My newbie soaping adventure and things I've learned along the way...

[Dana89]

These hit too close to home. I manage to sneak at least one bottle of oil (for cooking DH!) in basket plus, coconut milk and Goats Milk, (of course I am going to drink it along with the Aloe vera juice!! Yes I know I have not had oatmeal in 5 years but I decided to start eating it again! OH and that half gallon of plain yogurt, I will eat that with the oatmeal, I swear!

 

[penelopejane]

lol Dana.

 

[Dharlee]

26) You see molds in every container- Even the kids toys! Why that would make an interesting soap!

 

[nsmar4211]

27) You will mis-time your ordering and your 20+ samplers to test new scents will arrive a week before your shipment of oils will. Nooooooooooooooo

 

[annalee2003]

26) You see molds in every container- Even the kids toys! Why that would make an interesting soap!

I find myself checking to see if a plastic container has the number 5 on it all the time! I'm always disappointed when I realize that I can't use one. (I do have a small, growing, collection of plastic containers that I can use though!)

 

[gigisiguenza]

28- ) It's not soap, it's art! Don't judge me! -

You're a friggin soaping whirlwind. You watched all the videos, read all the blogs, and have books full of dutifully taken notes. You're ready! Three months later, you've made innumerable batches of soap. You've mastered countless techniques. and impressed all your family and friends with your soaping prowess....

.... Only to discover that every single batch you produced is soap you can't use yourself.

Everyone else can, sure. Heck, even martians can use it! But if you do, it will cause a funky alien rash, dry you out like old parchment, or give you skin so tight you could play babaloo on it.

So when family and friends ask why you're sneaking into the soap aisle to buy a bar of the sacrilegious commercial soap, you lie like a rug and claim it's art. You were creating soapy art. You were mastering the craft, yeah, that's it! You never intended to use it yourself, because you've been so busy creating soapy art for your friends and family's enjoyment, that you've had no time to focus on making the very specialized, nearly impossible to create, soap you need for *your* skin.

In the meantime, you sneak back into newbie class, hiding behind shades and the hood of your sweat jacket, learning how to make basic, no frills soap so you can try to discover the Holy Grail of soap.

All the while eyeing pictures of your wall racks full of colorful soaps you can't use.

They're art, I tell you!
Don't judge me!

 

[penelopejane]

29) Months into your soaping career you finally master (yeah, right) trace and produce a beautiful bar of plain soap. You decide you are ready to take it to the next step – fragrance. You painstakingly and frugally narrow down the list of 995 fragrances to 4 – no acceleration, 5 star glowing reviews. Your delivery arrives and you reverently open the box to take your first sniff OOB (yes you have to learn a whole new set of [FONT=&quot]acronym[/FONT]s) and it SLS (Smells Like you know what). Unbelievably two of the others are no better. What were those reviewers thinking? And how inaccurate are those beautiful names! The fourth actually smells lovely. Fragrance always smells better in finished soap, right?


30) Thinking of Christmas presents you buy a starter pack of colours thinking you’ll have everything you will need. You attempt the SMF monthly challenge but despite religiously following the how-to videos you somehow produce such a disaster that the idea of giving bars of plain castile (your only success) with a note “do not use until November 2016” suddenly seems totally acceptable. Although, maybe, just maybe your son’s girlfriend’s would like iridescent yellow soap with bright green swirls.

 

[gigisiguenza]

29) Months into your soaping career you finally master (yeah, right) trace and produce a beautiful bar of plain soap. You decide you are ready to take it to the next step – fragrance. You painstakingly and frugally narrow down the list of 995 fragrances to 4 – no acceleration, 5 star glowing reviews. Your delivery arrives and you reverently open the box to take your first sniff OOB (yes you have to learn a whole new set of [FONT=&quot]acronym[/FONT]s) and it SLS (Smells Like you know what). Unbelievably two of the others are no better. What were those reviewers thinking? And how inaccurate are those beautiful names! The fourth actually smells lovely. Fragrance always smells better in finished soap right?


30) Thinking of Christmas presents you buy a starter pack of colours thinking you’ll have everything you will need. You attempt the SMF monthly challenge but despite religiously following the how-to videos you somehow produce such a disaster that the idea of giving bars of plain castile (your only success) with a note “do not use until November 2016” suddenly seems totally acceptable. Although, maybe, just maybe your son’s girlfriend’s would like iridescent yellow soap with bright green swirls.

oh my, how true lol.... I bought one on sale that sounded wonderful, and it's horrid ... I keep telling myself I am going to use it because it must smell better after doing battle with the lye monster, but I cringe at the idea of wasting supplies to make soap that may smell like Fido's latest gift lol.

