Adventures With The Sage

Today, Carole called our office and asked for some help. The questions to cover Carole’s projects will probably be helpful for others, so we will cover impulse sealers today.

Sizes of impulse sealers should be considered when choosing. If you plan to seal small bags or soaps then choose the largest size that will accommodate all projects you are currently planning. If you seal mostly books, large packages and such, get a larger sealer. Don’t try to make do, you will only make yourself crazy in the meantime.

Most people who make soaps and bath salts only need an 8 inch sealer. Boxes and gift packages may need a 12 inch sealer, or larger.

Do you make bags that have a bottom flap? This is a bottom flap photo. This type of seal, called a flat welded seam, is made by a flat wire. The round wires are for making hard edge welded seams. If you want to make bags that have the bottom flap, you really need to get a cutter on your impulse sealer. If you have no intention of making bags, just sealing shrinkable pouches, then get the impulse sealer without a cutter.

First, let me show you how to make a bag with the impulse sealer and the flat wire. Place the plastic under the sealing arm. Press down on the arm. Set the heat until a weld has been sufficiently made. Do not heat any longer than necessary.

Now, let’s make a sealed pouch which will be shrunk with a heat gun. Put the item to be wrapped in the shrink bag. Position the bag under the arm to make the bag as small as possible. While pressing down the arm with one hand, gently pull the item away with the other. You can see that once the welded seam was finished the bag was able to be pulled away. Remove the excess bag material and always keep the teflon strips free from debris. If melted bag material is allowed to build up on the teflon strips, it will shorten the life of these strip pads and you will spend more money on maintenance kits.

Here are some points to clarify today’s post.
Get the largest sealer you need. Don’t get one much bigger than you need, just sufficient.
Cutters are needed for making bags with end flaps. If you are not making bags like this, skip the cutter.
Round wires are for making welded seams with no excess.
Flat wires are for making flat welded seams with end flaps.

We hope this has helped everyone make a better choice, as well as knowing how to clean the machine. If you need to replace the teflon strips and the impulse heating wires, see our Recipes Section for step by step photos (Installing A Heat Sealer Maintenance Kit).

Next week is all about finishing up the Mother’s Day Gift Baskets!

Supplies and Ingredients
White Granulated Sugar
Grapeseed Oil
Lemon Sugar Fragrance Oil
Lemon USA Essential Oil
Spearmint Essential Oil
Container for mixing
Scale
Spoon
Transfer Pipettes
Containers and caps

Since Jordan wanted a Mint Lemonade Fragrance, I needed to blend a fragrance to match her desired scent. Her first idea was Lemon Sugar with a little Spearmint Essential Oil for the mint note. I made a test with 20 drops of Lemon Sugar and 1 drop of Spearmint in a Clear Glass Dram. After I let the blend sit for an hour, I smelled it and decided that we needed to add a sharp Lemon note, because the Lemon Sugar didn’t have the tang we wanted. I added 5 drops of Lemon USA, which is our sharper Lemon Essential Oil. That fixed my Lemon notes, but there was only one person on staff who could pick up a faint mint tone to the blend. I added 1 more drop of Spearmint. I still couldn’t smell mint so I started with a new Clear Glass Dram and added 20 drops of Lemon Sugar, 5 drops of Lemon USA, and 4 drops of Spearmint. The mint note was stronger and I could finally smell the mint. This blend was very polite and I thought it was very good. I still had to go back to the drawing board to see if 8 drops of Spearmint would overpower the Lemon or not. I got a new Clear Glass Dram and tested again! I added 20 drops of Lemon Sugar, 5 drops of Lemon USA, and 8 drops of Spearmint to this dram bottle and let it sit. Wow! This blend I think was the best! There was a great balance between the mint and lemon. We didn’t want the mint to overpower the lemon, which it can do easily.

