What soapy thing have you done today?

[steffamarie]

My pull through doesn’t look very good lol I think the silicone was too flexible and didn’t have enough detail. Oh well. I will try again another day! They smell delightful, though - OMG Olive from NG is one of my new faves

 

[Bladesmith]

Niiice! I actually like grey n red. I've never managed black in HP just varying shades of grey...

The spots could be stearic spots? Did you use any butters?

Thanks Dawni! It doesn't look too bad.. just not quite what I was going for.

EDIT: I started thinking maybe it was something to do with the wire cutter. I cut it with a knife and it did reveal some bubbles. It looks like the wire cutter dragged soap into the bubbles as it went through leaving the white spots. That plus my colorants weren't perfectly dispersed . I'm pretty surprised to find so many little bubbles. That hasn't really happened to me before (that I've paid attention to anyway). And after making the exact recipe (except colorant and fragrance) the day before with no bubbles, I'm wondering if it's something to do with the colorant or fragrance. Or maybe I just didn't slam this one down on the countertop as hard as the other.

 

[earlene]

I had some fun today with Rimmed soap and doing a tester soap for Amy Warden's Food & Drink challenge.

Carrying over a couple of soapy items not finished yesterday and added more:

✓ choose soaps to give away to Nursing Home staff (we go tomorrow) - filled a flat of 39 soaps
✓ plan color test soaps - didn't make them today, so it will have to wait until Thursday
✓ replace freezer paper for short round molds with new - done early
✓ make soap rims with 10% Castor Alkanet in Lye soap I made yesterday
✓ report on how 10% castor worked with pliability for a rim
✓ continue my slap-dash clean-up/organization in soaping areas - less progress today
✓ move more mica from bags to jars
✓ bevel & plane some soaps (only 9, but I am getting better with this fancy beveling)
✓ do a tester soap with puréed black cherries - using rims I made earlier
✓ transfer two micas from baggies to bottles
✓ sort through my micas to see what all I have on hand
✓ put all my natural colorants together again - I need a second covered bin - need to go shopping
toss/recycle at least 5 more things (did fab yesterday - maybe I can repeat this!) - post pone to after dinner

 

[DWinMadison]

Rebatch of shards and trimmings. There's something cathartic about using up all those bags of trimmings. I used this in the shower this a.m.... it lathered great. I didn't add any new color or fragrance, and I kinda like it. It smells like Ivory soap.

 

[earlene]

First thing this morning, I planed & beveled more soap then cleaned up.

Bottled some Congee & more Rejuvalac (not just a nutritional drink) as I intend to use some in soap. The Rejuvalac makes the soap smell for awhile, but over time, the smell goes away. It's sort of like soaping with beer in that sense. I have not yet soaped with Congee, but thought I should give it a try. I haven't soaped with potato water or pasta water either, although last night I did boil my pasta without adding oil to the water just to try it out. Then decided I don't like pasta cooked in plain water; back to adding oil to the pasta pot.

Today we will visit MIL in her Nursing Home & I can give more soap away.

It was a good exercise giving large lots of soap away this week. It made me re-visit how much stock I really have on hand. I am happy to say it's diminishing enough that I don't feel so bad making more. And I was able to compare some soaps that I shrink-wrapped & labeled then boxed for storing away from the light & humidity to some of the same soaps that I had not put away in boxes. Proof is in the pudding, as they say. The box-stored soaps win hands down!

I have also decided I need to eliminate soap recipes that don't do well in humidity, because a couple of them that I left out and didn't box up, though they did well inside the boxes, out in the open, humidity made them tacky. If I give those away to family, I can't expect them to store them the way I do. So it's better to just eliminate those recipes from my repertoire.

ETA: Upon further consideration and a reminder from KiwiSoap in another thread about salt soap, I guess I won't be eliminating all humidity intolerant soap recipes. I will give this more thought.

 

[msunnerstood]

I am on a soaping hiatis until Thursday for a bunch of medical appointments but I did buy a set of Cookie cutting plungers to make embeds with and Im super happy with them. 68 came in the package and Im testing them with some of my soap edge slivers. Im soap geeking out lol

 

[DWinMadison]

My pull through doesn’t look very good lol I think the silicone was too flexible and didn’t have enough detail. Oh well. I will try again another day! They smell delightful, though - OMG Olive from NG is one of my new faves View attachment 39649

So, I have this idea about doing a pull-through with a grid of skewers or chopsticks strung totether like ### connected by strings or florist wire at the intersections. Wondering if it might produce a sort of plaid pattern. Is that moronical?

 

[earlene]

So, I have this idea about doing a pull-through with a grid of skewers or chopsticks strung totether like like ### connected by strings or florist wire at the intersections. Wondering if it might produce a sort of plaid pattern. Is that moronical?

