This is the second batch of soap I ever made, and it’s become one of my favourites over time. The long curing time is definitely beneficial because I used unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada) as my hard oil (and as far as hard oils go, it’s not very hard). I also used avocado oil, so the bars are loaded with all kinds of rich, nutritious oils.
Shea Butter & Citrus Shampoo Bar
28% olive oil (pomace) (USA / Canada)
19% castor oil (USA / Canada)
14% unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada)
25% virgin coconut oil
14% avocado oilCalculate to 5% superfat
Per 500g fats:
- 30g 5-fold lemon essential oil
- 1/2 tsp poppyseeds
Follow standard soap making procedure, stirring in the poppy seeds and essential oil at trace.
After my patchouli lavender batch of what I’d like to call sodium cocoate (just saponified coconut oil) for my laundry soap, I’m going to get my hands into something like this. Thanks for sharing!!!!
It’s amazing to think that I could stretch my washes out by this. I have a no poo method already but struggle to get past day 3 🙁
Really looking forward to this and to give it a try.
Any more shampoo bars you can hand out the recipes on I’d definitely gobble up or rather, my hair could gobble up.
Patchouli lavender—I must try that blend! It sounds awesome!
I’m with you on the no-poo thing—it is HARD to get very far! Plus, I found I really missed washing my hair. There’s just something really lovely about working up a beautiful lather and giving yourself a wee scalp massage. When you start stretching out your washes you’ll definitely have a few greasy days (generally one at the end of each cycle), but I’ve developed some coping mechanisms—you can read about them here, here and here.
Here’s a couple other shampoo bars for you: Latté Shampoo andGingerbread Shampoo!
Can you get by without using the lye. I have Sebhorric dermititis and I am afraid it will irritate my skin?
Long story short—definitely not. Lye is what actually makes soap, well, soap! The chemical reaction between lye and fat is what produces soap. If you don’t use it, you will just have a big batch of fat (or perhaps very greasy quasi-lotion if you manage to get the water and fats to emulsify without the lye). Ick, haha.
You’re right, though—lye can be irritating if the soap is not made properly. Soap makers use superfatting to avoid any possible irritation from the lye. That means they use extra fat, so the amount of lye they use cannot turn all of it into soap. So, if you needed 10g of lye to turn 20g of soap into fat, you might use 25g of fat so the lye would turn the first 20g into soap, and then have 5g left over as fat. This extra fat ups the moisturizing properties of the soap and ensures there is no leftover, un-reacted lye to irritate your skin (recommended superfat is 5–10%; anything more makes a soft bar of soap that can go rancid on you). If you can use commercially made bar soap, this won’t irritate your skin—in fact, it will probably irritate your skin far less as it doesn’t have any sodium lauryl sulfate or artificial fragrances in it. You can increase the superfat to somewhere around 7% to make it extra gentle, and give yourself a little extra wiggle room. Just be sure to use a scale and a good soap calculator, and you will be totally fine! Have fun, and feel free to get in touch with any other questions 🙂
Thank you very much for the information. Do you have any soap recipes that don’t use the lye, maybe a different process?
Uh… no. The definition of “soap” is “A substance used with water for washing and cleaning, made of a compound of natural oils or fats with sodium hydroxide or another strong alkali, and typically having perfume and coloring added”. So, it’s not really soap if there’s no lye involved. The lye is really not an issue though—it is entirely used up/neutralized in the saponification reaction. If you can use soap from the store, you can use homemade soap. That, said, your alternatives would be:
You really shouldn’t be worried about homemade soap being irritating 🙂 As long as you measure things properly, all the lye will be used up in the reaction, like how baking soda is used up when you make a cake (so you can’t taste it in the final product). Try buying a bar of homemade soap from a market or health food store and giving it a try—hopefully that will convince you that it’s perfectly fine for your skin 🙂
You can also try making your own shampoos — I used a diluted honey-tea mixture for a long time. It doesn’t lather at all, but it can clean your hair.
I do have a very ambitiously sized honey collection, so this just might be worth a go 🙂
Hmmm….I know I said I didn’t want to make my own bars, but I’m starting to think about it.
How much does it cost, ballpark, to make a batch?
How long does it take?
How many bars do you get?
