Thank you, by the way, I love reading your posts!
Awww. that is very sweet of you
I'm keeping an eye on your posts for more design inspiration! I love seeing / experiencing other people's products & then farting around with my raw ingredients to create my own versions based on my own aesthetic.
Yes I love it too!
I use it for my homemade sourdough milk bread!
That's an awesome idea! I love making spelt / honey bread when I have a few minutes to put together a loaf or two. So delicious! I will add some sunflower lecithin the next time I do that, along with some ground flax seed. Nothing in the stores can come close to competing with homemade bread straight out of the over
So easy, and so worth making the time for
"roll
said:
I don't understand why 100% CO takes sooooo long to trace, but it sure does."
I made my first batch of soap using extra virgin olive oil vs pomace in my regular recipe (shea / palm / castor / cocoa butter / olive) about a week ago or so. It took FOREVER to thicken up, even afetr I poured
This was in another attempt to successfully complete a pull-through design, which was something I was struggling with but getting closer & closer to.
So, I'm a newbie and have no personal opinion about trace, but the author Anne L. Watson (Smart Soapmaking) claims that as long as you've blended enough to emulsify the lye-oil mix, saponification will happen, and there's no real need to blend to trace. I wonder what the experienced soapers here think of this idea... have you ever just stick-blended a bit ...so that things are well mixed, but well before trace... and then poured into the mold?
Normally, this is what I do when using pomace, which works great (although not so great for pull-throughs). But when working with the extra virgin olive oil, this was a mistake. NOTE TO SELF
I ended up with very nice soap, beautiful scent from my essential oils (natural colorant infusions are not ready for use yet), but I will definitely be blending to thin-medium trace with extra virgin olive oil next time. My pull through worked, although my colorants were far too pale & my batter was too thin. The pull-through would have turned out even better had a blended a bit more.
Well, I sold the remainder of my soap yesterday......50 pounds + POOF! (even my test batches sold). My mouth is still hanging open in shock. I assumed my wholesale customers would want to test things first (although they've tried products I've gifted to them before & know my work ethic), check out the labeling (which just got finalized with the test print yesterday afternoon), discuss display options etc. NOPE. They want soap. Now.
'I'll take 21 of these, 21 of those, 21 of those, 7 gift boxes, 14 assorted lip balms, 14 each of assorted salves in 2 different sizes (a customer who likes doing things in 7s), 14 solid body butter sticks...."
Holy
!
I went back to my car & sat there stunned
And then I got running!
Yesterday was checking my test labels, taking samples to wholesale customers, taking orders from the same customers, searching for more display options, even taking orders from random people I had never met before while I was sitting & having lunch.
Today was organizing my equipment & soap room to be more efficient, re-alphabetizing all of my herbal oil infusions, cleaning all of my jars & gallon jugs, thinking things through....I need to rent a larger workshop space sometime soon.
Tonight is looking for an optional individual cavity mold - a beautiful sun, or something else round which looks gorgeous - to fulfill part of the above order. That was just one customer.
According to my calculations, I believe I need to get making between 150-200 pounds of soap in the next week & a half in order to keep up with just 2 customers, which doesn't include another customer who lost out on soap this round because she wanted me to email her a full list of available products first. I also have an Indigenous gift shop / gift shop owner who wants to have my products on her shelves who isn't in the immediate area, which means travel time. I ended up with several 16 pound & several more 8 pound molds, and I am going to need them!
If someone can suggest a good round cavity mold (preferably multi-cavity) which has a nice sun or something similar) I would greatly appreciate it
Molds are something which I have been struggling with as I haven't yet found ones which make me say WOW! THAT WOULD LOOK AMAZING ON DISPLAY! She wants something which differentiates her from other merchants in the area, in addition to my regular soap bars.