Now that we have that aside, I have been experimenting. I have no one to share with, and I don't think anybody reads my blog anyways, so I'm going to diary it up.
Shave Soap: I've been working on this recipe for a few years now. I really liked my last batch. It had great lather, glide, performance, moisturizing after feel, and was not irritating on my husband's sensitive skin. The one thing that I didn't like was that it had a lot of ingredients that were synthetic. This isn't really a problem for me, because the ingredients themselves were extremely gentle and quite a few were ECOCERT (the certification body that developed standards for "natural" and "organic" cosmetics) and derived from natural ingredients. Now before my 1 or 2 readers gets upset with me, understand that large cosmetics companies have spent a lot of money to gain a certain level of performance from their ingredients. I also believe in performance. A product that you spend your hard earned money on should perform the way it was intended. How a company gets to that point is through a trade study. Am I willing to sacrifice performance for all natural ingredients? It depends. All natural ingredients won't make soap. I need lye, which is made synthetically in a lab; however, the oils I use are all natural. BAM - Compromise. The problem is that the public at large has a general distrust of difficult to pronounce words. Hey, even the human body is comprised of elements which all have a chemical formula. I understand the concern though. Hey, I didn't know what tocopherols were either at one point. I get it. So I went back to the drawing board, because I just knew that I could make it better.
Better is the Enemy of Good Enough: That's what my former team lead told me once when I said I could make something I was working on better. Pfft. So that's what's delayed my progress from listing the shave soap in my shop. I thought I had the recipe down, and I went ahead and listed the shave soap. Then I remembered... I know how to make cream soap. Doh!!!! I looked at the shave soap I bought from St. James of London. The combination of ingredients amounted to - wait for it - cream soap. Doh!!!! I deactivated my listings. If you've never had your man try St. James of London shaving soap, then you are missing out. OMG. It's great stuff. I didn't want to just copy their ingredients, so I made my cream soap with a few different ingredients. My husband loved it. He said it lathered better than the St. James of London and it didn't cause any irritation. Woo Hoo!!
Not bad, right? The picture above shows my original listing for shave soap.
This one is my Cream Shave Soap. It turned out much whiter and had a pearlesque sheen to it. And the lather, oh, the LATHER. Hubby was impressed with my genius. I guess that's what really counts. I'm working on the labels and will have it uploaded onto my Etsy site soon.
Final Thoughts: So I don't want this blog to just be me selling stuff. I want to share new products that I make, but I also would like to share bath and beauty recipes, product reviews, give aways, explain ingredients, and share some of my experiments. More to come, because THIS time I'll be good and actually blog :)
