# Question about adding liquids.



## Auntie Kathy (Oct 23, 2006)

I have noticed that some soapers add things like vegetable purees and aloe vera gel to their soaps. Do you mix the liquids with the lye before you add them to the oils or do you add them at the trace stage?

How many here add "exotic" things to your soap? Thanks

Kathy


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## swamp_deb (Jan 9, 2004)

Different liquids are used in place of the water or milk used to melt the lye. I have used several different things as experiments, some I liked others I didn't.


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## *Cakes (Aug 9, 2004)

I add my 'exotics' after the lye has turned the fats/oils to soap and I shred it up and remelt it. For liquid-type, I like to add my homegrown aloe, different types of tea, milk, honey, and have added more olive oil. This is the fun part for me!


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## MullersLaneFarm (Jul 23, 2004)

I mostly make milk soaps but sometimes have made soaps from 100% cream, Aloe Juice & cream, or different teas.

I freeze the liquid and add my lye to it. There are pictures on my webpage

http://www.mullerslanefarm.com/soapmaking


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## Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians (May 6, 2002)

Me too. I use aloe vera juice in my lotions in place of water and in alot of my soaps. My Cucumber melon is cucumber from the garden i run through the blender, the frozen juice goes with the lye, the pulp in the oils, and the peel makes pretty flecks (they do go yellow with time. My Pomegranate soaps is frozen pomegranate juice and I Lemon zest has lemon in it..my 100% Coconut is all coconut milk, cococnut oil and unsweetened coconut in it. I have done a beer and a wine soap for special orders. Vicki


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## Jillis (Sep 11, 2005)

Vicki, I wished I lived in your neighborhood and could just watch you make soap!


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## Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians (May 6, 2002)

I started doing soap classes with preY2K stuff, and still do them now. My soap house is soo tiny the classes are usually just 2 people and me now, although I have done the classes to large groups at churchs etc. You would walk away from class saying "I thought you had to take temperatures, I thought this was alot harder"  Vicki


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## kidsnchix (Oct 2, 2003)

When you use other liquids, like milk, or cream or aloe vera juice or whatever, do you use the same amount as you would if you were just using water. I've made soap for a couple of years, but I've never experimented much. 

Also, like on Vickies soap for example, do you use the ground-up cucumber at the end when the soap is at the trace stage ?

Thanks y'all for your help.

RoseKYTN


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## churchsecretary (Dec 19, 2007)

Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians said:


> I started doing soap classes with preY2K stuff


Interesting! What did soap making have to do with Y2K?


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## suzyhomemaker09 (Sep 24, 2004)

churchsecretary said:


> Interesting! What did soap making have to do with Y2K?



Surely you jest?!?!

The looming Y2K issue was a jump-start of a huge self sufficiency trend. Being able to be self sufficient in the event of a socio-economic collapse.


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## Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians (May 6, 2002)

Yes the liquid is liquid. I put the whole cucumber into the blender to liquify it. The liquid part gets strained off with aloe vera juice added to equal the liquid amount for the recipe. The pulp and peel are added to the butters and oils, not weighed just ploped in. The skin gives you a pretty green cast to the soap, although the skin itself goes brown eventually.

You may want to liquify your lye with plain water, as half the liquid in the recipe, then add to butters and oils, then when you are at emulsification add your other liquids, this way the lye doesn't color your GM, or veggy liquids. 

Pumpkin puree is simply added at trace..coconut milk is used like GM, pomegrante juice is added at emulsion or the lye will make it go brown..

Yes Y2K not only was a boon for food storage, but also any homesteading skills you could teach, bread baking (which was always overshawdowed when we also showed them how to make tortillas) soap making from scratch, butchering, milking, gardening. Figure most of the folks we had here had never lived on a farm. Vicki


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## linn (Jul 19, 2005)

I have added cucumber, aloe juice, mango nectar and silk at different times to my soap recipes. I really like the soap that I added silk to. I added the silk fibers to my lye water and stirred until the fibers were disolved. When I used the other ingredients, I disocounted the amount used from the liquid and added lye to distilled water or milk/cream, then added the cucumber, aloe juice or mango nectar at trace.


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## MullersLaneFarm (Jul 23, 2004)

RoseKYTN said:


> When you use other liquids, like milk, or cream or aloe vera juice or whatever, do you use the same amount as you would if you were just using water.


Rose,
Yes, I do. I do use frozen liquid - milk, aloe, cream -though (even if soaping with water, at least half the liquid amount is frozen).

pre-Y2K was the ressurgence of the 'back-to-the-land'. Magazines like Countryside and Mother Earth benefitted. Guess a lot of folks realized if shtf, they needed to be educated in ways of old.


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## cloudhidden (Jul 4, 2014)

I'm a little late to this thread, I see, but I couldn't find anywhere else to comment on this that looked more appropriate.
I have been making soap w hard tap water in spite of all the warnings not to, and I can't figure out what the problem is supposed to be. Any info I find at all just mentions vaguely that a reaction could occur. 
My soaps are coming out great, as are the soaps of a friend who also uses hard water. 
Does anyone know why this is supposed to be a problem?


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## exegeses (Jan 28, 2003)

When I use hard water, it does weird stuff to my lye mixture.


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