Milky Tales – Goat Style

Goats Milk Soap

The benefits of drinking goats milk are very widely publicised but have you tried it in soap? As I mentioned in my January post I wanted to experiment with some new products this year and an opportunity arose to try Goats milk soap again.

A lot of people love goats milk soaps and have had success when using it to relieve symptoms of problematic and sensitive skin.

Goats milk is a beautiful creamy shade of white – sounds like something on a paint chart!

What shall we make?

So the next part of the journey was to decide which base oils to use, everybody has favourites and preferences when it comes to the choice of hard and soft oils. Should I go Palm oil free?. Should I include extra butter to give the soap a creamy moisturizing finish? So after a lot of deliberation the base recipe would be made up of Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, and Shea butter.

Which scents to choose – fragrance or essential oils?

Not a difficult choice here – I went for essential oils, the difficult part was the selection and combinations. Weeks later and I came up with my choice, my husband has never smelt so good as he had all the oils on his socks!

A few favourites, Lavender, Lime and Patchouli but also a few different touches with Vanilla, Vettiver and Fennel. I also tried some different combinations of additives settling on turmeric for it healing properties and activated charcoal for its cleansing power.

Into the Workshop

So once I had settled on my new recipes I sent these off to be checked by a chartered chemist and get the legal cosmetic safety assessment which is required to sell soap in the EU.

So with certificate in hand it was down to the workshop and a week later I had produced the first batch of each soap.

The soaps are now having their obligatory 6 week cure so watch this space for a picture when they wake up.

 

 

 

The Cure

So the soap fragrances have been chosen and the recipes have gone to the Cosmetic Association to be tested so we can finally offer our soap to the public. Each of the carefully selected essential oils have been chosen for their fragrance and wellbeing properties. The soaps need to ‘cure’ for 4-6 weeks and then they will be ready to wash up a rich creamy lather and moisturise the nation’s hands. I like to think of this as their hibernation stage, they are in a nice quite room with some classical music for company.

Wobbly Pins, the soap opera (Act 1, Scene 1)

The Wobbly six – the first six soaps in our new range are now going through their safety assessment and they will then be out and about at local craft fairs and small outlets for sale. The wonderful natural scent from the essential oils that I have put in the soap has been filling the house for weeks whilst they cure. My pedigree Schnauzers have been washed in the Paws Appeal Dog Soap and smell very fresh but they assure me they will roll in the grass again today.