I brought this topic over here instead of the soap making forum. Although my ultimate goal is to incorporate this into a soap in the future.
I've been searching on the net and found that making a tincture with rubbing alcohol and jewelweed is harsh on the skin and can have some very severe side affects.
Plus I was wondering how to put alcohol into my soaps, as I didn't really want to do that.
I also read that it was good to put the fresh jewelweed plant into the blender and cover with water, or using just enough to be able to mix it up to a liquid state and pour into ice cubes or other containers and freeze to have available all year long.
This is something i'd rather do with my soaps, is put the Whole plant in there, if it's ground up into a liquid state wouldn't it work better on the skin than if it were in a tincture of rubbing alcohol?
What are some of the way s you 've used jewel weed in the past and do you keep it on hand for poisonivy use
I don't necessarily want this information for making soap although I am goin g to make soap one of these days for poison ivy. WE have a couple in our famil y that get highly allergic reactions to poison ivy, and i'd like to keep this stuff on hand since i'm growing it this year and after it seeds out I want to harvest it and make something for regular use.
Jewelweed
If it's a rubbing alcohol tincture of it is harsh on the skin, it's probably because of the rubbing alcohol. My understanding of this plant is that it has to be fresh to work. You take a fresh leaf and rub it on the spot. I also don't think a soap would work for poison ivy rash. From what I have read, soap spreads the oil that causes the rash because it is fat soluble. You might want to do more research on this herb.
I will before I make the soap.
If I blend the herb up in water and the blender and freeze it, it should work well on poisonivy shouldn't it?
I may not make the soap later on, I'd hate to make something that wouldn't work. there are poisonivy soaps out there today even burts bees has them, not sure what they use in their soaps to call it poison ivy I think they use a tincture in their soaps.
thanks for the help I appreciate it.
I've frozen jewelweed, I pureed it with aloe vera juice, and made ice cubes, they worked great. I was less impressed with jewel weed soap, I find that a high coconut soap that is drying helped more than the jewelweed soaps.