Not at all! If you use either squirt bottles or pointie end pour-spouted measuring cups and layer your soaps in a parallel lines, then alternate with perpendicular lines, I expect it would work to enhance your plaid. I'm guessing you could still do a plain without the pull-through, but it would take a lot longer for the pour because you'd have to be so meticulous.

I hope you give it a try and show us your results!

 

[Nanette]

Funny, I'm actually doing the same thing. I started with heating an annotto infusion last night, then this morning was starting one for paprika and accidentally picked up the annotto bottle again. So now I have two annotto infusions and on paprika infusion going. Jeez! At least I knew what happened right away, but had already begun the pouring the spice into the jar of oil before I could stop myself. My brain->nerve pathway->muscle response is a little slow sometimes.

I need to go get my manjistha because I want to start an infusion of it as well. At least I am confident it is where it belongs, with the rest of the natural colorants. But I keep the paprika in my freezer because it can grow bugs if left in the spice cupboard and I love it on deviled eggs as long as nothing is moving around when I look inside the bottle. Yuck! I guess it wouldn't matter for soap but still, I hate bugs in my foodstuffs!

So I just realized in one of my efforts to clean out the excess jars & bottles in my cupboard, I now don't have enough jars for many oils infusions and for leftover food that I store in jars after a meal. Well, at least that prevents me from going overboard with the oil infusions this time around.

I have not tried the matcha tea powder yet, except to drink it. I'd like to try it as an oil infusion and as added to the lye solution, but right now I want to concentrate on the warmer tones given a project I have in mind and my limited number of jars and my mind doesn't need to try to do too much at once.

My goal is to test these colors side-by side as oil infusion only, as lye solution mixed only and as both lye mixed + oil infusion to see what kinds of results I will get with color. I had fabulous results with manjistha before, but didn't do any extensive color testing. This time around I hope to be more scientific in my method.

I wish there were more options for red tones besides dead bugs.

yes! I think cochineal was used to color food a long time ago.....maybe still today...those red gummy bears?

ok

 

[amd]

I have a stupid question....I made some shaving soap and added some stearic acid wsp brand....I did not melt it, just added at trace and of course it didnt melt. So I have stearic acid flakes all thru the soap...is this even safe to use? I will use if it is...hate to waste it. Of course it was a reasonably large batch..thanks in advance.

It would be better to post this as a separate thread rather than burying it as a post here.

This week's list is short as all of my bosses are here, so I have a lot of evenings taken up with dinners and such, but I might be able to squeeze in some soap making...
Make 40 bars of soap (the lip balms can wait until next week) for custom order #1
Wash Dishes
Source HO Sunflower oil for vegan soap experiment

My dinner last night ended early, so I was able to be home early in the evening. Daughter had missed me so she helped me wash dishes while we caught up with the day. I had a duh moment, and remembered that it was Soapers Choice Canola oil that is not specified as HO, so of course when I went to check the sunflower I was happy to see that it is noted as HO. Source found! Now to wait until I need to order something else. It's going to be a month or so until I see my friend again - she is giving a lb of hydrogenated palm so that I can do a true comparison of my experimental vegan soaps. I have been let off the hook for today (in the office as well as personal time) so I will be tackling the 40 bars of soap tonight. Thankfully they are all the same "flavor" and I have enough molds.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

If you're an "old timer" like me you might remember Eden Botanicals use to sell Amber Resin. They also sold rose, vetiver, jasmine and desert balsam resins. I had a bit of rose resin so I infused an oil.

Mountain Rose Herbs has Myrrh resin, here. What did you do with the rose resin infused oil?

 

[earlene]

yes! I think cochineal was used to color food a long time ago.....maybe still today...those red gummy bears?

Oh, yes, it is still being used and not only in food, lots of cosmetics, too.

See this video:



As I understand it, cochineal bugs provide many many people their livelihood, so in that respect, I don't let it bother me too horribly.

 

[Bladesmith]

Made another couple batches today.

Left has smugglers soul lush dupe and right one has avobath lush dupe (very lemony!)

Hot processed

 

[TAS]

Mobjack, the resin that I used from Eden Botanicals is not like the myrrh resin at all. Myrrh, frankincense, benzoin, etc resins are harvested from the trees. They are hard. The resin that I mentioned are perfume resins created in India, are soft, and look like this-https://www.ebay.com/itm/Premium-Go...hash=item5b02122cd2:m:mIH40DY2Q1G0-2Cz2Y0AN7g.

