There are many reasons I love Bill Bryson and find him downright hilarious—one is his ability to describe misery so well. It’s not that I particularly delight in the misery of others, but when aptly described in a way that is clearly meant to be humorous, I am powerless against the ensuing giggling and snorting (sorry, fellow public transit users). Anyhow, with this second instalment in my “Abject DIY Failures” series, I hope you can find some amusement, and learn from my mistakes.
Ground Soap Body Bar
The idea here was to stir a bit of ground, dried soap into a solid body bar and end up with a hybrid body bar that was like a bar of soap, but ubër moisturizing. Unfortunately, the first time I tried it I got a bit carried away and let the soap melt quite a lot before pouring the bars. The resulting bars didn’t really set up, leaving me with a thick paste that had bits of soap in it. I tried to use the resulting paste anyways, and discovered that the soap easily washed away all the nourishing oils and butters in the solid bar, leaving me with skin coated in sticky, tacky beeswax. Ick. So, my efforts at a super nourishing skin bar left me with a substance that could glue a small rodent to a wall. Um, fail.
If you look closely you can see that the lip stain has absolutely no interest in staining anything—it’s just sitting on my lips.
Lip Stain
So… many… lip ‘stains’. Holy hell. I have tossed so much red/pink goo down my sink that it might look suspicious to a paranoid detective watching my sewage output. Lip stain proved to be way, way harder than I thought it would be. It needs to be a thin, highly pigmented water-based liquid that easily absorbs into the lips. The thin, highly pigmented part came easily. Between oxides and powdered extracts of maddar root, rose hip, beetroot, and hibiscus, I devised a collection of red/pink liquids worthy of envy the world over. Unfortunately, that’s all they were. Painting them on the skin did nothing but get that bit of skin a bit wet, with maybe a hint of pink. That’s it. The dye was not interested in doing much of anything. Plus, thanks to the organic origins, several took on a rather off-putting wine-ish odor after a few weeks as they fermented into some sort of quasi-cosmetic moonshine. I finally hacked it (half a dozen red/pink colourants later), though!
It looks so promising here!
Aww, it separated 🙁
OOoh, mould too? Goody! Crap.
Pilling, Moldy Facial Moisturizer
Newly enamored with the dual thickening and emulsifying properties of guar gum, I set out to make a tinted moisturizer with some water soluble titanium dioxide and some oxides. The end result did a weird sort of pilling/peeling thing once on your skin. I figure the water evaporated, leaving the titanium dioxide and oil behind. From there you could then roll the mixture off your face like a patch of peeling, sunburnt skin. Ewww. Well, I decided to leave it to see if it improved with time, and all it did was separate and get disgustingly moldy in under a week. Let’s not publish that recipe, eh?
Maple Coconut Ice cream… cheese
I’m sure there is some very plain chemistry to explain why my beautiful maple syrup and coconut milk ice cream custard base curdled into an ample amount of very expensive, egg and maple flavoured cheese, but that reason is not plain to me. Damn. There was a lot of maple syrup in there.
Chameleon Tanning Lotion
This was one of my very first concoctions, but I forgot to include it in Part 1 of my abject failures. I was so proud of this tanning lotion. It got its colour mostly from strong coffee and bright orange buriti oil, so I smelled like a latté whenever I wore it. I got the colour just right in the kitchen, and I revelled in my newly tanned legs. The colour was just the perfect bronze. Then I went outside… and I turned into an oompa-loompa from the waist down. The colour was drastically, unwearably, unbearably different under natural light. Whoops. Into the bin with that one…
So! What failures have you chucked in the bin recently?
I almost never chuck an entire project in the bin. If it’s a FAIL, and there have been many (unicorn poop cookies, anyone?), I just tweak it till it works or until it is something else completely. Lotion didn’t set up? Add a ton of beeswax and make lip balm. Soap won’t come out of the mold? Soap balls it is! I’m too cheap and ingredients cost too much to throw away.
It sounds like you and I have slightly different versions of a fail lol—for my unicorn poop cookies to be a fail, they’d actually have to taste like poop 😛 I can usually re-purpose things (and I always try), but sometimes I find it’s worth admitting when something should be tossed, rather than adding (and potentially wasting) even more ingredients to try and salvage something. I’ve done that many times, and often just ended up with lots and lots of something I’m not really that excited about. I’ve also learned to work in tiny batches 😛 That helps a lot!
