I made 2 soaps this week.
The first is coloured with madder. I don’t have dividers for my mold so I cut up a plastic place mat and used that. Next time I’ll find a way to attach them together so they can’t move. On the left is madder infused in water and on the right is madder infused in oil. Center is the « uncoloured » batter, it’s yellow because the mandarin EO is yellow (I should have checked beforehand). The batter was too liquid to make a nice swirl, I’ll try to be at medium trace next time.
I kept records of everything (madder infusions, recipe, temperatures...) if anyone is interested. We’ll see what the soap looks like once cured. As you can see, the next day the soap was already much lighter.
The other soap is an attempt to make indigo ombre soap like Holly from Kapia Mera (Indigo Ombre Soap). I couldn’t tell when I got a stable emulsion and one more burst of the stick blender and I was a light trace. I should have followed her recipe exactly, but I increased the % of the hard butters a bit in my recipe (maybe that explains why the batter thickened on its own ... it would make sense that the butters got harder as they cooled down).
The pouring is uneven, if I had worked at emulsion it would probably have looked better. I’m sure the cured soap will look nice, but there is definitely place for improvement!
ETA: sorry for posting in the wrong section.
After going through gel phase:
Hard to believe, but the indigo soap is already hard enough to cut today (the madder soap isn’t, because I used less hard butter). I used sodium lactate in both soaps.
This is promising!
The first is coloured with madder. I don’t have dividers for my mold so I cut up a plastic place mat and used that. Next time I’ll find a way to attach them together so they can’t move. On the left is madder infused in water and on the right is madder infused in oil. Center is the « uncoloured » batter, it’s yellow because the mandarin EO is yellow (I should have checked beforehand). The batter was too liquid to make a nice swirl, I’ll try to be at medium trace next time.
I kept records of everything (madder infusions, recipe, temperatures...) if anyone is interested. We’ll see what the soap looks like once cured. As you can see, the next day the soap was already much lighter.
The other soap is an attempt to make indigo ombre soap like Holly from Kapia Mera (Indigo Ombre Soap). I couldn’t tell when I got a stable emulsion and one more burst of the stick blender and I was a light trace. I should have followed her recipe exactly, but I increased the % of the hard butters a bit in my recipe (maybe that explains why the batter thickened on its own ... it would make sense that the butters got harder as they cooled down).
The pouring is uneven, if I had worked at emulsion it would probably have looked better. I’m sure the cured soap will look nice, but there is definitely place for improvement!
ETA: sorry for posting in the wrong section.
After going through gel phase:
Hard to believe, but the indigo soap is already hard enough to cut today (the madder soap isn’t, because I used less hard butter). I used sodium lactate in both soaps.
This is promising!
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