Now I have a small dilemma. I need to fragrance a batch of sugar scrub, but I don’t want to sit here all day and count out drops of fragrance oil. This is when we converted the the drops to percentages.

Fragrance Blend in Percentages
60% Lemon Sugar Fragrance Oil
15% Lemon Essential Oil, USA
25% Spearmint Essential Oil

I needed to make 1 oz of the fragrance blend for scrub testing, so I usedthe percentages to calculate how much I needed to blend enough for 1 oz.

Fragrance Blend in Weight for 1 oz
0.60 ounces Lemon Sugar Fragrance Oil
0.15 ounces Lemon Essential Oil, USA
0.25 ounces Spearmint Essential Oil

During my testing several of the staff fell in love with this fragrance blend, so I was able to persuade the New Products team to come up with pricing for this yummy blend! I currently have a price of $4.50 for 1 fl oz of the Jordan’s Mint Lemonade blend. We will release this blend shortly, so if you can’t wait you can blend it yourself. If you want us to blend this for you, check our New Products section.

Now the fragrance has been blended, we can work on making the scrub. Jordan is planning on using Grapeseed Oil as the oil in her scrub, so we just need to mix a scrub that meets our requirements. We started with 8 ounces of Grapeseed Oil and then I started adding sugar and stirring until I had a very thick sugar scrub. I ended up using 16 ounces of sugar, which means that our sugar and oil ratio is 2:1. This ratio is one of the easiest ratios to work with on sugar scrubs.

The recipe and complete directions are below.

Scrub Recipe
8 oz Grapeseed Oil
16 oz White Granulated Sugar
.24 ounces of Mint Lemonade Blend (Using the fragrance oil at a 1% rate)

Weigh the oil into the mixing container. With recipes that you weigh like this, I like to add my fragrance oil to the fixed oils before I add the sugar. Now, add the sugar and stir thoroughly. Fill containers with mixed scrub. Stir the scrub mixture frequently while filling the jars to keep an evenly filled jar.

This recipe makes about 16 fluid ounces of sugar scrub. I used a 2 oz jar for my container and I filled 8 jars.

Next week is all about finishing up the Mother’s Day Gift Baskets!

That August, I wandered the test kitchen to find some ingredients that I remembered that were in the butter my therapists used. I already knew I wanted Coffee Butter, but I needed to find something else that would work. I thought Mango Butter to help keep the balm pliable, White Cocoa Butter and Beeswax would help keep the balm firm, and Lanolin would give the balm the stiff drag I had fallen in love with. The first attempt wasn’t what I was looking for, so I went to find some help from the Technical Support Team. I was given some suggestions to add to the first attempt. Shea Oil, Avocado Oil, and Cyclomethicone were the three items that were suggested. I made 4 variations of the Body Balm, and each variation contained 17 grams of the first (failed or undesirable) attempt.

So, instead of having you make my funky batch, I have worked through the variation so you get to a good batch the first attempt. If you want to make my original then go to this Recipes Section link: here. You can then make my first attempt and the 4 variations. Today, I’m going to share the Body Balm recipe with Variation #2, which is my favorite.

Collect needed items:
Coffee Butter
Mango Butter
White Cocoa Butter
Lanolin
Beeswax
Shea Oil
Scale
Lotion Bar Tubes
Lotion Bar Filling Tray
Microwave safe container for mixing ingredients
Microwave
Spoon
Fragrance Oil if desired
Transfer Pipettes

The Lotion Bar Filling Tray helps fill 20 Lotion Bar Tubes and each tube holds 0.75 ounces. To find out how much Body Balm I needed to make, I simply calculated 20 x 0.75 = 14 ounces. I decided that I would convert the recipe to percentages so I could use any method of measurement and amount I wanted.

Recipe in Percentage
13% Coffee Butter
6% Mango Butter
17% White Cocoa Butter
12% Lanolin
17% Beeswax
35% Shea Oil

As I stated earlier, I need 15 ounces for 20 Lotion Bar Tubes. I multiplied the 15 ounces by the percentage to find each ingredients needed amount in ounces. The math looks like this Total Weight Needed (A) X Percentage of Material (B) = Weight of specific item (C) in same unit of measure used for A.