 

[penelopejane]

oh my, how true lol.... I bought one on sale that sounded wonderful, and it's horrid ... I keep telling myself I am going to use it because it must smell better after doing battle with the lye monster, but I cringe at the idea of wasting supplies to make soap that may smell like Fido's latest gift lol.

I figure if 30 people give them five stars they MUST be good in soap. Fingers crossed. If I hate them I am sure I can give them to some appreciative. BB champagne was one that I love.

The colours are a different matter. No one could appreciate iridescent yellow and green.

 

[gigisiguenza]

I figure if 30 people give them five stars they MUST be good in soap. Fingers crossed. If I hate them I am sure I can give them to some appreciative. BB champagne was one that I love.

The colours are a different matter. No one could appreciate iridescent yellow and green.

Haha not necessarily. I know several that would go buggy over it

 

[penelopejane]

Haha not necessarily. I know several that would go buggy over it

I am guess int that "go buggy" is a positive emotion???

 

[nsmar4211]

31) You prepare all your three of your "cheap" molds and make a batch of scent tests thinking you'll do another batch tomorrow and test ALL the new scents. Invariable, each of the three molds has ONE bar that is not going to unmold anytime this week. Maybe this year. And no, all three liquidmaker FO's can't be in the same mold so you could use the other two.

 

[gigisiguenza]

32) There's no such thing as a new idea -

Every soapy epiphany sends you running for paper and pencil to plot out how to achieve the masterpiece of soaping genius you just invented. You spend weeks planning, make a dozen failed attempts, and use up half your supplies before you finally have a success - which you promptly post a pic of to your blog; complete with detailed pictures of the 293 steps involved in building it, and a list of tools needed that's as long as your arm.

Satiated and proud, you settle down to enjoy some soap p*rn, only to open pinterest and be assaulted by 4 separate tutorial pins showing how to do the exact same thing, in an eighth of the time, with two chopsticks, one eye closed, and one hand tied behind your back.

 

[penelopejane]

33) Teach yourself how to get rid of soap gremlins (those mischievous little imps/sprites/trolls sent to drive you insane with unexplainable failed batches of soap using reliable, tested, proven recipes.)
They are notoriously illusive so murder is not possible.

a) buy them a one way ticket to nowhere (thus ensuring they don't visit others) round them up and drive them to the train station. Ticket can be imaginary but not the trip to station.
b) administer chocolate and scotch (for you not the gremlins)
c) vacuum the floors (imagining you are sucking up gremlins that were hiding when you rounded them up for step a.
d) take a week off soaping
e) buy more supplies - it's probably that horrible FO that the gremlins hitched a ride on.
f) Buy new soap racks. They are useful and they are classified as furniture and the cost doesn't count towards soaping supplies, luckily! Transferring the bars gives you the opportunity to touch and gaze at your soaps so far. You realise one or two batches out of 11 are presentable.
You convince yourself a 15% success rate isn't so bad AND maybe, if you squint your eyes, the iridescent yellow one has faded a bit in 3 days which would bring your success rate up to 30% AND you are sure you whopped at least one gremlin with the head of the mop.
Then, like a good soap masochist, you start thinking about the next batch.

 

[gigisiguenza]

LOL love it

 

[penelopejane]

You are too quick Gigi! It takes me a few edits to get a post right...sort of like my soap making. I wish you could edit soap making!

 

[gigisiguenza]

You are too quick Gigi! It takes me a few edits to get a post right...sort of like my soap making. I wish you could edit soap making!

Me too... then I wouldn't have any so-so or disaster soaps LOL

 

[penelopejane]

34) I am glad I do not sell soap. If you choose to do so you would have to have available at a minimum soap with:

natural colours (and make them stick)
fragrance and colour free
palm oil free
lard free
coconut free
chemical additive free
995 different fragrances to suit everyone
castile soap (aged for 12 months)
consistently good swirls in artistic colours (some of us can't even get a swirl!)
consistently good solid artistic colours

And then you have to have good storage and lots of time to whip out those consistent batches (there is that "consistent" word again).

 

[gigisiguenza]

35) Life is like a box of soaps

Some moments are like perfect soaps, you want to put them on a pedestal with special lighting to show them off.... and some are like soapy disasters that you bury in the back of the closet, hiding them until you can find a way to rebatch them into something else.

But they're all special because they were something you did yourself and you learned something new with each attempt

 

[SplendorSoaps]

36) You promise yourself that you're going to use all of the FOs that you have on hand before you buy any more. Then your favorite FO supplier has a huge sale, and you way over-order. I know I'm not the only FO ho on this board!