Oh! I just thought of an anecdote that you’ll probably laugh at. So, when I first got started I had a big order of new essential oils come in, so I decided to make a lotion with a fancy, complicated scent blend. I HATED the way that lotion ended up smelling (definitely shouldn’t have blended the scent in the lotion, durrrr). The internet said it would smell nice. Lesson learned there. Anyhow, I continued to dig that hole, and tried adding more essential oils to try and steer the scent in a direction I liked. Bad idea. I ended up with a lotion that was so overly fragrant that I couldn’t apply it without getting a headache, but now it was totally loaded with my beautiful essential oils. So, ever determined not to waste all those ingredients, I made another “blank” batch of lotion and blended the two together, to dilute the scent. So, in the end, I had about 3x as much lotion as I wanted, and I hated the way all of it smelled. But I used it anyways, and I didn’t enjoy it at all. If I’d just cut my losses instead of trying to correct, and correct some more, I might have tossed $0.50 of ingredients, but after adding so many more to try and fix it, I didn’t want to toss it, and I hated it all 🙁 So, lesson learned on many fronts, just my two cents on learning when its best to cut and run—I’d rather enjoy my concoctions than force myself to use something I hate/that totally sucks to save a few cents—I consider it a lesson learned (bound to happen when you develop 95% of your recipes like I do), and I don’t make that mistake again. (And on a total tangent, do you ever do up spreadsheets with your cost per gram to work out the total cost of a recipe? I love doing that, it always blows my mind because similar products are sold for SO much! And, do you get your ingredients online? They are WAY [4–10x usually] cheaper than in store!).
The coconut-maple cheese and the oompa-loompa tanning lotion will be getting giggles for quite some time, I think….
Victory! Just what I’d hoped for 😛
maple syrup, if heated after mixed with milk, will curdle it. I think you can add it to hot milk and not have that effect. Probably if you had added the maple syrup at the end of the process, or while freezing in the ice cream maker, it would have been fine…
Thanks, Dawn! I just might try this again… on a much smaller batch lol.
I so enjoy all of your “recipes”. I will be smiling about the oompa-loompa image now and again, hopefully not at inappropriate times. HA HA HA HA Thank you for being an alchemist 🙂 I have made a few of your body products and really enjoy them. HUGS from Florida
Thanks, Linda 🙂 Enjoy your laughs lol, glad my ridiculous mishaps are good for something 😛 And a big thanks for reading!
I have really enjoyed reading everything you’ve put out so far! I’m still pretty new at all this and have yet to really venture out. My one big failure was a lavender soap creation (hand milled) but I used lavender water, that was, well, very strong, too strong for the soap I think, and I ended up with a jelly gooey slimy disgusting mess that smelled wonderful! I tossed it, it was literally like touching boogers (sorry for the visual). I’ve learned a lot since then and still working away. Love the oompa-loompa legs though, I will never look at a bronzer/tanner the same way again 🙂
Thanks, Lyz 🙂 I sure have fun doing everything & sharing it with the world. Your hand milled lavender soap sounds like my first attempt at turning bar soap into liquid soap. I’m not sure who these people are that manage to dissolve ground soap into water and magically end up with non-boogery liquid soap, haha, because mine was total snot slime, and nothing was changing that!
I love that you wrote a post about products that failed!!
Thanks, Anna! I figured they should be good for something 😛
So glad to know I’m not the only one…. Haha!
Hey, I wanted to let you know… you inspired me to render tallow, and I’ve got a BIG, gorgeous bunch of white tallow sitting in my stock-pot outside on my deck right now! (it’s chilly here in MN today – under 50) I cut into it to see how much of it was actually tallow, and it goes ALMOST all the way to the bottom of the pot! (I used VERY little water, and probably cooked away most of the liquid) At least 6-8 inches worth!
I had not planned on using tallow – I’m not a vegetarian, nor have any objections to it, but after I read your post about why you use tallow, it made a lot of sense to me – the part about palm oil. (which I will still use to make vegetarian soaps, but am going to try to use tallow now as well).
