Clay is a wonderful addition to a bar of natural handmade soap. It’s structure means that it is great at absorbing dirt and oils from the skin and leave it looking fresh and soft. This makes it particularly good for oily skin although normal and dry skin may also feel the benefits. For dry
Today I’ll be making a series of soap with clay as an additive. This is the first of two posts about this. In this post, I’m using French green clay, Rose clay, RedClay.
French Green clay is an illite clay. This means that it is good at absorbing water, oils and toxins from the skin. It is only recommended for those with normal to oily skin. Those with sensitive or dry skin should avoid this one as it is too drying.
Rose clay is made from both red and white kaolin clays and is much more gentle. It doesn’t strip the skin of oils or moisture but it still removes oil and dirt.
Red clay is mainly composed of montmorillonite which is fantastic at removing dirt and oils from the skin. It is brilliant for oily skin as it is a bit more drying than the other types mentioned previously. This one should definitely be avoided if you have dry or sensitive skin.
As these clay soaps are part of our natural series, we are using essential oils and no synthetic colours. The resulting colour of the soap will be the colour of the clays we use as part of the recipe. If the essential oils have a strong colour (like orange does) then it will also contribute towards the colour of the soap.
The French green clay soap will be scented with lemongrass and lime and we will decorate it with rosebuds and calendula petals.
The red clay soap will be scented with cedarwood, orange and lemongrass. We will decorate it with tea leaves
The pink clay soap will be scented with palmarosa and bergamot and will be decorated with Himalayan pink salt
The recipe we are using is the same one we used for all our natural soaps so far. It is palm-free and vegan and so will suit most people.
I’ll also be adding 2 teaspoons of clay per pound/500g. You can add more than this if you like but it will add a very gentle scrub to the soap if added at higher concentrations.
Weigh all the hard oils into a large plastic bowl and melt them. A microwave is handy but you can do this in a pot if you prefer. Add the liquid oils and leave to cool.
Make up the lye solution. To get detailed instructions on how to do this, grab my guide to making your first soap here.
Make sure you are wearing your goggles and gloves. Weigh out your lye and then weigh out your water in a separate container. Add the lye to the water and stir for a few minutes. Cover and then leave to cool in a safe place.
Weigh out your fragrance and clay.
So now you should have a bowl with your cooled oils (around 25-30 degrees
Blend with a stick blender until you reach trace. This is when you can see a faint trace of soap mixture on the surface when you drizzle the soap mix in. you don’t want it to be too thick at this stage as we will be mixing even more in the next stage.
Add your essential oils and clay and blend even more. If you wanted to make a swirl in your soap you could just add clay to one part of your soap batter. Split it into two jugs and add the clay to one. Then swirl as you like. This would be particularly effective with the darker clays. I opted to just make a single colour soap with mine.
Once all the clay has been distributed, pour the soap mixture into a lined mould.
Texture the top of the soap if you like. For all the clay soap in this series, I’m just pulling the soap in from the sides with a teaspoon. You can texture whatever way you prefer.
I’m adding some pink Himalayan sea salt to the top of this soap for decoration.
Leave to set up overnight. Then remove from the mould, cut and leave to cure for 4-6 weeks. Make sure that there is good air circulation around the soap so that water can evaporate from it.
The procedure is the same for any of the clays used and you can vary the look by adding different decorations or vary the scent by choosing different essential oil blends.
I hope you liked this little video. Look out for part 2 in which I make another 3 clay soaps (I just can’t get enough of them!).
If you’d like to be notified when a new post goes live or keep up to date about what is happening here at Hazelrock House you can sign up to become a Housemate! I’ll send you the occasional email to keep in touch. Don’t worry, I’ll keep your email safe and I hate spam as much as you do. Sign up in the sidebar or click the picture below.
