Soaping with Basil Essential Oil

#basilessentialoil #basilscentedsoap #soapexperiments

September 11, 2015

Basil....we both love it in tomato sauce, in a salad, just rubbing our hands on a plant. The smell and taste are intoxicating.  What is our natural progression with basil? Yep, you guessed it - in soap!  

Alison and I took the plunge and bought some Basil Essential Oil from New Directions Aromatics. Out of the bottle it is pretty strong and leaned a little towards Anise or Licorice. The Basil smell is there, it just doesn't smell like the plant in my yard.  Ok, we figure it will probably change somewhat when we make a batch of soap with it, but (isn't there always a but) what to mix it with?

We jumped online and found suggestions on what smells good with basil EO in several places; we made a list of the ones we actually had and then the fun started.

We had bottles of EOs and FOs all over the place,  and we tried all sorts of combinations.

If it was something we kind of liked we used cut up paper towels and dropped scent combinations on them.  1 drop of basil to 2 drops of peppercorn or 2 drops of basil to two drops of peppercorn, honestly it was crazy.

We let the fragrance combos dry out, smelled them again and finally narrowed it down to 4 combinations that we would try in test batches.

We got busy and mixed up our oils and lye/water, mixing to just emulsified, a really, really light trace.  Then we divided the batter into four separate containers; Alison and I both made two batches.

Below we will show you how each scent combination turned out from picking the colors to finished pictures.

We are hopeful that we won't confuse you to much.

Mixed the lye water and oils

First:  Basil & Lemon Verbena

#1 Basil EO mixed with Lemon Verbena FO from +Rustic Escentuals, 

for color we decided on Pistachio and Buttercup Micas also from Rustic.

We figured lemon (yellow) basil (green) duh!

freshly poured into the mold and swirled a bit

24 hours later, yes we had ash

what it looked like after we steamed the ash off

Here are the 4 cut bars. They do have a swirly thing going on, but it sure wasn't what I had planned.

It smells great, but it's a little Basil-heavy. We will wait and see if it morphs out as it cures, but if not we probably won't use as much basil next time.

We put the left over batter in some of our silicone molds to get the butterfly and rose.

Second:  Basil and Peppercorn

#2 is Basil EO mixed with Peppercorn FO

Obviously the Aborigine Amber Mica from +Rustic Escentuals is the brown of the pepper. The Caribbean Kiss Mica (from Rustic) is the, well, we just liked the combination.

Freshly poured, I swirled the inside and then added the remaining soap and did a little foo foo swirl on the top.

After 24 hours, ash again

After we steamed the ash off

And here are the 4 bars of Basil Peppercorn soap

Here are the "overflow" pieces for this one.

I was happy to see my inner swirling kind of worked. It made for an interesting soap.

Third:  Basil, Litsea Cubeba and Tangerine

#3 is a combination of 3 EOs, Basil, Litsea Cubeba from +Lebermuth Co.  and Tangerine from +Bramble Berry.  You are probably wondering, "How in the world did they come up with that combination???" Go back and look at the first picture!

We decided against using the green in this one. There was too much going on, and the soap was thickening too fast.

This is what it looked like freshly poured and after Alison had layered the inside and swirled the top.

Once again ash after 24 hours curing.

And after we steamed and right before we cut it.

Nice bright bars of soap, once again the Basil is the dominant smell. We hope with time it will calm down. 

Overflow batter pieces.

I think it looks pretty even if we skipped the green.

Fourth:  Basil and Clove Bud 

#4 - We went back to two EOs, the Basil mixed with Clove Bud from +Natures Garden, the colors are Moss Green Mica from Nurture Soaps to represent the basil and  Passionata Mica from +Rustic Escentuals to represent the clove bud. 

Alison left some of her batter uncolored and designed her soap with swirling in mind.

Once again ash, easily removed with steam.

How Alison's soap looked after curing 24 hours and after we steamed it.

Beautifully swirled soap.

Once again we discovered that a little Basil goes a long way.  Next time we will use a lot less Basil, but these bars are still lovely and smell terrific.

They will be cured October 23, 2015

Basil - not just for Caprese Salads!