Recipe we are using today
1.95 ounces Coffee Butter (15 ounces * 13% = 1.95 ounces)
0.9 ounces Mango Butter
2.55 ounces White Cocoa Butter
1.8 ounces Lanolin
2.55 ounces Beeswax
5.25 ounces Shea Oil

Weigh all ingredients into the microwave safe container and microwave for _____. The beeswax will take the most amount of time to melt. If you stir the mixture periodically, the beeswax melt more quickly. Once everything is melted, pour into the lotion bar tubes using the filling tray. Allow the balm to cool and then scrape the top of the filling tray. Now remove the lotion bar tubes from the filling trays. If you have any other questions, refer to Plastic Tom’s Tutorial.

Once the lotion bar tubes have been filled and removed from the filling tray, cap the tubes. These are now ready for labels!

Notes:
This recipe will actually fill 21 tubes. I had made a slight calculation error and transposed some numbers on my tube weight in my notes. The Lotion Bar Tube will hold 0.70 ounces of this recipe. I apologize for my error on the weigh.

Notes:
If you are just wanting to make a small test batch, here is the test batch size.

Recipe for Test Batch
3.5 grams Coffee Butter
1.5 grams Mango Butter
4.5 grams White Cocoa Butter
3.0 grams Lanolin
4.5 grams Beeswax
9.0 grams Shea Oil

This will fill one Lotion Bar Tube, with a tiny bit extra to use immediately.

Next week is all about finishing up the Mother’s Day Gift Baskets!

A close up of my arm two years later.

I’m once of those M&P soapers that gets jealous over the swirled soaps we made for the Cold Process Soap Week. I couldn’t stay jealous, so I decided to resolve the issue and make a swirled soap for M&P soap.

Collect needed items:
White Melt and Pour Soap
Transparent Melt and Pour Soap
Blackberry Sage Fragrance Oil
Brick Red Color
Big Bar Soap Mold
2 Containers for melting soap
Transfer Pipette
Straw or chopstick for stirring
Mixing Spoon
Measuring Spoon

In one container, measure a small amount of White Melt and Pour Soap (approximately 3 oz). Melt this soap. In the other container, melt the Transparent Melt and Pour Soap (approximately 13 oz). Once the soap is melted in both containers, add 1 mL of Blackberry Sage Fragrance Oil to the White Melt and Pour Soap, and add 4 mL of Blackberry Sage Fragrance Oil to the Transparent Melt and Pour Soap. Pour the large amount of Transparent Melt and Pour Soap into the mold, leaving some space left for the colored soap. Stir the soap while it is in the mold, so it can be cooler for the colored soap. If it is too hot, the soap will not swirl correctly. Add 1/4 teaspoon of Brick Red Color to the White Melt and Pour Soap. Stir in the color. Once the color is completely mixed into the soap, pour half into each bar mold and swirl the color with the straw. Allow to cool and then remove from the mold and cut.

Notes:
If the soap is too hot, it will mix together and you won’t have defined swirls.

Next week is all about fun with Lotion! Head to toe moisturizing and enjoying it!

Soap #1
Eucalyptus Spearmint Light Luffa Soap

Transparent Melt and Pour Soap
Eucalyptus Spearmint Fragrance Oil
Ground Luffa Fiber
Blue and Yellow Colors from January 12 2009
Oval Soap Mold
Container for melting soap
Transfer Pipette
Mixing Spoon
Measuring Spoon

Melt the Transparent Melt and Pour soap. I usually take about 2 ½ minutes in the microwave for the or 1 pound of soap I’m melting. Once the soap is mostly melted, stir the soap to melt the small chunks still in the soap. This is done to prevent the soap from getting too hot and making it so you possibly burn yourself. Once the soap is melted, add 3 drops of Blue color and 2 drops of Yellow color. Stir in color and mix until soap is colored. Add 4 mL of Eucalyptus Spearmint Fragrance Oil. Add 1/2 teaspoon of the ground luffa and stir in to the soap. Pour into the Oval Soap Mold. I had 1 ounce left after filling the molds, so I filled a small heart from the Bath Fizzy Hearts post on April 1st. Allow the soap to cool and then pop the soap out of the molds. Tada! The soap is now ready to use.

