Natural Homemade Hand Milled Facial Soap Recipe
This all natural homemade facial soap recipe is wonderful for several reasons. One, it’s simple to make and is perfect for those who want to customize their own homemade soaps without delving into making cold process soaps with lye or using a melt and pour soap base. And two, it allows you to “beef” up your soap with ingredients your skin craves that are often too costly to use during the cold process soapmaking method. Adding them after the soap is made, allows you to not only use less of the ingredient, but also gain the benefits without fear the desired properties will be lost during the saponification process.
For this homemade facial soap recipe I added ingredients suited to dry and/or maturing skin. I do that a lot, I know, but next year is the big 4-0 and I’m trying to save face – literally – for as long as I can. It’s then ever so lightly scented with lavender and chamomile essential oils. If you have combination skin like I do that is prone to breakouts, you can add some tea tree oil to this recipe as well or even sub the rosehip seed oil with something like hazelnut oil which is a natural astringent. After all, customizing recipes to suit you is half the fun. The other half is finally getting to enjoy the end result!
Natural Hand Milled Rosehip Facial Soap Recipe
Ingredients:
28 oz. unscented cold process soap, grated
2 oz. shea butter
.5 oz. cocoa butter
2.5 oz. distilled water (or milk or even rosewater)
2 Tablespoons pink kaolin (or white cosmetic) clay
.5 oz. rosehip seed oil
.25 oz. sea buckthorn oil
1 teaspoon rosehips powder
2 Tablespoons coconut milk powder
.1 oz. lavender essential oil
.15 oz. German chamomile essential oil (at 3% dilution)
Directions:
I used my own unscented goat milk soap for this recipe that I grated two days after unmolding it. Fresher soap is easier to grate, however, the age of the soap isn’t super important. Using cold process handmade soap, however, is of utmost importance as typical commercial soaps aren’t really soap but are rather made of harsh foaming agents. These don’t rebatch quite the same way. (You can find my recipe for making an easy cold process goat milk soap here. To re-size the batch superfat at 6-7% with a 33% water discount.)
You’ll need a digital scale to weigh out the ingredients and a soap mold. I used the Crafters Choice™ Basic Round Silicone Soap Mold for this soap project. The final recipe will yield approximately 7 bars.
Begin by grating the unscented soap bars or loaf. Weigh out 28 oz. of soap using a digital scale and combine in a large stainless steel pot on the stove. Weigh out the water and add to the grated soap. Do the same with both the shea and cocoa butters. Then, using measuring spoons, measure out and add the powdered coconut milk, kaolin clay and rosehips powder. Set the heat on medium and mix, stirring occasionally.
Once the shea and cocoa butters have melted, reduce the heat to low and allow the soap to “cook” for a short time until it looks like it’s melting, then weigh out the rosehip seed oil, sea buckthorn oil and essential oils and stir into the soap until thoroughly combined.
Spoon the soap into your mold and allow the soap to harden fully before removing from the mold. If you used fresh soap allow your soap to finish curing for 3-6 weeks. If your soap was already cured, you can start using your new homemade facial soap whenever you like.
For more of my natural homemade soap, bath and body recipes, be sure to follow my DIY Bath and Body board on Pinterest. Or keep up with all of my new bath, beauty and skin care recipe by following me on Blog Lovin‘, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google + and Instagram!