What soapy thing have you done today?

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For the love of soy: Calling all soy wax soaper

New Year New Formulation

Here is what i did. no im waiting to see how hard we gonna get. without palm or SB or CB

soy wax 20%
CO 30
Castor 10
OO 14
Sunflower 12
Rice 14

Super Fat 4%

water 26.5
lye 35

65g of water is Aloe Juice (Chilled) the rest distilled.
heated SW to 150 oil to 160 then i Mixed both.. temp then was at 159 or so
Lye water was at 120 when i added to oils.

SOY WAX is new Territory for me

So what im hoping for is a quick unmolding.. any experts on how quick soy wax unmold is..
 
I’m pretty happy with the confetti I added from previous trimmings but had hoped it would be whiter. I may have been timid on adding enough TD. It’s for a family member though and smells like a sultry summer evening. Since she lives on the canadian border, this will still be a welcome hint of the warmth to come when I send it after curing.

Very pretty! and you can never go wrong with a sultry summer evening! ;)
 
I organized my soap cabinet today; shrink wrapped all the soaps that were good, tossed out a grocery bag full of rancid or near rancid soaps. I have some soaps that are almost 3 years old and they're hard as rocks, smell amazing, and lather beautifully (tried some scraps). I was also reminded, rather painfully, do NOT accidentally grab your heat gun by the barrel. It hurts like heck! (got a 3/4" burn on my thumb)

It feels good to be organized and now my soaps are all in one place and look so pretty!


OMG I DID THIS too. My son was back for holidays from fort benning. and he got me a shelf. well i decided to redo my walkin pantry. OMG.. I was so over whelmed. I must say. I did not realized all the things i had. ( well yes and NO )
buy yall get the drift. he also purchase a cute rectangle table for me that we put in there so i wont have to keep coming in the kitchen and hoggin the table (LMAO).. Since i have a window it worked out great. LOVE IT.. i can stay in my lil hole and work..now im not in anyones way.
 
Zolveria, that sounds awesome! I used to have such a great walk-in pantry in my Condo in California. No window, though. But I loved it and miss it very much. What a great idea to turn it into a soaping room! I've been thinking of converting one of my upstairs rooms into a soaping room and even have my granddaughter's go-ahead to use her room since she doesn't visit very often anymore and is almost an adult now. Then the other day, I thought why not convert my upstairs office (it's a small baby nursery sized room) into a curing room? The only trouble is if I move my whole operation upstairs, I'd have to do something about renovating the upstairs bathroom so I have better sink access. A small bathroom sink in a short (barely hip-height) counter top just won't work well for a soap maker. So I am undecided.
 
I love your salt soap warbond! It looks so creamy. How do you use kombucha in soap? Do you have to freeze it first or anything?
I made 2 soaps today. The first was a cleaning soap for DH. It was mainly CO, PO & PK Flakes with a little soybean oil. It stayed so fluid that I could've swirled it. My second soap was for the January challenge. It was mainly OO, AKO, RBO with some castor, PO, PK flakes & shea butter. I WANTED to swirl this one but it got thick much faster than I had anticipated given the amount of "slow to trace" oils in it.
 
Not wardbond, but I have made a few Kombucha soaps myself. I did not freeze the Kombucha tea, but I do keep it refrigerated prior to use in the lye water. Pouring the lye in slowly, then stirring, more slow pouring, then more stirring AND using a very tall container for the lye solution is how I prevent it from boiling up and out of the container. The first time I did it, the solution got hot real fast and almost came up out over the top of the vessel, so since then I always use my tallest lye solution container for any solution that might heat up and boil. Plus an ice bath for the vessel to sit in while waiting for it to cool down.
 
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Thank you Earlene! I have a co-worker that bought a bottle of ginger kombucha. One sip told her that she didn't like it & it's been sitting in the work fridge ever since. I've been thinking about asking if I could have it for soap. Otherwise, it'll probably sit there until someone cleans the fridge & tosses it.
 