 

[earlene]

I had a long giant sized To Do list I wrote yesterday while sitting in the waiting room at the Walk-In Clinic/urgent care clinic while my husband had his leg looked at. (Gardening/over exertion/leg vein injury) Then we spent the rest of the day doing a ridiculous amount of driving and walking around in stores looking for stuff before grocery shopping because we were in the cities and can't find some of that stuff in our little town. My husband should have been at home with his leg elevated and iced, but he kept saying 'let's go to the next (store) down the road - they might have it. We also had dinner at a new restaurant. We will definitely return there because they had a lot of vegetarian options and the food was good. We didn't get home until after 9 p.m.

Anyway, I obviously got none of my soapy To Do items finished after we took off for the walk-in clinic since.

But today I did get a little bit done between sitting around with Hubby who is sitting in recliner with leg elevated and iced off & on per doctor's orders. I am thankful it rained all day, otherwise he would have been outside doing yard work. We only went out for about an hour or two today, so he's been giving the leg the required rest it needs today at least.

✓ cut a loaf of 4 1/2 bars of soap (slab cut) at 4:30 am (awoke, so did that to get it out of the way, then back to sleep)
✓ planed & beveled a few soaps
✓ took soap photographs (but forgot to get shots of the soap I cut at 4:30 am, so more to do)
✓ posted about the Rimmed Soaps and added alkanet soap photos to another post to show what results looked like
✓ visited MIL in Nursing Home & gave soap to staff - a flat of 39 soaps*
✓ washed soapy dishes from a couple of days ago

Next soapy To Do's for tomorrow and the next few days:

- continue my clean-up/organization in soaping areas (prep for future renovation)
- toss/donate items destined to make room for soaping supplies in kitchen (prep for moving my soaping area)
- transfer more colorants from plastic zip lock baggies to plastic bottles
- color test soaps using the infused oils, etc.
- photograph alkanet confetti soap
- choose soaps to give away to family (various visiting family coming the next 2 weekends)
- determine how many more soaps I have left to plane & bevel - make a plan to get caught up
- design soap labels for soaps ready to package & begin packaging
- begin packaging
-

* Just in time, too according to MIL. Apparently they've been asking her when I was going to bring more and she said she would pay for them herself if I'd bring more!
In fact the medication nurse stopped dispensing meds so she could go sniff soap. She's lucky I was not her Boss. I would have reprimanded her.

 

[KiwiMoose]

Made another couple batches today.

Left has smugglers soul lush dupe and right one has avobath lush dupe (very lemony!)

Hot processed

View attachment 39699

Need a LOVE button! LOVE that blue!

Where are y'all getting your Lush dupes? I had to make my own by blending a ton of different oils!

 

[TAS]

earlene, you humble me. I made one simple batch yesterday. I had to get it done because we are expecting house guests today through the weekend, and I guess it would be rude to excuse myself to go make soap. I will, however, have to go cut it later on today so I have that to look forward to.

 

[Bladesmith]

Need a LOVE button! LOVE that blue!

Where are y'all getting your Lush dupes? I had to make my own by blending a ton of different oils!

Thanks! I bought a bunch of fragrances from nurture soap and they have a lot of lush dupes.

 

[Diana Smith]

Does Yesterday count? Had my 3rd Arts & Crafts Fair. Made back 25% of my booth fee. Luckily it goes for 4 solid months so I *should* be able to make back my full booth fee + some, in theory anyway. I only made $10 in 7 hours though so... it has low participation. But I had several people show up and want to buy products that are curing on the shelves for another 4 weeks though. Made some contacts, a few people volunteered some free help for me, which I was like, oh you can make me a public profile on your phone? Almost cringe. I just hope they don't extort me for doing it for 'free'. I gave them a free soap bar for volunteering to do it for me. So I hope it works out. I've actually decided not to be a cell phone user it's too expensive at the moment. All of my whipped shea butter lotions (no water) melted in the sunlight into pools of liquid. (I don't have a tent yet, it just never crossed my mind when I was looking at sparkling micas to invest in a tent.) I guess I need to work on finding a real job, although I love this one so much!

 

[Peggyrae]

Does everyone use MP for embeds?

Hi everyone! I haven't posted for a long time due it to being summer for the kids and my grandkids have been visiting. I just started doing embeds and started with M&P embeds on my CP soap. I wasn't very happy with the results because my embeds were sweating for the longest time. (Possibly from the extra moisture from the curing CP soap?) I ended up brushing them off with a soft paintbrush and respraying with 90% alc0hol. I read that one way to control this was to wrap the soap tightly, but don't like to wrap my CP soaps that way. I just wondered if anyone else had issues with this and how they dealt with it. I am doing my second request for a similar soap with pinecone embeds and was wondering if I let them cure longer than the usual 4-6 weeks the sweating will be less of an issue.