What soapy thing have you done today?

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I used up the last of my MB fats on a batch of soap this morning so I thought I’d just bust out a fresh batch, and I totally goofed up! Not paying close enough attention and feeling over confident in my process, I guess. 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️
I had my olive oil in my big ol container and grabbed the next liquid oil and went at it. At the last gram, it dawned on me that the bottle felt different and sure enough, I was adding castor instead of sweet almond! Ugh! Enough castor to make it 13% instead of 5% for this batch size. So I do math the hard way, probably over stressing, to figure out how much more olive I need to balance it out. Well, of course, I don’t have that much olive in my jug, so in the middle of all this I had to stop to run to Costco. DH goes with, and we get everything on my Costco list including the OO - aka not just a quick dash to get back at it.
I am finally done, and now I have a jug of clearly and boldly labeled Olive/Castor blend for my next MBs.
Thank you for normalizing this way of masterbatching. 💕😂

My soapy thing today was making a yuge batch of liquid soap paste. I'm following @Zing's example and am working on Operation Use Stuff Up, and today, that was red palm oil. I wasn't crazy about it in bar soap, but I actually like palm oil in lotions and liquid soap. It makes a thicker LS and of course, red palm adds a nice, natural color. Below is a pic of 2500g of LS paste, enough maybe to last a year. I dilute it 5:1 for our foamer bottles.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that this was an *exciting* batch to make! Got my heart rate up enough that I might be able to skip my aerobic workout tomorrow morning. ;) Seriously, though.... I was pouring the KOH into the water, and a whole bunch of it plopped into the water a lot faster than I planned. It went to the bottom of the water container, and before I could stir it, kabloom! (which is why we never put water on top of lye, lol).

All I could do was step way back and let 'er rip. Post-volcano measurements showed that I only lost about 20g of solution, but it was all over my stainless work table and making its way towards other things nearby. I quickly threw a towel over the puddle, which stopped it from going anywhere.

Because I wasn't sure how much of the 20g was KOH and how much was water, I poured the remaining liquid down the laundry sink (yay for a clean drain). Then I came back to clean up the mess. Let's just say, I know why they add lye to cleaning solutions, because my stainless table is sparkling clean now!

Anyway, I consider myself very lucky that it wasn't worse, and very thankful for PPE. When I made the new batch of KOH solution, I noticed that the flakes were extra feisty. KOH always crackles, hisses, and pops, but this solution was positively rolling at a boil, even with slow pouring and mixing.

Thankfully, the rest of the soaping was quite uneventful. With warm oils, hot lye, and glycerin for ⅔ of my liquid, we got to sticky taffy within 2 minutes. She's resting now under a towel; I'll dilute tomorrow as I've had enough for today. 😅

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Just trying to imagine hissing soap, thought your photo was bolognaise sauce when I first saw it, without reading your post :).

I had hassles a couple of weeks ago, with shaking liquid green colour, I put some in half the batch with black, then went to reshake the bottle to put just green on top and forgot the lid was off, let's just say lovely green everywhere.
 
Just trying to imagine hissing soap, thought your photo was bolognaise sauce when I first saw it, without reading your post :).

I had hassles a couple of weeks ago, with shaking liquid green colour, I put some in half the batch with black, then went to reshake the bottle to put just green on top and forgot the lid was off, let's just say lovely green everywhere.
Oh no! At least my lye spill made everything cleaner, not greener!
 
Today it was time to dilute yesterday's LS paste as we and our adult kids (and their kids) were running dangerously low.

In the same way that CO-OO-PO is the trinity recipe for bar soap, CO-OO-Castor is the trinity recipe for LS. Yesterday's paste recipe was just a slight deviation from that, in order use up my last bit of red palm oil and experiment with it in LS. The recipe screenshot is below; this was made with 0%SF; a 2:1:1 glycerin:water:KOH ratio; and some of that free olive oil that I recently scored. Although I don't like OO in bar soap, thankfully I do like it in LS.

After weighing out and tearing up 250g of paste, it was diluted with 1% sodium lactate and boiling hot distilled water poured over the top of the paste at a 4:1 water: paste ratio. After about a minute of hand-stirring, the stickblender was used to speed up dilution - hence the foamy head. That will likely dissipate by tomorrow morning. Once it has fully cooled, it will be easier to determine if it needs more water. My typical dilution rate for foamer bottles is 5:1, but this recipe has more CO than typical for me, making it more soluble, so I didn't want to risk over-diluting.

Anyway, the results are good both from an esthetic standpoint and how the soap feels: it has very nice off-white foam, it is non-drying, and it rinses clean. Yay!

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After two failed batches of soap dough due to old oils, my newest attempt w all new oils worked great!! Conditioned and wrapped the dough. Used my bath bomb press to do the first squeeze. It really helped!!
I wasn’t sure if this extruded disc would work or not. I’m really surprised and grateful it turned out better than I expected! Yay!
“Soap, the final frontier!”
 

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After two failed batches of soap dough due to old oils, my newest attempt w all new oils worked great!! Conditioned and wrapped the dough. Used my bath bomb press to do the first squeeze. It really helped!!
I wasn’t sure if this extruded disc would work or not. I’m really surprised and grateful it turned out better than I expected! Yay!
“Soap, the final frontier!”
The pic from yesterday wasn’t great as the embed was too soft to cut. Here’s a better slice from today. Now to figure the soap!! I’m thinking maybe OPW?
 

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Can you make a ciaglia batch with them? If you look at some of the ciaglia soaps on various threads, the speckles are quite fine and could look like stars. :)
Agreed. My ZNSB scraps can be ground very fine before they're even fully cured.
 

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After being encouraged by several members of the forum, I finally made my first batch of soap with lard in it. Went pretty high as well - 48% piggy. Even if the recipe was mostly hard fats, I was surprised to see it was very slow moving - and poured in the mold at thin trace - it stayed liquid for quite some time. That behavior was mentioned by a couple of you guys, and now I witnessed it myself. Let's see how it turns out and whether or not I'll be converted as well 😅
 
I've been out of soaping for 20 years, and decided to start up again. This my second batch, I poured at too thick of a trace, but I'm happy with it. Things that used to be second nature to me now require thoughts on the process. But, it will come back to me.

Goats Milk and Honey with no oats.View attachment 79215
Welcome back! This looks like yummy caramel pudding.
 
I need to be working in my she shed so bad. I have a festival Saturday but I've been under a freaking broke down truck all week. I'm hoping these are ready. Peppermint and menthol, and funky lookng pumpkin.
 

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I was curious, so I checked it out. They sell this at Neiman Marcus! There’s not a single solitary thing that any of us couldn’t do, so it better smell really really good! I did notice there wasn’t an ingredients list. They mentioned the red algae and shea butter and some mysterious botanicals. Also their very special rope. 🙄 I don’t know, I’m a skeptic. There’s a Neiman Marcus within driving distance. I may go down there just to sniff it. 😂
I am anxious to hear what you think! I don't care how much money I had I sure wouldn't pay $65 for a bar of soap with a linen string that will turn that nasty color and cut through that hole in no time! JMO! Hope it smells really good!
 
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