# What went wrong?



## Lesley Susan Madigan (May 5, 2018)

I am very new to this but last Sunday I did a melt and pour. Glycerine base, red colour, rose petals and patchouli scent.

Being cautious I melted a small block of base and added dried rose petals, red colour and  the FO. I didn't use enough base maybe I should have added water or milk as it didn't fill the mould but once it cooled I had  a perfectly formed round soap okay it was about a quarter of an inch thick but it looked good, red and translucent so when I held it up to the light I could see the petals in it. It also smelt nice maybe a little weak on the scent and when I used it, it lathered beautifully  and felt lovely and soft but....

The colour stained my hands 

What did I do wrong?


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## cmzaha (May 5, 2018)

To much color and you cannot add water or milk to m&p. What type of colorant did you use and what m&p base? With coloring you have to use soap and body safe colorants, not crayons or candle colors. If you did not fill the mold you obviously did not melt down enough base. You could have melted additional m&p sprayed the set layer well with alcohol and poured on another layer. I do not know about using real rose petals in m&p, they turn black in cp soap but silk flowers can be used, taking in consideration I do not know what you used for rose petals.


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## jackznanakin (May 8, 2018)

definitely sounds like the colorant used. Just an FYI for later, rose petals in M & P can leave green and red spots where the heat of the soap makes the petals/leaves bleed.


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## Lesley Susan Madigan (May 10, 2018)

After being used a couple of times the excess colour vanished so I am going to be positive it was a first attempt after all it looks good, lathers well, smells great and doesn't leave my skin feeling dry like most soaps do 

So it's almost a success just need to balance the  colour

When I went to the workshop to learn how to do this they added milk to the base?

Colour was sold as suitable for soap/candle/bath bomb making


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## Zany_in_CO (May 10, 2018)

Lesley Susan Madigan said:


> When I went to the workshop to learn how to do this they added milk to the base?


In that case, I would contact whoever held the workshop for advice. Since we weren't there, any advice would only be a guess at best.


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## cmzaha (May 10, 2018)

M&P base is not made to add in liquid additives. It would be better for you to contact the manufacturer of the base you are using and ask what and what percentages you can add to your base. The workshop may very well not know. Not everyone teaching really know what they are doing. Even adding additional oil in bases can be iffy and need to be very tiny amounts. You want a milk soap then it is best to purchase a gm m&p base. Keep in mind, not all m&p bases are actual soap based, some are only surfactant based. The key is purchase a quality base and ask what you can do with it, as far as additives.


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## dixiedragon (May 11, 2018)

Are you sure it wasn't a base with milk already included? I've seen goat milk MP soap bases.


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## topred (May 12, 2018)

If you use mica for your color, you might try mixing it first with equal parts Polysorbate 80 and then adding it to your melted base. However if you add too much color, nothing will stop it from bleeding out. If you do try this, please tell how it turns out.


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## Lesley Susan Madigan (May 13, 2018)

Well last night I tried again- since the last attempt I have got a silicon mould with a dozen moulds in it.  Last time I didn't want to melt too much base as it would just be wasted but this time I figured if I melted too much then I had capacity.

Melted the base and added a small amount of milk as much colour as I added last time (but this time it was of course being added to a much bigger load of base) but this was an orange colour and a generous splash of gingerbread FO, mixed it all in until the colour was uniformly distributed, poured it into half a dozen moulds and left it to set and it came out the silicon mould with no problem

Well it looks pretty good and smells really nice, got the colour even and it's a nice sunny orange. I was doing it for a friend who wanted to try some of my soap after using the other one so I am just waiting for him to let me know how it works as a soap


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## cmzaha (May 13, 2018)

You do not have to waste m&p base you just re-melt it and use it again. As I mentioned above you should Not add milk to m&p base, depending on the base you risk spoilage. Purchase a Goat's Milk base if you want soap with milk. There is no way the m&p base will react (saponifiy) the fats in the milk. Milk base is made with milk for liquid in a soap based m&p, not all m&p is soap based, especially the clear and ultra clear bases which are usually surfactant based. I certainly would not give away soaps with added milk, no matter what you see on the Internet or You Tube.


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## Lesley Susan Madigan (May 13, 2018)

cmzaha said:


> You do not have to waste m&p base you just re-melt it and use it again. As I mentioned above you should Not add milk to m&p base, depending on the base you risk spoilage. Purchase a Goat's Milk base if you want soap with milk



Thanks spoilage did occur to me and I am certainly considering a goats milk base when my current stock runs out. I really didn't know you could re-melt the base


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## cmzaha (May 13, 2018)

Lesley Susan Madigan said:


> Thanks spoilage did occur to me and I am certainly considering a goats milk base when my current stock runs out. I really didn't know you could re-melt the base


I added an edit to my above post


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## Lesley Susan Madigan (May 13, 2018)

cmzaha said:


> I certainly would not give away soaps with added milk



It was just a trial and I did say to my friend I wasn't sure about the spoilage, he has promised to report so it will be interesting to see what he does report


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## lrpolillo (May 13, 2018)

Adding things to your melt and pour should be done at a minimum. And i mean additives such as coconut oil sweet almond oil shea butter etc. i never add more than 1% because it will affect the lather of your finished soap!  Milk and things that can spoil should never be added to melt and pour. I dont recommend flower petals as additives to MP either. Just an FYI.