This problem can be solved by making a Blooming Bath Oil. What is a Blooming Bath Oil? A Blooming Bath Oil is a bath oil that has an emulsifier mixed with the oil, so the oil mixes with the water instead of floating on the top of the tub! This bath oil will separate into layers, so you just need to shake it up before pouring into the tub. Think of a vinaigrette salad dressing, because the oil and vinegar must be mixed together before pouring over your salad. Who would want just oil on their salad when they were expecting the vinaigrette mixture? This is how a Blooming Bath Oil works, because you don’t want just oil in your tub.

Today we are going to make a Blooming Bath Oil with Sesame Oil and Polysorbate 20. I’m using the Sesame Oil because it is an oil that is light on the skin, yet rich in great nutrients for the skin. The Polysorbate 20 is going to be used because it not likely to foam very much.

Collect needed items:
Polysorbate 20 (You can use Polysorbate 80 if you desire)
Sesame Oil
Fragrance or Essential Oil of your choice (I’m going to use Rose Fragrance Oil)
Scale
Beaker or other container for mixing (optional)
Containers for finished product (I used the 2 oz Clear PET Oval Bottle, Size 20 and 20 mm Black Non Dispensing Caps)

Recipe
1 ounce of Polysorbate 20
4 ounces of Sesame Oil
.06 ounces Rose Fragrance Oil

Weigh all ingredients into mixing container, or if you wish, you can weigh directly into a bottle of your choice. Stir ingredients together if you measured into a mixing container or you can cap and shake the bottle if you filled a bottle.

Notes:
If you don’t want to use Sesame Oil but you want to use a light oil, I would recommend giving Rice Bran Oil a try.

These Blooming Bath Oils will be included in the Mother’s Day Gift Baskets!

Next week is all about fun with Melt & Pour soap! Swirls, toys, shapes and curls! Great fun for an afternoon with the kids or for some peaceful time by yourself.

Let’s make our regular test batch type of soap. If you missed the original week of cold process testing, you should look here.

6 ounces Hydrogenated Soy
5 ounces Coconut Oil
4 ounces Olive Oil
1 ounce Shea Butter

2.2 ounces lye
6 fl oz water

We are going to use the higher end of the water recommendations in the Lye Calculator so we can mix the powder in easily. We are also making this soap in dry weather so the soap will dry/cure quickly. If you are making this in a humid location, please use a dehumidifier to help dry out the soaps.

Weighing time: 8 minutes
Adding lye to water: 5 seconds, followed by 60 seconds of stirring
Heating of oils time: 2 minutes
Pouring lye solution into the fat mixture: 5 seconds
Using immersion blender to mix soap solution: 90 seconds
Pour into mold: 10 seconds
Allow soap to rest: 24 hours

2 tsp rose hip powder

Pour the majority of the soap into the prepared mold. Leave about 1/2 cup remaining in your mixing vessel. Add rose hip powder and stir well. Dollop the colored soap on the white soap in the mold. Use a Q-tip or small painting brush to swirl. This shallow mold will have a better swirl with a stick that has some kind of texture to assist in spreading the colored soap. Think of this as more fingers to make the swirls.

Place a heating pad on the counter. Set to low. Place a cake/cookie cooling rack over the heating pad. Set the mold on the cooling rack. Leave in place for about 2 hours. Remove the heating pad.