Off to read your basic soap making post 🙂
Hmmm… time for some math! For the cost, as with all things, your initial investment cost is going to be the highest. I probably spent ~$20 at Value Village to get my initial supplies (pot, spoons, etc.—it’s all mentioned in the basic soaping post). I’d definitely recommend ordering your ingredients online as the prices are far, far better. I shop at http://www.newdirectionsaromatics.ca and the prices there work out to be:
So, that’s a total of about $60, using the smallest packages of each oil that would give you enough for this 500g recipe (yes, 5L really is the smallest package of RBD Coconut oil they sell). I’m sure you can see that all those ingredients would get you far more than one batch of soap, though. Each 500g batch of soap gives me 12 bars of soap or shampoo.
Making the soap might take an hour, curing takes at least 3 weeks.
Have fun!
wow thats really good for you hair i need to try tis soap bars really badly
These bars sound amazing. My 11 year old daughter and I have been no poo for about 2 & 1/2 months, and although our hair has finally adjusted, I also really miss just the process of washing our hair. I’ve added eos to my baking soda rinse for certain benefits and smells, but I haven’t tried anything else. How many washings does a typical shampoo bar last through? I have brown, short, fine hair. Which type of shampoo bar would you suggest for me?
What a fun thing to do with your daughter! I’m sure she will really appreciate breaking free of store bought shampoos early in her life—I wish I had done the same with my mom! However, you may want to read this article about how the BS/ACV method may actually be bad for your hair. Worth thinking about & being aware of, at least. I can’t say from experience as I’ve never used that method, just homemade ‘poo bars and ACV rinses.
If you’re going to switch to ‘poo bars (I love them and I’d really recommend it!), you’ll have tons of fun with them 🙂 There’s so much room to play with EOs, oils, butters, superfatting, clay, and more. I can usually get about 4–6 washes out of a bar (they’re ~$0.50/each to make depending on the ingredients you choose and where you get them), but I have very thick, very long hair (I have even more hair than that, now). You know your hair better than I do, but I’d guess you could get at least twice as many washes out of a bar. My hair is brown, fine, and long, so I would guess you could use any of the bars I have here that I’ve developed for my hair 🙂
Thank you so so much for sharing the article with me about using baking soda on my hair. Definitely will switch to the honey & water shampoo until I get some shampoo bars! I appreciate your advice!
Happy to share—as I said, I can’t say from experience, but I’d hate to hear your hair suffered 🙁 It’s important to remember that being natural doesn’t necessarily mean harmless or beneficial, but baking soda is just so innocuous!
I’ve been making my own liquid shampoos, but I thought to make bar is wonderful idea. Once I washed my hair with regular homemade soap bar and I’ve decided that was last time I ever do it, my hair looked and felt like an old broom. I’m guessing shampoo bar is quite different from regular soap bar. How much soap this recipe makes?
Hi Elain! Yes, shampoo bars tend to be different from straight-up soap (though, of course, it depends on the recipe—all my soaps work fine on my hair), and very different from something like a bar of Ivory. If you hair tends to be dry I would recommend boosting the superfat above 5%, to 6 or 7%, or even as high as 10%. You’ll also be using more castor oil (around 20%), so you get more lather and more conditioning.
This recipe makes approximately 16 bars of shampoo 🙂
I’m planning to make this shampoo bar. Can you tell me what the black “polka dots” are? (cannot find a better name to describe them). Thank you
They are poppy seeds, Mrs G! They’re really just there for fun in a shampoo bar, but if you wash your body with it as well they are a great exfoliating touch. Thanks for reading and let me know how the bars work out for you!
Hi, I made this shampoo and I’m so happy with it. Thank you for the recipe.
I changed it a little bit: I used rosehip powder to color it (it turned out a shade of beige) and I used an old bottle of rosewater (foodgrade) in place of normal water. The shampoo has retained a bit of scent, and since it stayed quite soft for a while, I stamped it as additional decoration.
By the way, if you want to make castile soap, do it. You only need 5-6 weeks curing time. It’s true that it takes long time to trace, so I would recommend not do it on a warm summer day (I did it, and it was a mistake).
Awesome, I’m thrilled to hear it! It sounds like your end result is just beautiful 🙂
I have made castile soap! I made a batch about 2.5 years ago, and even now, it’s still softer than 3 week old bars that contain hard oils like lard. And I even cheated a little with my castile and included a bit of coconut oil.
Too bad that it did not work out… my castile soap bars (the ones from a “failed” batch made on ahot summer day) are hard as rock and white as snow…
It sounds like we’re using different definitions of “castile” here, haha. From what I’ve read, pure, traditional castile soap is 100% olive oil, so when made using traditional CP methods it always ends up being quite soft, and usually green. However, the definition has since loosened up, and brands like Doctor Bronners have popularized a definition of it that’s just “soap made with just vegetable oils”, and it sounds like that’s what you’ve made. With the inclusion of oils like palm and coconut you can get a very hard, white bar, but it isn’t technically “pure” castile soap in the traditional sense.
