Watermelon Soaps

I love watermelons, and ate them a lot when growing up. Not cut up in small cubes like I cut it for my hubby, but I ate it straight from the slice I was given, it was messy, but yummy. Imagine my surprise five years ago when one of my allergy test show me to be allergic to watermelons! So nowadays I can only eat very small portions of it, since it is not an allergy that will cause me to stop breathing, but rather a tummy ache instead.

After many years of seeing so many watermelon soaps, I decided it was time to make one myself. I have made watermelon soap embeds before, but not an actual soap bar. I have seen videos of watermelon fragrances misbehaving so I wanted to keep the design fairly simple (one single color) with watermelon slices embeds made before hand.

I decided to make two soaps with it, one scented straight up with the watermelon fragrance from New Direction aromatics, and another one blended with Lemon Crazy from Aztec Candle (the closest thing I had to a lime fragrance). In El Salvador we used to add lime and salt to almost everything we ate (salads, mango, jicama, watermelons), so when I cut watermelon for my husband, I usually sprinkle it with lime and salt as well, and he really likes it that way now. This is way I wanted to do that fragrance blend.

By the way, this summer out of the many watermelons we have bought, I got two watermelons that were duds (one was not ripe enough, another one was too ripe). When that happens, I make watermelon juice with it instead. Adding sugar to the one that was not ripe enough. It is very easy to do, I just cut it into chunks and added them to the blender until it is all liquid! It makes for a refreshing drink in this heat.

Here is the video of the making and below the supplies.

Colorant:

1/4 tsp Pink Neon mica from Make your own

Molds:

Two 4″ Silicone mold

Fragrance:

1.5 oz of Watermelon from New Direction Aromatics

0.5 oz of Lemon Crazy from Aztec Candle

It has been almost 4 weeks since I made the soap and the scent has remained, the soap that has lemon still has the distinct scent of watermelon being prevalent, and the lemon notes seemed to have softened though. Overall I am pleased with the scent, it did not discolor (though I used a small amount of stabilizer, as it has 0.33% of vanillin), it behaved fairly well, and it smells like watermelon chewing gum. It is not a super duper strong scent, but it did not fade either. I would wish it was a bit stronger because I prefer strong scents.

Embeds

To make the embeds I used red, white and green soap dough. Very similar process to my previous watermelon embeds, except in a much smaller scale as shown in the video at the beginning. Tools used:

Equipment

• List of regular equipment
• Long and skinny spatulas

Safety Equipment:

• Nitrile gloves
• Facial Shield (I use either a facial shield or the goggles below)
• Safety Goggles
• Respirator  (I use this when mixing the lye, I mix the lye in the window sill, window opened, with a pedestal fan blowing the fumes away, better yet, freeze your distilled water prior) I also try to wear long sleeves, pants and closed shoes.  In my personal experience, most of my near misses (when I feel my skin itching or a slight burning sensation), or when I come contact with the soap batter, have happened when I am wiping down the containers, when I am almost done.
  

Recipe Totals

Please note that this recipe has a a very low superfat* percentage, dual lye and a considerable discount-lye water concentration*. If you are a beginner, a recipe like this one might be better.

Needed Ingredients

Ingredient	Gram(s)	Ounce(s)	Pounds(s)	Oil %
Coconut Oil, 76 deg	229.63	8.10	0.51	24.99%
Ricinus Oil (Castor Oil)	73.43	2.59	0.16	7.99%
Karite Butter (Shea)	64.35	2.27	0.14	7%
Olive Oil – All Grades	256	9.03	0.56	27.86%
Lard	273.29	9.64	0.60	29.74%
Mango Butter	11.06	0.39	0.02	1.20%
Cocoa Butter	11.06	0.39	0.02	1.20%
Ingredient	Gram(s)	Ounce(s)	Pounds(s)	Batch %
Lye – NaOH 100% Purity (5% Superfat)	127.78	4.51	0.28	10.24%
Water (40% Lye + 60% Water Solution)** I added 2 oz extra of water to this amount	191.67	6.76	0.42	15.35%
Total Oils	918.81	32.41	2.03	73.60%
Soap Weight (Pre-Cook)	1,248.35	44.03	2.75	100%

Custom Additives

Add with the Fats
Rosemary oleoresin	0.01 oz	0.23 g
Add at trace
EDTA mixed with water	0.23 oz	6.45 g

Some concepts explained:

*SUPERFAT:

By now you probably know that lye (sodium hydroxide) converts oils into soap, through a process called saponification.  And you probably also know that there are specific amounts needed of each for this to happen.    Because each soap has a different SAPonification value, different amounts of lye are needed for each oil.

Superfatting sounds like something I like to do to myself when I keep eating after I feel full.  But in the soap world, many will know it is when you either add more oils or less lye than it is required.  Let’s say, hypothetically, that you need 3 oz of lye to convert 16 oz of manacao oil  (totally made up oil) into soap. If you only use 2.5 oz of lye instead of 3, that means that a percentage of the manaco oil will not become soap, but will remain an oil.  And this is desirable as that extra oil will cause the soap to become more gentle on your skin, by reducing its cleansing ability slightly.   But if you use 4 oz of lye instead of 3, that means all 16 oz of manacao oil will become soap, and not only that, there will be extra lye floating around.  That extra lye will be looking for more oil to convert to soap, that oil could be the natural skin oils, which means this soap can burn or irritate the skin.

Usually superfat of at least 3% is recommended as oils properties may change from crop to crop. But even if you had a 0% superfat soap, it would still be gentle as handmade soap creates glycerin, which is a skin humectant. (From most commercially produced soap, glycerin is removed to be sold separately).

*LYE CONCENTRATION / WATER DISCOUNT:

Most soap calculators will give you the amount of water needed to mix the lye with, based on traditional cooking methods of making soap, what we now know as hot process. This is a big percentage of water (38% of the oils) because a lot of it would evaporate through the cooking process. However, for cold process soap this is usually too much water, which can lead to a lot of soda ash or a lot of shrinkage during the cure.

This blogpost explains it better (from modern soapmaking).