Moving on from the indigo journey, I made a soap this weekend using French green clay. I also tried a new recipe that added palm and hemp oil to the basic olive, coconut and castor oils.
I used 2 tsp per pound of soap of the French green clay per SMR website, mixed in a little water stolen from before the lye was added, and then combined with the batter.
This was my first try at embedding, to keep it simple I just cut long rectangles from a bar of 2 week old blue soap that were square on the ends. From suggestions in this forum I rinsed a little water over the sticks to soften them a bit before putting them in the mold with the batter.
Because our previous CPOP of 2 hours in a 170 deg oven seemed to hot, this time I just put the loaf in a 170 deg oven and then turned the oven off. Id read somewhere here that CPOP helps with embeds and I was worried about these because they weren't very new soap and had already cured.
Overall I think it went well. I would like cleaner lines on the embeds - not sure how though. I do like the gelled green color - I think the hemp made it more avocado-y - and how the top looks like brains The scent is tangerine 5x, eucalyptus and litsea cubeba, and it smells fresh.
My phone camera seems to exaggerate the spots - I don't remember them being this noticeable.
I used 2 tsp per pound of soap of the French green clay per SMR website, mixed in a little water stolen from before the lye was added, and then combined with the batter.
This was my first try at embedding, to keep it simple I just cut long rectangles from a bar of 2 week old blue soap that were square on the ends. From suggestions in this forum I rinsed a little water over the sticks to soften them a bit before putting them in the mold with the batter.
Because our previous CPOP of 2 hours in a 170 deg oven seemed to hot, this time I just put the loaf in a 170 deg oven and then turned the oven off. Id read somewhere here that CPOP helps with embeds and I was worried about these because they weren't very new soap and had already cured.
Overall I think it went well. I would like cleaner lines on the embeds - not sure how though. I do like the gelled green color - I think the hemp made it more avocado-y - and how the top looks like brains The scent is tangerine 5x, eucalyptus and litsea cubeba, and it smells fresh.
My phone camera seems to exaggerate the spots - I don't remember them being this noticeable.