@ Marie.
Nope.
100% olive oil. Nothing else. Who knows? Beginner’s luck? 😉
Weird! I am super intrigued now. Did you, perchance, add a bit of salt? I’ve read that can help. What else did you do? What’s the lather like? What superfat did you use? Did you just use water as the liquid? Did you discount the liquid at all?
@ Marie.
I have no idea. Honestly.
It was my second batch of soap. The very first one (using the same recipe) went very well, the bars were solid and (after a while) slightly yellow. With this one no, they are very white and even more solid. I used tap water (mine is at the medium level of the medium range) and the same brands of lye and olive oil. No color and no scent.
What I did wrong, was making the soap in August. The soap took a very long time just to get a light trace (with the previous batch, I got a medium trace in a reasonable time) and because of this I could not unmold after the usual 24 hours. I think it needed 3 days and, consequently, a longer curing time (I would say 8 weeks instead of 5). I learnt in the meantime that making soap in a hot summer day is not a good idea because of humidity.
The soap works, however it makes less lather than the previous batch and it definitely works better with warm water rather than with cold. So I use it in the shower.
I used this recipe: http://frugalkiwi.co.nz/2009/10/lye-ability-making-castile-soap/.
At that time, I did not know a thing about lye calculators (I learnt it on your blog, thank you for opening my eyes about it) and I followed the recipe blindly. Since it worked for the first time, I used it again for the second.
I hope this might shed some light on the mystery of white castile soap… :-))
Hmmm… odd! I’m curious about high humidity effecting the batch—why would that be any different than using a bit of extra water in with the lye? Anyhow, I will have to give pure olive oil castile soap a go to see if I can replicate your results (though I’ll never replicate the humidity without moving, lol). I monkeyed with my recipe a bit, including coconut milk and maybe a bit of coconut oil (it was a few years ago and I don’t have my notes handy, haha) to try and improve the lather, so I can’t say I’ve made totally pure castile soap yet. Another project!
You might want to try the castile recipe from soap-making-resource.com. I was super afraid to try castile after hearing awful stories from my sister-in-law about her experience making it, but I finally tried using that recipe, and I ended up with a beautifully white, very hard bar – and that was just 18 hours after pouring into the mold! I’m still curing it so I can’t attest to any other properties, but it definitely has hardness.
I usually use the cut ends of my soap bars to roll into little “soap rocks,” but the ends that I cut off of the castile loaf were too brittle to roll into anything at all!
They use a bit of a water discount – that is probably what makes the difference.
Regarding the green color … the Soap Queen blog just had a post about the results that they got using different olive oils, and some of theirs were green and others weren’t. I used olive oil from Costco, and my bars came out totally white. I have no idea about the chemistry behind it, but it sure looks like a neat bar of soap 🙂
Hmmm… maybe I will! Or at least try it with a water discount. Your results are so different from anything I’ve experienced, but you certainly aren’t the only one to have that experience… how odd! I’ve got the cheapo olive oil from Costco as well for my soaping, so perhaps I can help duplicate your results 🙂
I’ll post a picture to your Facebook page when I post the pic of the cinnamon/milk soap in a sec 🙂
Thanks! Can’t wait 🙂
I personally find that after a LONG cure, castile soap does turn as hard as a rock. However if you are too impatient for the cure, just hot process it, I always get a rock hard castile soap whenever I hot process it. I suspect the reason why Mrs.G’s soap turned out white was perhaps she used refined Olive oil as refined olive tends to give a paler soap in my experience. Just in case if anyone’s wondering.
Thanks, Lily!
Well, I have pretty much become addicted to your blog. Like you I tend to become slightly obsessed with any new hobby and have thrown a lot of money at this one in the last couple of weeks. Initially I stuck to balms and butters but I’m going to give soap a try…as soon as my order arrives in the mail! My question, how long do you have to leave the shampoo bars to cure? Any suggestions for a bar for red hair? I was thinking about that bright red oatmeal bar you made, maybe minus the oatmeal:)
Aww shucks, thanks Lynn! I’m thrilled you’re enjoying reading my assorted ramblings 😉 As with all soaps, 3 weeks is generally enough for aging (unless you seriously cut back on the hardening oils, like lard or tallow). I’ve read as long as 5 years for pure olive oil soaps. And for bright red hair you could use pretty much any shampoo you like since you don’t have to worry much about staining (unless it’s super pale) 🙂 I love my gingerbread shampoo!
