I've been sick for a week, but finally managed to make my custom orders last night. One batch of shampoo bars and a batch of sugar scrub. I also ordered SCI and SCS noodles to try making pressed shampoo bars and start testing out a few recipes. I have a friend who has a 3D printer so she is going to print me a 3 pc mold for them if I get a recipe I like. For testing I will be using a pvc end cap, plug and my husband's arbor press, lol.
Hoping I am feeling up to doing some soap things over the weekend. It's supposed to be relatively cool weather, so the dungeon should be good working temps for me. At the very least maybe I could get my dishes done...
I would like to do:
MB lye (without silk for vegan soap experiments)
Test batch 1 of vegan soap experiments: sub palm in place of tallow in my regular recipe
Test batch 2: sub Dixiedragon's* lard replacement in place of tallow in my regular recipe
Test batch 3: sub IL's* palm replacement in the lard replacement in place of tallow in my regular recipe
*I'm not sure I have these ladies credited with the correct recipes, I'm working off memory today and not on all cylinders. My apologies if I have anyone confused.*
What I would like is to have a vegan recipe that is similar to my current recipe, and performs the same. I have some customers that don't care if the soap is vegan or not, so I would like to have the soap perform the same for them regardless. So I'm going to do a couple of small test batches to use up some sample FO's that I have, and then I'll compare them after a regular cure, at 6 months, and hopefully again at 9 months. I'll also put them through my usual "questionable storage" conditions to see if they develop DOS or not.
Other randomness that needs to be done:
I would like to get a batch of donut bubble bars done, as well as a batch of pineapple ones. I have a show the end of September, so curious to see if novelty shaped bubble bars will sell better than my scoops. I also need to organize my thoughts a bit on creating gift baskets with existing stock (or using existing stock and making one or two items to round it out).
Oh, and I need to make a batch of cupcakes for my Dec club, and restock Nag Champa.