Help! I'm a newbie

[Cactuslily]

Hello soapers,
Firstly, allow me to apologize if I've posted incorrectly. Not good on computers, and I e never taken part in a forum. I'm so grateful to have found this, because there are no soaping classes in Tucson, and even finding ingredients, I mostly rely on Internet. Shipping and handling is killing me. My biggest problem seem to be that my soap is setting up too quickly. 9 times out of ten, I can't even attempt to swirl or anything because my colors set up so fast. What could I be doing wrong? Any suggestions or guidance would be infinitely appreciated.
Sincerely, and happy New Years, and happy soaping,
Cactuslily

 

[shunt2011]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

If you post your recipe and your procedure we would be happy to try to help you troubleshoot. There are a lot of factors that can play into it setting up to quickly (temp, EO/FO, hard oils vs liquid oils, lye concentration etc).

 

[Ellacho]

Hello and welcome!

 

[Lindy]

Hello and welcome. You could be stickblending your soap too long taking it to too heavy a trace. If you want to swirl and do other fancy methods you need to take it to light trace.

 

[lenarenee]

Good for you for being brave and tackling your first forum; you picked the
best one! Welcome!

 

[IrishLass]

Welcome, Cactuslily! :wave: Ditto what Shunt said.


IrishLass

 

[Susie]

Hey and welcome! Great bunch of folks here willing to help.

 

[Cactuslily]

Gratitude

Hello fellow soapers,
Thank you for making me feel so welcome here and offering to assist me. I've made this CP soap once before with great results. Today, I only changed one color and the FO.the FO is not known to affect trace. I seem to be getting this same problem though with any recipe I have tried this far. I blend til light trace, divided to three containers, added my colorants and stirred with spoon. Before I could even put into mold it was too thick to do much with. The recipe is:
9.9 oz coconut oil
9.9oz olive oil
9.9 oz palm
3.3 oz RBO
4.6 oz lye
10.8 oz distiller water
1.5 oz FO
colorants
This recipe is from the soap queen. Initially shown as a lemon poppy seed.
This has been the only soap thus far that looks like the picture. My first soap was a lavender goats milk, that while came out fine, the colorants used were not correct and because of the high olive oil content I think, wouldn't take a lavender hue that I would call pretty. I want to learn to adjust recipes myself either for a different size or different oils, but it all seems too confusing. I bought a book called, "The everything soapmaking book". Can anyone recommend another?
Once again, thank you for the warm welcome and the offer to assist this lonely soaper in the desert
Happy Healthy New Years to all!
Amy

 

[Lindy]

Purples can be really hard to get to stick in CP. Try Nurture Soaps purples, they are all tested in CP...

 

[IrishLass]

Based on what you wrote, it looks like you are waiting too long to separate the soap out for coloring. If it were me, I would add the lye to the oils and just barely emulsify things before portioning the batter out. Don't bring it to trace. Just give it a few whirrs of the stick-blender to make the oils turn from clear to a stable cloudy/opaque, then portion it out for coloring. That will give you more time. You can also buy more time by using a little bit more water, too, maybe increase it to about 11.5 oz or so.

Hopefully more will chime in soon, but that's my take on things.

IrishLass

 

[Dahila]

Welcome to the forum

 

[Obsidian]

Another thing that affects trace time is temps, the warm your oils/lye, the quicker it traces. Try letting your oils and lye cool to around 80* or so.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

.... want to learn to adjust recipes myself either for a different size or different oils, but it all seems too confusing. I bought a book called, "The everything soapmaking book". Can anyone recommend another?

I wouldn't buy a book for that - you have a much more dynamic source right here.

When I started out, I read a lot of posts about recipes and feedback on recipes and learnt so much about the oils and what they do. Then I came up with my own ideas and asked for feedback, tweaking it based on the advice. Then I made it and tested it. Then tweaked some more

 

[snappyllama]

I'll jump in with my experience. I was too heavy handed with my stick blender at first. Now I do exactly as Irish Lass mentioned: only a tiny water discount and take things just to emulsion before separating my batter. I spend a lot more time stirring than SBing.

I think it may have something to do with the climate. I also live in a low humidity area and noticed that soapers online in humid places (aka the south) seem to SB way more than I do. Or it could be that I make very small batches (most around 2lbs). Or it could be the beefy might of my awesome blender...