I went to my local grocery store yesterday, and was thrilled to find that they had about 5 pounds of beef-fat just sitting there, waiting to be THROWN OUT – and they were happy to wrap it up and give it to me at no charge! YAY!!! 🙂 I left there happy as a clam, and came home and started grinding it up in food processor (I forgot all about asking them to grind it, but I think I wouldn’t have dared ask them to do that for free fat anyway…) It took a few hours to get it all done, but now I have at least 3 pounds of beautiful white tallow, ready for me to chunk it up and put in freezer today! 🙂 I can’t wait to make my first batch of soap with it! (together with olive and other oils, of course!) 🙂
THanks for your wonderful, inspiring, and informative blog! 🙂
Oooh, I’m so jealous of all that beautiful tallow! And three cheers for free, local ingredients, eh? Fantastic stuff 😀 Thanks for reading and enjoy all that beautiful tallow and the beautiful soap it’ll make!
I really enjoy reading your column, and always look forward to the next one. I really appreciated this one about failures. I’m very new to DIY lifestyle, and I’ve had a few failures of my own. The nay sayers (so, was it worth it? You going to stop it now – or even just the surprised looks) get to me sometimes. The batch of deodorant that BURNED my pits ( to much baking soda) Face serum that burned my face (to much citric acid) and soap. I made a batch of soap with the idea to grate up a couple of bars of coffee soap I’d made and incorporate them in with a new batch of she butter soap .., but when I made the coffee soap I used the stick blender to grind the beans instead of the coffee grinder (I didn’t have one of those yet), and the coffee beans were way to course on the skin. Don’t ask what I was thinking, (I don’t know) but I’d put of of the coffee shreds IN THE MOLD before my new soap. Looked like maggots. Ugliest soap ever. Very useable, but really ugly. You gave me confidence to keep on trying. Thanks so much for sharing that.
Hi Mary! Your comment put a big smile on my face 🙂 Not a lot of people are overly excited to share their failures, but they can be so funny, and such great learning experiences! And seriously, to the naysayers—I suppose they’ve never stalled a manual car, never fallen off their bike, and never botched a batch of cookies. Pfft.
I have definitely made a few of the same mistakes as you—I once applied straight vitamin C to my face, and it’s SUUUUPER acidic. Not my wisest moment, to be sure. I’ve also done the soap with far too much coffee—it was ground, but there was so many grounds in the coffee you could have exfoliated until you bled with the bar! Hahahaha… oops… I gave it to gardeners and told them it was intentional, LOL!
Thanks so much for reading and never stop trying! Most of my most exciting projects (I’m currently working on creamy eyeliner) start off with many failures. But it is SO rewarding when you finally get it!
Can’t wait for the eyeliner recipe! I love that you have make-up recipes and that you show how they work for you. I make lip balm for my family, but I really want to make some lipstick for me. You have helped to inspire me on more than one occasion. I am really trying to make our lives more natural and healthy. After all why not. And I think that booboo posts are great for helping newbies learn without the expensive mistakes. I for one am very grateful.
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Me either, haha! I still need to get ‘er down—right now it’s got a great consistency and applies beautifully… but flakes off after a whopping 10 minutes 🙁 Booo. So, yeah. Work needed there 😉 Thanks for reading & DIYing with me, and have fun with your homemade lipsticks!
Two days ago I made my 2nd batch of soap after great success with your Titanic-reproduction recipe on my first attempt–An African black soap with 55% shea butter and no fragrance at all, for sensitive skin–another winner!
So yesterday I made a third batch, totally my own creation–well. I should’ve read your article on carrier oils first. I wanted a soap to help mature skin. So I added rosehip and camellia tea seed oils. Then I threw in avocado and castor oils–now I know I was mixing heavy oils with drying ones. Then, to top it all off, I added EOs for skin: helichrysum and german chamomile (who knew it was BLUE?)–on top of which, for fragrance, I added rose and litsea cubeba EOs. I also added silk peptide, kaolin clay, and almost 3 T. of titanium dioxide, seeing as how some oils were blue, some orange, some green. Oh–and sodium lactate, as I used neither animal fats nor palm oil. (I thought Soap Calc was the answer to everything.)
When I unmolded it today, I had saffron-colored soap–ok, a surprise I could live with. Very glossy (a LOT of silk, as it was getting all over the place and I finally just got it into the lye solution without continuing to measure it). And OMG, the stench!
I’ll wait it out, but taking your tip, I won’t try adding to it to save this. What an incredible waste of expensive ingredients (a 3-pound batch). The moral: just because two batches of recipes turned out great does NOT make one an expert on creating your own. Live & learn!
