Mission soap scraps

[natik]

Wanted to make more soap, but I REALLY don't need any more, and oils are so expensive... Sounds familiar? Since addiction always wins, I found an excuse to make more. I have tons of soap scraps, so I decided that it would be an honorable thing to use them. Of course, in the process I used more oils and created more scraps, but it is another story
Here is how it went:


Lots of shavings. I am proud of myself for sticking with using as many scraps as I could.


Good job again, still carried on with the idea to use scraps.


Then I got tired of it and decided to swirl, at least half of the soap.


End... Well, you still see some scraps, don't you?

And the final pic



Or course, every soap is plained and beveled. Which means more scraps. Can one use scraps of the scrap soap to make another scrap soap?

Gosh, it took me longer to try to get decent pictured that making those soaps.

 

[jessica kiefer]

I love them. I got scraps-a-palooza myself. I just bought a nice bucket to keep mine in....LOL. You know you need to use it when you decide buying a bigger storage bucket is the answer.

 

[dmcgee5034]

They look great!

 

[Kcryss]

I love the 3rd one down. It could be dirt/sand with a plant.

 

[dibbles]

Nice work!

 

[KiwiMoose]

They all look great! And great job of making excuses to (not) make more soap

 

[natik]

I love the 3rd one down. It could be dirt/sand with a plant.

That's what I was going for.
Another thing which have surprise me - is how easy and fast it is to work with scraps. They trace fast when you want them to, and stay fairly liquid when you need it, just don't beat the hack out of them.
But doing layers - it's a breeze.

 

[natik]

They all look great! And great job of making excuses to (not) make more soap

That's what my husband says. I am VERY good with excuses .
But all I was doing - is not letting things go to waste.

 

[Kcryss]

That's what I was going for.
Another thing which have surprise me - is how easy and fast it is to work with scraps. They trace fast when you want them to, and stay fairly liquid when you need it, just don't beat the hack out of them.
But doing layers - it's a breeze.

It doesn't look like a breeze at all. Looks like you spent a great deal of time making them, they all look so good.

 

[natik]

It doesn't look like a breeze at all. Looks like you spent a great deal of time making them, they all look so good.

Nope. I did split the oils and the lye for each layer. But then you mix the lye and oils, get it to a slight trace, add colors and FO, add the soap shreds, and either blend it or just mix it depending on what effect you want, pour the mix. And by the time you are done mixing next batch - the previous layer is hardened enough to do some landscaping or just pour the next layer. I found it was way more predictable than with regular CP swirling, when you really don't know how fast it will start thickening on you.
The one thing I found works well to prevent air pockets in the mixture is to add some liquid oil from the batch oils to the shreds, and mix it before pouring the lye/oil mix. I used the recipe with coconut/tallow/lard/castor oil, with castor only 6%. So I added all the castor to shreds (in most of the layers, shreds were 60% of total oils) and mixed it. It doesn't seem like enough oils to get all the shreds wet, but it was enough to prevent any air pockets in the final soap.
Couple layers I did with Ciaglia's method. Those layers stayed fluid enough to probably do an uncomplicated swirl. I might try it next time.