 

[Lion Of Judah]

Welcome to the forum. I would agree with everyone here that has reply so far , in that you are bringing your soap to far into trace to do swirls , you just need to bring it to emulsification and then separate it out according to the colors you want to use . mixing the colors is where you bring the soap to light trace where you can start combining them to create your swirls / design.
i would love to see pics after you try it

 

[cmzaha]

Welcome to the forum. Depending on how badly you want a class Soapies (soapies-supplies.com/shop/classes/ in Scottsdale) runs classes and Kelly at Soapalooza.com has online classes. Neither classes are inexpensive and you can really learn with practice and asking questions here. I personally feel the classes are to expensive and just jumping in a doing is a better teacher. Practice Practice Practice, read and ask questions. Also never throw out a batch you may think is bad, someone in here can probably help you fix it.
As for purple I like Lavender Fields Ultramarine available at The Sage, trick is to not add in so much to actually get purple, it will usually be grayish when poured but will turn a beautiful lavender to purple, if you have purple in the soap batter it will be way to purple when the soap cures. I would stick to easier colors than purples to start with. Brambleberry also has a nice purple lab colorant for high ph which are easy to use since they are diluted with distilled water. For lab colors from B&B you always want high ph if making cp or hp soap. I haven't diluted any for awhile but I think the small bottle makes 8 oz of colorant. Don't set that in stone since I seem to have a lot of senior moments.
http://www.brambleberry.com/Easter-Purple-High-pH-LabColor-P4315.aspx
Millersoap.com has very good recipes, but remember to run any recipe you choose to use through a lye calculator. I happen to love the Canolive ricipes on her site. Soapcalc.net is the one most in this forum choose to use

 

[Cactuslily]

Thank you soapers! And more ?'s

Thank you to all have kindly taken time to answer me. You all are great! I just found my original post (after lots of button pushing and looking around). Just to say, I didn't blend much at all. Just to emulsify, and also soaped at low temp. My soap came out so well the first time, but not the second when I decided to get creative and instead of making it the same, decided to change FO, divide I to 3 parts, and attempt a drop swirl. My soap was so thick that I had to rush to just try and get it into pan. Came out ok...so e air bubbles, but not what I had envisioned.. I will try upping the water and see how that goes.
At any rate, I have also been making bath bombs, body butters and bubble bars while I cried about the soap I couldn't do...my question is ( and I'm sorry if this isn't the right thread (is that the word?) Does anyone know which is better SLS or SLSA. I was looking at the Chemistry Store, and saw they had both for sale. Are they interchangeable in a recipe? I've read some that SLS isn't good to use but SLSA is? Any thoughts or knowledge to impart? I should have started this soapmaking thing when I was way younger my house may be a bit of a wreck, but it sure smells good! Thanks again!
Amy

 

[kmarvel]

Hello soapers,
Firstly, allow me to apologize if I've posted incorrectly. Not good on computers, and I e never taken part in a forum. I'm so grateful to have found this, because there are no soaping classes in Tucson, and even finding ingredients, I mostly rely on Internet. Shipping and handling is killing me. My biggest problem seem to be that my soap is setting up too quickly. 9 times out of ten, I can't even attempt to swirl or anything because my colors set up so fast. What could I be doing wrong? Any suggestions or guidance would be infinitely appreciated.
Sincerely, and happy New Years, and happy soaping,
Cactuslily

Lily, Hi, I am from Sierra Vista area. Welcome to the site. This is a great Forum and you will find a lot of help, advice and great people here.
Kathie

Hello and welcome. You could be stickblending your soap too long taking it to too heavy a trace. If you want to swirl and do other fancy methods you need to take it to light trace.

Lindy and the others are correct. I too find myself stick blending too long and I get to trace too fast for my colors to swirl. It is a practice thing. On another note, I have learned and asked so many questions here I thought maybe they would want to throw me out of the Forum. hahaha Ask questions here.........you will be making wonderful soap in no time at all. :clap:

 

[shunt2011]

Another thing that could cause you soap to trace faster is your FO. There are many (mostly florals and spice) that can cause darn near soap on a stick. I can't answer your question about SLS & SLSA being interchangable. I just orders some SLSA and am going to try my hand at bubble bars.

 

[navigator9]

You probably won't like my advice, but here goes. I would suggest making a few batches without color or fragrance first, until you get the hang of things. Taking the focus off of worrying about those things will allow you to pay closer attention to all the rest, and to relax a bit. Your soap will still be wonderful!

And it's not you......purple can be a challenge even for seasoned soapers. Too much, and you get Welch's grape juice, too little, and you get corpse gray. It takes some trial and error. Keep good notes, and when you get it just right, you'll have a record of how you did it. Every batch is a learning experience. Welcome to soapmaking!