I love your salt soap warbond! It looks so creamy. How do you use kombucha in soap? Do you have to freeze it first or anything?
I made 2 soaps today. The first was a cleaning soap for DH. It was mainly CO, PO & PK Flakes with a little soybean oil. It stayed so fluid that I could've swirled it. My second soap was for the January challenge. It was mainly OO, AKO, RBO with some castor, PO, PK flakes & shea butter. I WANTED to swirl this one but it got thick much faster than I had anticipated given the amount of "slow to trace" oils in it.
I made ice cubes and used them, Also I make my own kombucha so this was older and was less sugar.. more acid. Than standard.. so temperature didn't seem to be an issue.
..it did turn dark brown.. but didn't seem to change the colour of the soap... The plain sea salt actual seemed to bleach it out... Also used 75% salt of total oil... It did trace quickly after the salt/frankincense was added.. that's why I used this mold.. the flaws from such a thick trace in my small batches can be mitigated, by making boutiqey bars (5oz).

I use the salt to help disperse the frankincense evenly and stop stop the frankincense from clumping.

I use a bit of salt to help other spices from clumping no in other soap..

Does anybody uses benzoin powder anymore?
 
Well I spent hours watching youtube videos on soapmaking last night. I woke up late and was shocked to find that I awoke before Hubby. I even had to check to make sure he was still alive! (Yes, I know, but it happens and I do that when he sleeps late. I've been widowed once, so there is a reason.) Anyway, here I am hoping he would go to bed soon so I can watch MORE videos on soap making! Crazy, huh?

But my goodness some of the intricate soap designs are amazing. I mean, white gardenias piped onto the soap that look like real gardenias (my favorite flower, btw.) And another video where the soaper didn't add the FO until after pouring the main batter into the mold, then she added the FO and stick blended in the mold. Now there is an innovative way to avoid the a finicky FO from making it too hard to get your soap into the mold fast enough! So many more videos, there just isn't enough time! And I found a video of a lady who wants to be funded to travel across the country to make soap with soapers or wanna-be soapers in the lower 48 states (US) for the year of 2018 and then she will write a book about all these great soap design techniques. She has apparently recieved some funding already from some soap suppliers, so apparently the project will get off the ground. But if I heard her correctly (and that's disputable given my hearing impairment), she's only been making soap herself for 2 years. Maybe I should listen to that video again. I may have heard her wrong.

Anyway, I didn't make soap today or anything to do with soap. I went with Hubby to his Dr. appt, then out to dinner and back home again.
 
Well, I made my first batch of soap today. I kept it nice and easy. I used a basic starters recipe from soap queen. Olive, palm oil and coconut. I think I had the lye water too cold. It was a very hot humid day today (40+ C) and I was impatient so I put the lye solution in an ice bath to get the temp down quicker. I didn't realise how quickly it'd go down and it ended up colder than expected. So my oils ended up about 15 degrees hotter. Hopefully it doesn't ruin it. It seems I greatly underestimated the amount of mica needed to colour a bar of soap too. I had some left over violet mica from a previous project and I thought I'd put that in. I think it made it ever an ever so slightly darker yellow so sufficed to say, that idea didn't work. I will have to wait until I get an order of mica delivered before I next try to colour something. Which is a pity because Friday is a public holiday and I was hoping to do something then. It is unlikely to arrive tomorrow. I forgot to add.... whatever it is you add to make it harder when you are using a silicon mould. I forget what it is called. Oh well.

We'll see how it turns out tomorrow and after it cures.
 
Well, I made my first batch of soap today. I kept it nice and easy. I used a basic starters recipe from soap queen. Olive, palm oil and coconut. I think I had the lye water too cold. It was a very hot humid day today (40+ C) and I was impatient so I put the lye solution in an ice bath to get the temp down quicker. I didn't realise how quickly it'd go down and it ended up colder than expected. So my oils ended up about 15 degrees hotter. Hopefully it doesn't ruin it. It seems I greatly underestimated the amount of mica needed to colour a bar of soap too. I had some left over violet mica from a previous project and I thought I'd put that in. I think it made it ever an ever so slightly darker yellow so sufficed to say, that idea didn't work. I will have to wait until I get an order of mica delivered before I next try to colour something. Which is a pity because Friday is a public holiday and I was hoping to do something then. It is unlikely to arrive tomorrow. I forgot to add.... whatever it is you add to make it harder when you are using a silicon mould. I forget what it is called. Oh well.

We'll see how it turns out tomorrow and after it cures.


