Question about scents ..

[tklechak]

Hey All!! I have a question about fragrances & coloring ... I only have 1 loaf of CP soap under my belt ... It came out better than I had expected. There's 2 things I'm not thrilled about ...

#1 ... after sitting for awhile, it seems that my soap has lost most of it's scent. I thought I used plenty of fragrance (.22 oz. orange & .74 patchouli), and at first it smelled great, but lost most of it's scent after a week or two. Could this be because I used Fragrance oil instead of Essential oil??? What is the difference between the two????

#2 ... another thing I would like to do is color (swirl) the next loaf. How do I go about doing that, and what should I use for color???

Thanks for your advice !! Timm ................ hope this post makes sense, it's early and the coffee isn't working yet ....

 

[seven]

how big was yer batch?

 

[lsg]

That was my question also. What brand of fragrace did you use. Cheaper fragrance oils don't seem to have much staying power for me. The difference in fragrance and essential oils is that essential oils come mostly from plant material. Fragrance oils are man made in a lab.
I suggest watching several youtube videos on swirling. To me, the in-the-pot swirl is the easiest. I suggest starting with a neutral colored base and using one color for the swirls. You can use iron oxides, which don't morph or bleed in cp soap. The lady in this tutorial is using titanium dioxide and purple. For your first time swirling, I would leave the main part of the soap uncolored and use a color for the swirls.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jFE_dF6NMI[/ame]

 

[Obsidian]

Also, citrus scents are know to fade quickly in soap.

 

[tklechak]

how big was yer batch?

seven .... the batch was small, 20 ounces of oils, 10ounces of lye & water. I'm thinking it was the FRAGRANCE OIL (instead of Essential Oil) that I used as well as the supplier WJ Medical (???) that I bought on Ebay .....

 

[kikajess]

I'm still learning about fragrance oils and essential oils myself. Some are very strong, some are not. It will take a lot of trial and error for me to find the ones that work best for me.

Regarding color, I first experimented with stuff I had around the house: cocoa and sage powder. After a bit of practice I wanted some more colorful colors so I bought some oxides and micas. I love, love, LOVE micas. They seem to disperse beautifully in oil and soap, even though they don't keep their shimmer.

But oxides are giving me a headache. I can't seem to get them to disperse very well. I am seeing a lot of speckles and clumps, even though I use a mini mixer to first disperse it in some oil, and again with a little bit of soap before adding it to the rest of the soap. Ugh. Titanium Dioxide is the worst of the bunch. Hate it! But with more practice, I am sure I can figure out the secrets to beautiful dispersal of oxide colors.

Congrats on your first batch of soap, and good luck with batch number two. Hope to see some pics of your soaps soon!

 

[My Mountain Soaps]

go to soapqueen.com, she has alot of easy tutorials. also watch your heat of your loaf, sometimes when it gets too hot, i've noticed that my scent gets morphed or dissipated. also your water and lye percentage seems high? if it is 20oz oil, then 10oz water/lye? that is 50% water/lye. maybe if you post your recipe in percentages and be specific we can help more. You will learn that using percentages is alot more universal, so that when you go to make a different size batch, you only have to enter a different size mold into your soapcalc, instead of having to recalculate the entire recipe. I want to know exactly your precentage of lye, and your percentage of water is why. If you use almost one ounce of FO to 20 oz oil, that would have been more than enough. I use 1.5 oz EO to 55oz oils and it does fine. So maybe you are also right in that is the FO.

 

[seven]

seven .... the batch was small, 20 ounces of oils, 10ounces of lye & water. I'm thinking it was the FRAGRANCE OIL (instead of Essential Oil) that I used as well as the supplier WJ Medical (???) that I bought on Ebay .....

with that size of batch, the amount of FO you used was around 5%, which i think was sufficient. BUT then again, FO can be a challenging beast on its own. there are sooo many of them, with different qualities and staying power.

i am not familiar with your supplier, but obviously their FO's staying power is not so good in your case. did the bottle say about the recommended usage amount for cp soap?

as for swirling, again, there are soooo many different types of swirls. i agree that ITP (in the pot) swirl might be the easiest one to try. youtube is a great source for many great tutorials in different types of swirls.

HTH