentage to be lowered. Like you, I do question how something that has been used safely for years can suddenly be deemed as unsafe, but I guess it is down to new research. I too was thrown when we first ordered larger bottles of the essential oils and they came in plastic bottles (the 500ml ones come in metal bottles and 100ml come in amber glass but the 1 litre bottles are plastic). I guess it is more cost effective for the company we buy from. I was concerned about whether it would affect the quality of the oil but did check this and the bottles are HDPE plastic which is safe for use with essential oils and will not be broken down by them. We do store our essential oils in a cool, dark cupboard though just to make sure sunlight and warmth are excluded.
Very useful information. My soaps with citrus oils (sweet orange, grapefruit and mandarin) always loose the smell after curing and I was wondering what citrus EO actually stay in the soap. I never heard of the orange fivefold and I will definitely give lemongrass a try!
I buy Orange 10X from Brambleberry in the US but I live in Puerto Rico which is a territory of the US. I already use lavender, orange, lemongrass, cedarwood atlas and peppermint in my soaps. I have heard of litsea cubeba before but always wondered how it smelled. I will look for it and try it. I use geranium mix with lavender and tea tree. Oh my!! The combination smells great. I also use bergamot. It is on the more expensive side and to me it doesn't smells that nice on its own but a little bit mixed with orange and cedarwood atlas smells great. Thanks a lot for the information.
Oh yes, we use Bergamot too and it is a beautiful scent, especially when combined with other essential oils. We have just done a bergamot, cedarwood & lime blend which smells divine! If you do like the citrusy scents I would definitely keep an eye out for litsea cubeba as it is a lovely one :-)
@@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany thanks for the recommendation. As you could noticed I like your videos a lot but when it comes to essential oils, oh my! I love talking about essential oils. 💕🥰
Yay! Lemongrass - I've fallen in love with it! Just made a Eucalyptus, Lemongrass & Litsea loaf! I hope it holds - the lemongrass softened some of 'wow' in the Eucalyptus and Litsea added a little brightness. Try a peppermint orange blend - makes a great and different holiday blend and drip some clove in there. It's quite nice. Cedarwood - another favorite! And, I'm diggin' the purple socks!👍
Peppermint orange sounds like a lovely combination, I will definitely have to try it! Yes, Lemongrass works so well in so many blends, I love its versatility! The purple socks are fab, aren't they!
I love lavender but my bestie hates it 😂 I'm sure people are drawn together who balance each other out. I love Rose Geranium in soap too. I followed one of your recipes and I'm still using the bars and it was a dream but maybe I was just lucky that day 😁
It's funny isn't it, how a scent can be so pleasing to one person and awful to someone else! It is so nice to hear that you got on well with one of our recipes and are enjoying the bars, I am sure it wasn't just luck :-)
@@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany I used lemon for the husband but it wasn't a great success so lemongrass comes next. Got to keep the old fella happy as I've taken over the house with my attempts 🤣