Thank god cause I really want to try the gingerbread! I’m planning some big gift baskets for family members for christmas and my sister has extremely long, extremely thick brown hair and I think she will love it too! Also I love the argan serum, I think my fam will love it too!
3 weeks til I have new homemade soap and I can minimize my shower clutter! Thanks for responding!
Brilliant! I love soap & shampoo as a Christmas gift. It’s become a default gift for me now—thankfully my friends and family continue to bathe, so it’s always useful 😛 Let me know how your shampoo turns out! Also, if you’re all about reducing shower clutter, check out my all in one soap recipe. You can soap, shampoo, and shave with it 🙂
Thank you, I will keep you posted:)
Is this recipe one of the batches you’ve made so far, Lynn?
Am I missing something or is this recipe missing a hardening fat?
In this recipe shea butter is supposed to be the hardening fat, though not a terribly good one. This was the second batch of soap I ever made, and the internet told me shea butter was a hardening fat. The resulting bars are lovely and moisturizing, if not all that hard. I’m still hoarding a few that are now over two years old. With this one I’d recommend at least 6 weeks of aging, as it tends to vanish pretty quickly with just 3.
This isnt a good idea for hair at all. It too alkaline for a shampoo and will cause damage. Nothing can repair damaged hair.
Marie, this looks like a great recipe for my husband’s hair (fine and thick) . But I have thick medium coarse hair with a perm – do you know if that will be a problem?
I can’t think of any reason this bar would be problematic for any hair type—just be sure to both thoroughly wash and rinse your hair, as shampoo bars aren’t as strong as store bought shampoo 🙂 I’d also follow up with my shine & detangle ACV rinse for the length of your hair as it helps prevents tangles—it’s a total lifesaver for me!
Hi Marie- just wondering if I can use fractionated coconut oil in your soap recipes? I am a bit confused on the coconut oil thing. I have FO and also a coconut oil that is solid at room temperature. But I have also seen coconut oil that is liquid at room temperature at the grocery store. What to use??
Hi Kelsie! In soap making, fractionated and non fractionatd coconut oils are not interchangeable as they have different make-ups. You can check the differences yourself by heading over to SoapCalc and sending through two recipes, one that’s 100% fractionated, and one that’s 100% non-fractionated, and see how the ratings for hardness, lather, etc. change. So, go with the solid stuff—that is, the stuff that solidifies around 24°C, which is just above typical room temperature. I would recommend buying your soaping coconut oil online, though—it’s about 1/4 of the price to get the refined, non food grade stuff.
Hi Marie. Just wanted to thank you for this recipe and amazing blog. I probably tried making at least ten different recipes that you shared on your blog especially lip balms, body lotions, body butters and soaps. This recipe is just fantastic, this is my third time making it and I absolutely love it. Now I only have one bar of soap in my shower that I use for everything.
I gave it as a gift to my friend and she loves it too. Now she wont use anything else and said she’ll pay me just to make more 🙂 .
I’ve never tried any other shampoo bar recipes, but this works wonders for me. And I don’t even need to use ACV rinse after and can go at least three days without washing my hair. Last time i had a haircut a hairdresser asked me what kind of shampoo i was using as she said my hair looked and felt really healthy 🙂
Way to go for natural and healthy alternatives.
Thanks again for sharing and inspiring others.
Hi Iryna! Thanks so much for reading 🙂 I’m so thrilled that you love this recipe! It’s a fave of mine as well. I would recommend adding 1 tbsp of clay per 500g of oils, though—then you can shave with it as well!
If you start to find that your hair is rough and tangled after a few months of using this bar, that’s probably because the silicone in your hair is finally peeling out (ew, eh?). At that point you’ll probably want to start using an ACV rinse to smooth things out 🙂
Thanks for DIYing with me!
Hello! Have you made this bar with any other EO’s? Is there a particular benefit to using Lemon?
Hi Jenna! I’ve made loads of other bars using different EOs, but for this one I stick to lemon because then it’s like a lemon poppyseed loaf 🙂 I’ve found citrus EOs to be the most popular EOs for use in soaps since everybody seems to like citrussy scents. And, as a plus, lemon EO in soap is said to help lighten hair, though I’m not convinced of that since the whole point of shampoo is that you rinse it out 😛 You should check out my other shampoo bars here 🙂 And in the end, you can use whatever EOs you want.