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## Lesley Susan Madigan (May 13, 2018)

My friend reports it lathers well and smells fantastic and as they are really small bars he's going to put the rest in the freezer and bring them out as needed.. At the workshop I made 5 small bars with semi skimmed milk in the mix and they've just been stored in a cupboard and two  months later still smell fine?


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## Lesley Susan Madigan (May 13, 2018)

That now I recall was an olive oil base


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## lisamaliga (May 16, 2018)

You can add milk to melt and pour soap base. However, it must be POWDERED milk. I only add about 1 teaspoon per pound & the finished soap has a richer lather. I also add the powdered milk at the beginning so it'll mix well with the soap base.


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## cmzaha (May 16, 2018)

^^^I would truly like to know how milk powder in m&p base is going to make lather better. You are still putting milk in a product that is is already a finished product so nothing can react. I still stand with what I said about not adding milk to m&p, purchase a milk base. I base this on the experience of my daughter who purchased and poured over 1200k lbs of m&p a year. She told me she tried it in her beginning days and it did go bad


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## amd (May 17, 2018)

There are so many self-published soapmaking books out there giving, dare I say, bad advice! These books get picked up by bloggers and then onto pinterest... and then everyone thinks it is ok. I was cleaning out some books on my Kindle app and came across a m&p book that had a recipe adding *banana puree* to the soap base. I gagged, left a bad review on goodreads and moved on.


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## I_like_melts (May 17, 2018)

amd said:


> There are so many self-published soapmaking books out there giving, dare I say, bad advice! These books get picked up by bloggers and then onto pinterest... and then everyone thinks it is ok. I was cleaning out some books on my Kindle app and came across a m&p book that had a recipe adding *banana puree* to the soap base. I gagged, left a bad review on goodreads and moved on.



That's crazy o.o It would spoil so fast.


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## SunRiseArts (May 19, 2018)

cmzaha is so right.  Do not add milk, oils, or anything to weird to MP base.  Other things like pumice, an extract, might be ok.  They are not made to carry many additive, and even if it does not ruin your soap, it will not lather well.

Anything except for maybe calendula petals or poppy seeds will get brown eventually.  There are many bases that content milk.  Like a goats milk base, and whole sale supplies carries a buttermilk MP base.

If you make your MP correctly, the bars can last 5 years, some even more.  I have a set of roses I made from like 20 years ago, that are decoration in my bathroom.  At least that is my experience.

Also.


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## earlene (May 19, 2018)

Is your MP soap sealed tightly in shrink wrap or plastic when you give it away to your friend?  Is  he putting it in the freezer in a sealed plastic wrapper? 

I ask because, unless you bought a non-sweat soap base, that soap is more likely to draw water to itself and become a sticky mess inside the freezer.  Even in a sealed plastic baggie, it could still draw water to itself in a freezer.  I have no experience freezing MP soap, but it just seems like it may not be the wisest method of storage for this type of soap.  I understand his thinking (milk-freezer) but he doesn't know about how Melt & Pour functions in high humidity locations.  Also, according to Anne-Marie Faiola, it may also cause the soap to become brittle (reference link).


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## Lesley Susan Madigan (Jun 10, 2018)

Well a month later he's still happy with the soap because its all really tiny bits I used a mould for very small star shapes so as he's using nothing else he's probably going through it fast enough to avoid spoiling by keeping what he isn't using in the fridge. He says he loves the smell it's gingerbread


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## Lesley Susan Madigan (Jun 10, 2018)

I'm going to try a larger mould tonight but I won't add milk to that as I think it would be in use too long so would spoil.

It's a learning curve when I run out of this base I'm going for a goats milk one to try

Being a little broke this year my plan is everyone gets soap for Xmas so I need to start working on it as I've got loads of family and I figure a home made soap especially nicely packaged


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## Lesley Susan Madigan (Jul 1, 2018)

I'm now making soap with more confidence

Did one for a friend. Didn't add colour to the melted base apart from a swirl of copper mica.

Bit of a disaster when I realized I'd get two thin soaps from the base but wanted a big one.

Ended up remelting half of it then adding it to the mould so the soap came out a rather attractive two layer soap and I got the scent right. I was using an FO that smells like Alien I like it so much I think I'll make some for myself

My first soaps are still going strong despite the milk content as are the milk content ones I did for a friend

Myself the main thing I'm loving is after just a few months of using my homemade soap my dry skin is so much better


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