Activated charcoal soap and salve

Since I started making my own soap, I've been enjoying trying new recipes, especially adapting them to use beef tallow. See my post Sustainable soap - 100% tallow! for most about why I want to use up the tallow rendered from our own beef.

I already sell 100% tallow soap (pure and simple), pink clay soap (pretty pink), lemon balm soap (green herb), neem oil soap (stinky neem) and coffee grounds soap (true grit) in my Etsy shop, and just recently I added my new black magic charcoal soap. See the links at the end of this post for the other recipes.

When I read about how this lady found that activated charcoal soap helped with adult acne, I really wanted to make some and give it a try. I have had acne on and off since high school, and it really bugs me. I found a a recipe for ctivated charcoal soap here, and then adapted it to suit tallow, with 25% coconut oil for suds. It makes a really nice face wash, although I can't say its cured my acne completely.

I ordered activated charcoal powder here (if you are going to make a few recipes with it, then buy the powder not the capsules, I couldn't be bothered opening them all to get enough out for soap!). You don't need much at a time, so a 150g jar should last for a while. (Here's a similar product on Amazon - affiliate link).

Around the same time I saw the soap recipe I also saw this recipe for a charcoal drawing salve, which is supposed to be useful for skin conditions that need "drawing" like acne, boils and skin infections. I made my basic herbal salve, and added activated charcoal, bentonite clay, lavender and frankincense essential oils. It smells lovely. It does look grey on my skin, so its best to use at night (although it does also smudge on my pillow case).

Activated Charcoal Soap

500g tallow
250g coconut oil
250g olive oil
142g caustic
2 Tbsp activated charcoal
2Tbsp bentonite clay
Eucalyptus essential oil

See this post on Lovely Greens for general instructions for making cold process soap.

Activated Charcoal Salve
100mL olive oil (can be infused with skin healing herbs such as calendula)
10g beeswax

2 tsp activated charcoal
2 tsp bentonite clay
30 drops essential oil (e.g. 15 drops lavender, 15 drops frankincense)
2 drops vitamin E

See instructions here to make salve. Add the charcoal and clay powder after melting the beeswax in the oil, otherwise its hard to see if the beeswax is dissolved as the salve turns black!

What do you think? Are you keen to try activated charcoal soap and salve?

You can get all my tallow soap recipes in my eBook Make Your Own Natural Soap, more information here.

Would you like to try making your own soap from natural ingredients, but don’t know where to start?

This eBook will take you through everything you need to know to make simple soaps from natural ingredients, including herbs, clays, charcoal, oatmeal and coffee grounds.

It also explains how to use tallow in soap. Tallow is cheap and locally available, and it makes long-lasting moisturising soaps, it is an under-utilised ingredient in home soapmaking in my opinion. This eBook includes 10 recipes specifically designed for tallow soap.

Basic Tallow Soap
Pink Clay Soap
Green Herb Soap
True Grit Soap
Black Magic Soap
Salt Spa Soap
Honey and Oatmeal Soap
Neem Oil Soap
Sustainable Shaving soap
Cleaning Soap
Formulate your own

My other soap posts:

Natural soap using beef tallow

Beef tallow soap recipes

Sustainable soap - 100% tallow!

How to rebatch a soap disaster

Why use natural soaps and salves?

Neem oil soap and salve

Shaving soap

Soap with coffee grounds

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here . You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!). I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months. I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post! New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog. I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people. I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts. I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo. Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about...

How to make soap with beer (and tallow)

I may have mentioned this before.... soap making is addictive! Once you start, you just want to keep making more soap. And not the same soap, you want to try all sorts of different soaps. I made the mistake of joining a facebook group called Saponification Nation and now my facebook newsfeed is full of glorious soaps, in all colours and shapes, which makes it even harder to resist the urge to experiment. One soap that kept popping up a few weeks ago was soap made with beer. I generally prefer not to use ingredients just for the sake of it, I like to know that they are adding something to the properties of the finished soap. As you know, I don't like to use artificial ingredients either (colours or fragrances). When I read about beer in soap I found out that beer adds sugar to the mixture, which increases lather. I use tallow in my soap, which has limited lather, so anything that adds lather could improve the soap. ...

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