About the Author
Melanie Teegarden
Articles by Melanie Teegarden
Evergreen Tree Care and Diseases
Learning the basics of evergreen tree care can yield a bounty of useful products for your homestead. In addition to shade, wind insulation, and oxygen production, various evergreens can yield nuts, edible buds, as well as inner bark and needles for tea.
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How to Make Natural Deer Repellent
Perhaps your garden had some unwelcome attention from foragers last year, and your crops suffered. Maybe you have tender, young trees on the property and worry about deer stripping bark from their trunks in the cold, bare days of early spring, or pushing them over as they rub the velvet from their antlers in the fall.
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How to Make Goat Milk Soap in 7 Easy Steps
Learning how to make goat milk soap doesn’t have to be complicated. Follow our step-by-step goat milk soap recipe and see for yourself.
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Can You Make Goat Milk Soap Without Handling Lye?
The idea of making goat milk soap without handling lye is certainly appealing, but the truth is that somewhere along the line, someone has had to use lye in order to make soap.
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Soap Making Oil Chart
In creating a soap making oil chart, I am hoping to clear up some confusion regarding which are the best oils for soap making. Different oils have different fatty acid content and give different properties to the finished soap.
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Using Fresh Produce as Soap Ingredients
There are many botanical ingredients you can use as cold process soap ingredients. Lavender and rose petals are classics, and Himalayan Pink Salt soaps are trendy and inviting.
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How to Make Body Wash
Making body wash is an easy and rewarding experience. Learning how to make body wash is a simple and fun activity, well-suited to small group projects or craft time with the kids.
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Inexpensive Cold Process Soap Supplies
Buying cold process soap supplies doesn’t have to be a major expenditure. Most items can be found locally, at grocery and hardware stores.
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DIY Sugar Scrub: Coconut Oil and Caster Sugar
In this article on sugar scrubs using coconut oil, I will offer two different DIY sugar scrub coconut oil recipes. We will also discuss the best sugar for sugar scrub recipes.
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Making Soap Dough for Decorating Body Bars
This recipe uses the heat transfer method to melt the oils. This means that the fresh, hot lye water is used to melt the coconut oil completely, then the other two oils are added to help further cool down the batter.
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Using Modern Soapmaking’s Essential Oil Calculator
In this article, I will briefly address the art of perfumery as it applies to essential oils in soap. I will then conduct a step-by-step exploration of the Essential Oil Dilution Calculator and how to use it to keep your products both fragrant and safe.
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Making Natural Soap, and Other Soap Myths
Do you dream of making natural soap at home? Unless you are willing to collect ashes to make your own lye, chances are that at least some portion of your natural soap will be laboratory created, or at the very least refined.
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A Basic Tallow Soap Recipe
Tallow soap has many wonderful qualities to recommend it, such as a hard, long-lasting bar and creamy lather. It has similar qualities in soap as palm oil. It can also be very emollient when combined with other soap making oils, such as olive oil.
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Hot and Cold Process Lard Soap Recipes
A lard soap recipe, in addition to containing a significant quantity of lard, should also contain complementary fats to bolster bubbles and skin conditioning properties.
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Rebatching Soap: How to Save Failed Recipes
Rebatching soap is an excellent way to prevent waste and turn your valuable oils and fats into a useful product, even if mistakes have left the soap imperfect or unsafe to use.
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