Thank you Marie for your suggestion with ACV. I love taking it internally, and think my hair will love it too.
I added sweet orange essential oil to last batch and it smells wonderful and makes me happy when I use it.
I keep telling my husband how proud I am not only to bake bread but also to make homemade soap 🙂 He doesn’t get it. Go figure 🙂
Oooh, that sounds just divine! Citrus in the shower is such a wonderful way to start the day 🙂 And I’m pretty sure my boyfriend doesn’t really get it either, but he sure appreciates the fruits of my labour 😛
I have a question. I recently saw ingredients of apple cider vinegar in bar soaps. How much acv would you use in a recipe? Thanks!
Hi Kyra! The chemistry of soap makes adding an acid to it a bad idea. Lye is a base, so if you add something acidic to it, you’ll have a baking soda + vinegar type reaction on your hands. After that, you’ll just have less lye in the raw soap as it will have reacted with the baking soda, throwing off your careful lye calculations, and you likely won’t have any of the ACV acidity left (which is pretty much the entire point of rinsing your hair with ACV), which sort of defeats the point of adding it in the first place 😛 Soap needs to be basic to be soap, so I’d recommend leaving the ACV as a separate thing 🙂
Thank you for breaking it down for me!! I did make one of your ACV rinses and I absolutely love it!! I think I will stick with it since it has been doing a fantastic job!!
No worries 🙂 Enjoy those ACV rinses, they’re awesome—just avoid the scalp for reduced greasies 😉
I have been following you for a couple of months now, and I love all of the recipes I have tried so far. I am planning on using this recipe, as it is very similar to my favorite shampoo bar that I purchased. The only difference is theirs also uses Babassu oil, which I have on hand. So my question is could you help with how much I should add/adjust the current recipe. This will be my second batch of soap, so I am a newbie and not sure about adding to a current recipe. Thanks for your help and all of your great recipes.
Hi Jessica! Thanks so much for reading & DIYing with me 🙂 Babassu oil is closest to coconut oil when it comes to soaping, so if you want to include it I’d trade out some of the coconut oil for babassu. Run the recipe through SoapCalc, tweaking the amounts, and watching how your lather and hardness levels change, and choose something that looks good to you. Start small, and you won’t be able to go too far wrong 🙂
Thanks for your help Marie. I am so excited to make my own shampoo bars and I think this recipe is gonna be perfect. Thanks again
Wonderful! I look forward to hearing how they turn out 🙂
What superfat, water as percentage of oils and fragance g/kg did you use? I always have trouble when running any soap recipe through the lye calculator since the recipes don’t include all of that information. Do you use the same for all of the shampoo bars or it depends of the recipe?
Love your blog, btw!! 🙂
I used a 5% superfat, and a slightly higher than normal 42g essential oils per 500g oils. I usually stick to 5% superfat (sometimes up to 7% or so), but I generally do a better job of noting everything—this just happens to be a super old recipe 🙂
Dear Marie, I’m so very much in love with your blog and my new hobby! 🙂 I just can’t stop!
Last weekend I made my first batch of soap, this one, I substituted some of the olive oil for rice bran oil and added eucalyptus and rosemary to the eo’s. It’s now ‘relaxing-week-one’ can’t wait to see how it worked out. The smell isn’t that great yet I’m afraid, but I need patience, and also maybe I shouldn’t have experimented with the first attempt ever on soap, changing the recipe, but last time I had something lemony (together with lavender) I found it smelled a bit too much after kitchen cleaning stuff. :-S 🙂
I made the soap without the thermometer method, worked perfectly!
The eco -butcher in my street will set apart the beef tallow and I can pick it up next week, so next weekend, new soap try with beef tallow! Now only I need to pick a recipe 🙂
I’ll keep you posted on how this batch turned out!
Love from Amsterdam, Judith
Hi Judith! Thanks so much for reading 🙂 Congrats on your first batch of soap! I really hope you re-calculated the entire recipe after making changes to the oils you used—that’s super, super important to make sure your soap is safe to use.
Your tallow hook-up sounds fantastic, lucky you! May you first aging period speed by so you can enjoy your new soaps 🙂
Hi Marie,
Thank you for your reply! I did re-calculate the recipe with the other oils, it seems to harden great and the smell is getting better too. Fingers crossed for next weekend #CountingDays.
I started with the tallow, to render the fat, and wow that takes a long time to make that melt 🙂 It worked alright I guess, but it’s smelly.. I read that that is normal and will disappear once in soap… ?!