We are providing a bit of extra heat because we received snow over the weekend and through the night. It is quite cool here. Instead of worrying about the soap losing all of its heat, we will add a bit of supplemental heat to make sure the soap will go through gel phase. In the summer time I would just turn off the air conditioner and allow the soap to stay warm.

If you have curious cats or children, cover the mold with a box and check on it every half hour. If you have a house free of curious fingers, just leave the soap in the open.

If you are concerned about any soda ash developing on the exposed surface of the soap, then cover it with Saran Wrap. We like this heavy plastic wrap because it doesn’t stick to everything in sight and require two people to place it.

Uncover the soap in 24 hours. If the soap doesn’t want to easily come out of the mold then allow it to sit for another day. Dehydration is helpful to removal from the mold. Once the soap is in the mold for 48 hours, try to unmold. If the soap still doesn’t want to come out of the mold, then place the mold in the freezer. If the soap is extremely scented try putting ice in a cardboard box lined with a plastic bag instead. It is a difficult thing to explain to your family that the ice, meats, veggies and Popsicles taste like Patchouly. The goal is to make the soap cold, not flavor all the refrigerator foods. Freeze for about 20 to 40 minutes. Remove the soap and allow it sit on the counter until the soap mold is sweaty with condensation. Press gently on the mold until the soap releases. If the soap is slow to release try freezing again. Patience is key. We find only a few soaps are this difficult to remove, but these difficult soaps can certainly try the patience of a good soapmaker. Your soaps, and soap molds, will appreciate the gentle care.

Next week is all about fun with Melt & Pour soap! Swirls, toys, shapes and curls! Great fun for an afternoon with the kids or for some peaceful time by yourself.

Collect your needed items:
Scale
Citric Acid
Baking Soda
Cornstarch
Fragrance Oil (I’m going to use Strawberries & Champagne.)
Purple Raspberry Spray Color made on January 19 2009.
Plain water spray
Silicone heart mold
Metal mixing bowl and metal spoon
4 x6 flat bags
ribbon

First things first.  We need to WEIGH these ingredients.  In the past we have used recipes that were done by volume, but this recipe is different.  Use your scale. If you are struggling with getting a scale, then email us for some hints.  Choosing a good scale isn’t hard, once you know what to look for.

I have now weighed the citric acid, baking soda, and cornstarch.  Mix gently with the metal spoon.

Add the fragrance oil and mix to break up all clumps.  This mixture must be a free-flowing powder before we start adding color and water.

Mist lightly with the plain water bottle.  Two to four sprays should be plenty.  We are trying to add enough water to the dry chemicals so we can compress them into the mold, we don’t want to start the fizzing reaction just yet.  Stir, or fold over, the powder to mix thoroughly and not create a dust cloud in your kitchen.

Let’s spray again.  Stir gently.

This time we will spray color.  Two to four sprays are plenty.  Mix again.  We will continue in this process of adding color or plain water to the mixture just until the whole mixture is slightly damp.  The mixture should hold together when tightly compressed.  (See the clod in my hand?)

Let’s press into the mold.  Use the back of a spoon or a tamper to compress this powder completely.  Each mold was filled with 2 tablespoons of dry/damp mixture before tamping begins.

We are using a silicone mold so removal is easy as pie.  Leave the tamped hearts to dry overnight.

In the morning we remove the mold and…. Viola!  Our hearts are ready for packaging.

I have used the 4*6 flat bags for packaging these hearts.  I have now tied with a ribbon yarn.

Now wasn’t that easy?

Notes:
If you don’t want to press the mixture into molds, you can press the mixture into a tablespoon and then lightly tap the tablespoon into your hand to release it. You can make multiple half ball fizzies and set them aside to dry where they won’t be bothered.

Next week is all about fun with Melt & Pour soap! Swirls, toys, shapes and curls! Great fun for an afternoon with the kids or for some peaceful time by yourself.