uncleflip
Member
Fortunately, these were not one and the same! 
I got my first experience with soap today, using my M&P goat milk base from BB to just get a feel for using the stuff. A friend at church has VERY sensitive skin, and likes goat milk soap with no fragrances- so I simply melted it and poured it to get a feel for it. Two birds with one stone, as they say.
I'd also ordered some fine white pumice, so I tried something listed on the product page, and did a simple M&P recipe using it. It called for adding pumice until the mixture was like thick mud. I put 8 tablespoons of it into an 8oz batch (2 tablespoons at a time). Right about the time it looked the right consistency, it also cooled suddenly- and as I went to pour it into a bar mold, it felt more like dough- and I pressed in soft blobs of it. (That bar looks rough, but of course still usable.) I reheated the base & pumice (not the stuff in the mold!) for 20 seconds in the microwave, and the consistency got much better- thin enough that I thought the pumice might settle out. (It does not appear this has happened.) I poured it into the second and third molds, and all looks well right now.
The other factor here: My girlfriend and I got the crazy idea to make a soap with curry (we love curries, and love the scents....and, oh yeah...we're not really what one would call normal), so in addition to the pumice, I mixed in 1.5 tsp of Kashmiri curry powder. (I liked the smell better than a Madras or a Korma.) The soap smells very much like the curry- but the curry powder combined with the pumice seems to have produced a nice flecked grey colour, with an effect somewhere between concrete and sweatpants.
Not really asking for advice, just sharing the experience of my first day trying to do soap. Of course, any comments/thoughts/advice/wishes that I would stop these sorts of strange experiments/amusing anecdotes/abuse will be read with great interest!
Be well
-UF
I got my first experience with soap today, using my M&P goat milk base from BB to just get a feel for using the stuff. A friend at church has VERY sensitive skin, and likes goat milk soap with no fragrances- so I simply melted it and poured it to get a feel for it. Two birds with one stone, as they say.
I'd also ordered some fine white pumice, so I tried something listed on the product page, and did a simple M&P recipe using it. It called for adding pumice until the mixture was like thick mud. I put 8 tablespoons of it into an 8oz batch (2 tablespoons at a time). Right about the time it looked the right consistency, it also cooled suddenly- and as I went to pour it into a bar mold, it felt more like dough- and I pressed in soft blobs of it. (That bar looks rough, but of course still usable.) I reheated the base & pumice (not the stuff in the mold!) for 20 seconds in the microwave, and the consistency got much better- thin enough that I thought the pumice might settle out. (It does not appear this has happened.) I poured it into the second and third molds, and all looks well right now.
The other factor here: My girlfriend and I got the crazy idea to make a soap with curry (we love curries, and love the scents....and, oh yeah...we're not really what one would call normal), so in addition to the pumice, I mixed in 1.5 tsp of Kashmiri curry powder. (I liked the smell better than a Madras or a Korma.) The soap smells very much like the curry- but the curry powder combined with the pumice seems to have produced a nice flecked grey colour, with an effect somewhere between concrete and sweatpants.
Not really asking for advice, just sharing the experience of my first day trying to do soap. Of course, any comments/thoughts/advice/wishes that I would stop these sorts of strange experiments/amusing anecdotes/abuse will be read with great interest!
Be well
-UF