Next week the real soap process, as I didn’t have the time anymore. I’ll keep you posted 🙂
The soap turned out lovely! I was surprised at the amount of foam that it gives, quite a lot, lovely for washing my hair. My hair feels soft and the smell turned out great luckily 🙂
Awesome! All that extra castor oil really does the trick for making a super-lathery shampoo bar 🙂 Thanks so much for DIYing with me!
I do find the tallow smell does dissipate with aging, but you can also do a second render (boil the fat again once you’ve lifted it off the first batch) with a chopped potato—that’s supposed to help clear things up and reduce the smell 🙂
Enjoy that awesome soap!
In the words of my teenage daughter, OMG!!! I made a version of your Shea Butter & Citrus Shampoo bars. This was my very first experience making any type of soap. I was afraid of crafting with lye, but I survived & my house is still standing. And, I made 3 more batches of soap to boot. Love it! I just need to speed up the cure. It is incredibly hard to wait 4 weeks!
I changed up your recipe a bit since shea butter was your “hard fat.” I definitely didn’t want to wait a year for hard olive oil soap. I ran a few recipes through a soap calculator to find some target numbers for lather, hardness, etc. I kept playing with percentages until I got numbers in the desired range. I used lard and kept all of the other oils in as well. I mean really, who couldn’t stand a little avocado love in their hair. I have dry, long, thin, straight, tangly hair.
I added some dried herbs from my pantry. Rosemary, sage, peppermint. In addition to thin, my hair is also falling out and growing slowly. Ah, life at 40! I did use those essential oils, lemon, lavender, and dried lavender. My stick blender did a beautiful job of further chopping the dried herbs & flowers.
I now have a beautiful herby shampoo bar that might be good for my hair. It looks like a beautiful fancy herbed butter & smells heavenly. I am still waiting for it to cure. But, I take a sniff everyday. Just 2 weeks to go!
Hey Crystal! Congratulations on your very first soaps, how exciting! They sound amazing 🙂 I definitely remember the terror of the lye for that first batch, it only gets better from here 😉 And excellent work tweaking the recipe to be what you wanted, that’s awesome—and probably the best part of DIY! What you want, made by you 🙂 here’s hoping the next 2 weeks fly by for you 😉 Thanks for reading and DIYing with me!
Hey Marie! How are you doing? 🙂
I’ve decided to replicate this shampoo bar and have noticed that it doesn’t sum up to 500gr, am I missing something?
Also, I want to add poppy seeds as you did, how much seeds did you put and at what stage of the soap making?
Thanks a lot!!
OH yikes, this recipe is really showing its age! I updated it and that should answer all your questions 🙂
Thank you!!! 🙂
Hey! Can i use cocoa butter instead of shea butter? Thanks!
Hey Gracia,
Marie made a great video exactly on the topic of substituting cocoa butter with shea butter or vice versa:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGK4mkLRXNM
Yup! Just be sure to re-calculate the recipe 🙂
Hi Marie! I made this shampoo bar and I have to say that I LOVE IT! After struggling a lot in the past year to find a natural way to wash my hair I finaly found a product that I can make on my own and that can clean my hair without making it greasy! My hair is finaly clean, soft, shiny and nourished! Thanks yoy a lot about all of your recipes, I made almost all of your soap bars, I think that I’m going to do the same think with the shampoo bar as well :)))) Hugs
YAY! I am so dang glad 😀 WOOO!!! Thanks for sharing and DIYing with me 🙂
Thank You darling, you are definitely the best :)))))
I have only made soap a few times now all the correct way with a recipe and with lye. I have not made shampoo bars before you gave the oils for this recipe but not the lye/water amount. Is it because there is no lye or because we have to go use a soap calc. To figure it out? Also is there a cure time for these? If so how long, with my soaps its been 6 weeks is this the same amount of time or longer. Thank you and can’t wait to try this recipe out.
Hi Laura!
With all Marie’s soap posts, she doesn’t list the lye or liquid amount so you need to plug it into SoapCalc and enter the amount. Marie makes 500g batches and some people would like to make more and add or swap various ingredients. In leaving the lye and liquid out, it gives people that ability to change it up a wee bit to make it the way they want to. Most soaps generally need about a month to cure, I leave my regular soap to cure for at least six weeks before first use, and some of them I leave for at least six months (here’s looking at you neem soap!).
This seems like a great CP recipe to try out. I was just wondering what the PH would be for this shampoo bar.
It’ll be pretty high, just like any CP soap. I no longer use CP soap/shampoo, preferring mildly acidic syndet formulations like this one 🙂