Now I’m gonna hunt down your first episode on failures.
Hi Dee! I’m so curious about your homemade black soap! Did you roast your own palm leaves? How did you cook everything together? Where did you get the cocoa pods and other plant matter to roast up?
When it comes to soap, I never add anything too expensive 🙁 I’ve always figured that the oils get pretty bunged-up in the saponification process, so it’s not really worth adding anything too pricey. That and I’ve found you really don’t notice much of a difference in the end product :/ Sorry about your first “oops”!
Hi, Marie–of course, I couldn’t find plantain peels, shea tree bark, or cocoa husks to burn for homemade lye (sigh*) –but there’s a fair trade company selling “African black soap powder” on Amazon. What I made is regular cold process soap with a few spoons of this powder added at trace. It’s not black like the real thing, but speckled with organic matter and otherwise unscented for sensitive skin.
Well, my ‘mistake’ is still usable soap, and as it cures it’s beginning to lose its stink. Yes, I’m learning that it doesn’t make sense to add very expensive ingredients to soapmaking–that’s a great lesson and I don’t mind the little failures which help me learn. (Sometimes, what NOT to do is as important as what TO do!) In future, instead of the really expensive EOs, I’ll used botanically-infused and strained carrier oils, instead.
I’ve also been reading more about fragrance oils and learning that they can be very useful in soap without being dangerous. Parabens and phthalates aren’t as iffy as we’ve been led to believe, apparently, and anyway we wash it all off when it’s in soap! I’m sticking to phthalate-free, though, and reading every MSDS sheet, especially for anything listed as “harmful to aquatic life.”
As soon as I get my next order in, I’ll have ingredients to try your Jasmine, Lavender and Sandalwood soap! I’m also expecting some amyris EO for comparison. Made your Shea Body Meringue and loved EOs for that–looking forward to trying the Cocoa Butter Body Meringue, which will probably be even better (less sticky). Your body meringues make the women in my family feel as decadent as repressed Victorians!
And I finally found a local supermarket that sells a very clean lard for about $16 for 8 pounds. More “Vinolia” coming up, too, woohoo!
OK, cool! That’s a neat way to go about it 🙂
I have found that stinky soaps tend to un-stink as they age… though sometimes it takes quite a while lol (I have some bars downstairs that are a couple years old haha).
A word of warning on fragrances—even if you don’t mind what’s in them, they are STROOOOOOOOOOONG. Because I almost never use artificial fragrances, I find their lingering strength to be startling. In shampoos, my hair will smell of fragrance for days. In lotions, the scent never leaves. It’s weird, and not something I love. Just something to keep in mind 🙂
I was loathe to attempt fragrance oils at all until I saw you use them, sparingly, in soaps. Like you, for everything else I’ll stick to EOs, not only because their fragrances are softer but also because I think they really do have therapeutic properties for skin. For example, few drops of real rose EO in a cream, lotion, or toner works wonders for my skin.
In honor of all things Titanic, however–and in your honor, too, Marie– when I make your “Vinolia” soap, I’ll continue to use a real rose blend EO.
Your “Jasmine, Lavender, and Sandalwood Soap” will be my first use of fragrance oil–and I may only use it for the jasmine. I just received my first order of Amyris EO and may try that for Sandalwood.
Have you used amyris, and what advice can you provide about it?
Hi Dee! I look forward to hearing about your new soap 🙂 I did end up finding that one to be so strong with the fragrance oils that I gave most of it away. People who aren’t (mostly) artificial fragrance free loved it, but I found it to be too strong as I’m rather sensitive to artificial frangrances now.
I have never used amyris, sorry!
After being challenged by a friend, I made a batch of shaving cream using a modified lotion recipe. It turned out fine, but to jazz it up (and use up some of the bag), I added some beet root powder. At first, the lotion was a gorgeous bright pink and I was very pleased. The next morning, though, it had turned from pink to a minty green. From there, it degraded on to pea soup green, moss green, and settled on “scary baby diaper contents”. Needless to say, I made another batch of shaving cream to give my friend. There was no way I was handing over the green stuff.
Erk! I think many of us have purchased bag upon bag of assorted plant based colorants like beetroot powder only to find this is the end result whenever they’re combined with water 🙁 I have soooo many of them. Sigh 😛 Thanks for sharing your fail!