Hi Jayne and Welcome to the forum.

Your soap should be fine as long as you ran it through a lye calculator like Soap Calc or Soapee. The temperature of your lye doesn't really matter. My lye is always room temp or cooler. As long as your oils are warm enough to be clear you are good to go.

As for your colorant, some are not CP stable. The PH causes them to morph if not. The mica you had was likely not good for high ph soap.

Can't wait to see the pictures of all your creations!
 
W I had some left over violet mica from a previous project and I thought I'd put that in. I think it made it ever an ever so slightly darker yellow so sufficed to say, that idea didn't work. I will have to wait until I get an order of mica delivered before I next try to colour something. Which is a pity because Friday is a public holiday and I was hoping to do something then. It is unlikely to arrive tomorrow. I forgot to add.... whatever it is you add to make it harder when you are using a silicon mould. I forget what it is called. Oh well.

We'll see how it turns out tomorrow and after it cures.

Jayne, congratulations on your first soap! Sodium Lactate. But you don't have to wait for your order to come in. You can just add salt to harden your bar quicker. Here's how: https://www.thespruce.com/make-soap-harder-faster-517222

As for colorants you can use while you wait for your CP stable mica order, look in your pantry. You can get a deeper sort of orangish/yellow (depending on how much you use) with turmeric. Infuse in a bit of oil from your recipe and strain out the tiny particles to avoid spots in your soap. Also a capsule of beta carotene (dietary supplement sold with the vitamins in pharmacies) will produce a deep orange. You snip the capsule and squeeze the oil into your soap, carefully as it will stain everything it touches. If you have chlorphyll liquid (another dietary supplement some people have, but not the most common ingredient in most people's refrigerators) you can use it to color your soap green. Most organics in your kitchen or from your garden don't work well for coloring soap as the lye eats them up and turns them brown, but calendula flower petals hold up well and again, produce a deep yellow to orange color.

As Shari said, some micas don't survive lye. Don't waste your time trying to use the micas from eye shadow (I tried that once) because if it's not lye resistant, it will morph or totally disappear. I tried it once and although it was a fun experiment, there was no resulting color in the soap.

For very light color, in SOME cases, food coloring does work, in others it doesn't. I colored lye soap with food coloring once a couple of years ago and it stuck for the life of the soap, which I had for over a year before I used it all up. So you could try that if you have any on hand, just so you can make soap and experiment.

Of course once you get your micas, you will can obtain quite vibrant color schemes and that's really a lot of fun!

Oh, and that temperature difference isn't going to ruin your soap. It should be just fine.
 
Thanks for the welcome folks! It turned out ok. It cracked a bit on top so I'm going to have to work out how to manage that but overall, a pretty good effort. I'm uncertain what to do about the cracking. I know that is caused by heat (well I think it is caused by heat). It gets quite hot here (100F is a typical summer day. 122 is about our worse). I know I can put it in the fridge but won't that impact gelling? Is there anything else I can do to prevent cracking? Once I get micas I figure I'll want it to gel so I get the bright colours.

I might give the turmeric a go tomorrow.
 
Thanks for the welcome folks! It turned out ok. It cracked a bit on top so I'm going to have to work out how to manage that but overall, a pretty good effort. I'm uncertain what to do about the cracking. I know that is caused by heat (well I think it is caused by heat). It gets quite hot here (100F is a typical summer day. 122 is about our worse). I know I can put it in the fridge but won't that impact gelling? Is there anything else I can do to prevent cracking? Once I get micas I figure I'll want it to gel so I get the bright colours.

I might give the turmeric a go tomorrow.

To avoid cracking, you will want to use less insulation, maybe a lighter towel and just check it regularly. You will see if it's starting to get too hot and can uncover or adjust the cover. If it does crack a bit, I just use my finger (gloved) and kind of press it together. Can't even notice it when it's done.
 
I did an experiment today. Made a regular bar, and through mica colors on top (not mix in batter). I want to see if they stick or sweat.
 
Beveling, beveling and more beveling. Good news is, I am finished cutting and beveling everything I’ve made recently so it’ll all be ready to package up at the end of February. In other news, a local microbrewery asked me to use one (or more) of their products in a soap so I’m headed there after work tomorrow to sample and decide!
 

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