Natural Eye Makeup Remover

The first thing that most women do before going to bed is to remove their makeup. I found out by accident that you can use coconut oil. It has so many uses. I keep a container of coconut oil in my kitchen and one in my bedroom. I also use it in my homemade lotions. But found out that it also works great as a eye makeup remover. What?! I put some on my face one day because my lotion container was in a different room. Rubbing it over my eyes and completely forgetting that my full clown face is on...aka makeup lol Well it was down my cheeks after one swipe. Enter thought bubble!! I actually put some on my eyelids and used a makeup cotton pad and wow. All gone! It makes sense because it's a fat but not something that I would normally think to remove my makeup. I've been using it for the past 2 months and even my eye lashes have grown, thickened and even naturally curl right now. That is huge for someone that is hypothyroid as we are constantly losing hair, including eye lashes and eye brows. I even noticed that because I use coconut oil in my lotions that my eye brow are also filling out because the hairs are growing as well.  I wish this was a planned experiment because I would of taken before and after pictures of my eye lashes and the increased length. But just try it yourself and you will see it in a few weeks. I use the solid coconut oil and just let it slightly melt in my fingers and then apply. A little goes a long way and is cheaper than buying the eye makeup remover at the store. I'm all about natural and saving money at the same time. :)

2 Coconut Oil Soap Recipes

I've been making my own soap for almost a year now. I'm not even close to being an expert but have a pretty good understanding of the process. I keep my soap extremely basic and colour free because this is for my personal use and colour is just so that your bars look nice. I can close my eyes and pretend they're pretty. Haha So the easiest and best cleansing soap I've made to date is from straight coconut oil. I make 2 different coconut oil recipes. One is for laundry which is superfatted at 1% and the other is to wash hair and body which is superfatted at 20%.

Recipe #1 for laundry

33 oz coconut oil

5.9 oz lye

12 oz water

0.5-1 oz essential oil (optional, I don't use any scent)

Recipe #2 for hair and body

33 oz coconut oil

4.8 oz lye

9.6 oz water

1.5 oz essential oil (my favourite is lemon or peppermint bars)

Both of these recipes are made the same way. If you have never made your own soap before I would do some research on it first. The reaction between lye and water can be extremely dangerous if not done correctly. Always add the lye to the water to avoid this type of reaction and always wear protective gear such as goggles, gloves, long sleeves and mask. Safety first!

1) Measure out all of your ingredients. Make sure that the containers that you are using are for your soap making only. You don't want to cross contaminate with food.

2) Pour your lye into your water. I normally do this outside as the initial gases created can be quite strong. Once mixed I bring it back in the house. The reaction between the lye and water will make the liquid extremely hot so be careful.

3) Melt your coconut oil on your stove. Place a thermometer in the container to keep track of the temperature. You don't need the coconut oil so hot as coconut will melt quickly but you want the lye mixture and coconut oil to be about the same temperature when mixing. I heat my coconut oil to about 130-140° and then remove from the stove to cool.

4) Place a thermometer in the lye mixture and wait til the temperatures of both cool down to about 110°-120°. Some soap makers mix at different temperatures but this works just fine for me.

5) When the desired temperature has been reached mix the coconut oil and lye water together.

6) With a stick blender you will mix them together until you reach something called trace. You will know it has been reached when you mixture looks like pudding. This is the point where I add my essential oil. Do some research as every essential oil reacts different and might need to be added at a different step or temperature. Now back to tracing. It can take 5-10 minutes to reach but you will know when you get there. A blending stick is about $12 so please invest in one. I tried doing this with a mixer and it took about 45 minutes. Go buy the stick blender! lol

7) Pour in soap mold.  If you don't have a soap mold you can place parchment paper inside a loaf pan. 
8) Place in the oven at 165° for about an hour.This step will speed up the curing process. Normally you would let your bars cure for about 4-6 weeks to let the lye cure out of your bars before use. This oven hot process will speed up the curing process and could be used the next day or within a few days as long as the pH levels test normal.

8) Let your bars cool overnight and then take them out of the molds.

9) Test your bars with pH papers, the zap test or red cabbage test that I mentioned in my previous post 100% coconut oil soap recipe.

Voilà! Ready to use soap bars for laundry or for the shower. There are many on-line tools for soap making. I use the website The Sage to help with my lye, water and fragrance calculations when making a new recipe. Create your own recipes and have fun with it! :)

New Soap Recipe - 100% Coconut Oil

So I'm fairly new to the cold soap process. I've made about 1/2 a dozen batches of soap and have a pretty good understanding now of the reaction between lye and water as well as tracing. The only thing that I was looking for was a soap recipe that wouldn't make my soap bars turn to mush after halfway used up and was probably my lack of understanding on the recipes I was choosing on-line. I experimented with a few different ratios and the last batch I made wasn't too bad which was equal parts of coconut oil, olive oil and lard (Crisco). I try to keep my recipes simple as these are just for my own personal use and want to make sure that the ingredients are easy to find locally. I did some research and found that some people use 100% coconut oil and superfatted at 20% which pretty much goes against the rules of soap making but people swear by the results. I tried a batch this weekend and even after the first day it was just as hard as the soap that you would find at the store.  There was a really good lather and felt good on my skin. Success!!  

These are the soap bars removed from their mold the next morning.

Typically you have to wait 4-6 weeks with the cold process method to wait for the lye to cure out of the soap. I use the hot oven process where you keep the temperature of the soap above 160° for about an hour. This speeds up the curing process. There are a few DIY ways to check if the pH is too high before using if you don't want to buy ph papers or like me didn't even know where to look for them. The old method from way back in the day is to do the ZAP test where you stick you tongue on the soap.  If it zaps like when you put your tongue on a battery, there is still too much lye in your soap and is not yet safe for use.  Another way is to puree red cabbage into distilled water, then filter the solids out. It is important to use distilled water as there are no contaminates it it. Put a few drops of the filtered liquid directly on the soap and if the liquid is still lye heavy it will turn green. If the soap is balanced it will turn blue. I've tried both methods and work, only depends if you have red cabbage on hand. Here are some pics below but please don't judge as I took these pictures when I did my first batch so the soap is not so pretty. LOL

               

The first picture is my filtered liquid.  I used a dropper to place a few drops right on the soap. In the last picture you see that the colour of the drops have turned from purple to blue showing that the soap pH is balanced and safe for use. 

DIY Laundry Soap

I've been using soap nuts for about a year now but am finding it harder to buy locally.  I've done some research and have made a batch of laundry soap with coconut oil soap bars that I made superfatted at 1%.  I grated the bars and added baking soda and citric acid. Use just like any laundry detergent and use vinegar as a rinse aid. This works in an HE machine as that is what I have at home. Worked very well. This is my new laundry detergent recipe. :)

The white bars on the right are the coconut oil bars superfatted at 1%

Final product with mixture of grated soap, baking soda and citric acid.