What soapy thing have you done today?

[AliOop]

Okay… I need to know about the shower cleaner… just did a search but can’t find it. @AliOop sending up the bat signal! Please point me to it. My shower will thank you.

It’s another super difficult recipe, just like the citric acid hair rinse. I wish I remembered where I read about this cleaner recipe, so I could give credit where it is due. It might have been One Good Thing by Jillee?

Recipe: Mix equal parts Dawn dish soap and white vinegar. Do this right before you plan to use it.

Process: Liberally spray down your shower, including the curtain. Now comes the hardest part: let it sit for 10-15 minutes!! This is crucial to let the product do the hard work. You should be able to wipe, or at most, lightly scrub away any buildup. Rinse it very well. Thicker lime scale may require more treatments, but once you are back to baseline, a monthly application of this should keep things in good order.

PS - the vinegar smell does dissipate quickly after rinsing. It can be a little eye-watering till then.

Edit: the above recipe is actually a cleaner; apparently Zing was talking about the daily shower spray - another good one learned from some blog site I can’t remember.

 

[Shelley D]

I made my challenge soap. It looks decent

We need a cheering emoji in the quick selections!

 

[Shelley D]

I made faux sea water ~ getting ready to make some soap

 

[Servant4Christ]

I just hand shredded a MOUNTAIN of soap scraps from the Christmas soaps of doom. I'm thinking about adding the shreds (scented with BB's Sugar and Spice FO) to some soap batter scented with peppermint EO to hopefully get something reminiscent of chocolate mint.

 

[jeanemarie]

It’s another super difficult recipe, just like the citric acid hair rinse. I wish I remembered where I read about this cleaner recipe, so I could give credit where it is due. It might have been One Good Thing by Jillee?

Recipe: Mix equal parts Dawn dish soap and white vinegar. Do this right before you plan to use it.

Process: Liberally spray down your shower, including the curtain. Now comes the hardest part: let it sit for 10-15 minutes!! This is crucial to let the product do the hard work. You should be able to wipe, or at most, lightly scrub away any buildup. Rinse it very well. Thicker lime scale may require more treatments, but once you are back to baseline, a monthly application of this should keep things in good order.

PS - the vinegar smell does dissipate quickly after rinsing. It can be a little eye-watering till then.

Edit: the above recipe is actually a cleaner; apparently Zing was talking about the daily shower spray - another good one learned from some blog site I can’t remember.

Just a thought - Would sodium citrate be an even better chelator since it's already transformed into a salt of citric acid? Like what happens when you put citric acid in a soap recipe and it reacts with the sodium hydroxide to act as a chelator in the finished soap?

 

[AliOop]

Just a thought - Would sodium citrate be an even better chelator since it's already transformed into a salt of citric acid? Like what happens when you put citric acid in a soap recipe and it reacts with the sodium hydroxide to act as a chelator in the finished soap?

Either one will work, but citric acid requires a lye adjustment (increase) because it does react with lye to become sodium citrate. You can read more about that here. Personally, I choose to use sodium citrate, just to avoid that extra math.

 

[Shelley D]

I finally got back into the swing of things and made some soap
2 batches at that! I kinda forgot my own maths and how much it took to fill my loaf mold so my first batch turned out to be a half batch, but that's ok for now. I will make more and let it chill (cure) for the rest of the year for Christmas
The 2nd batch was an experiment ~ I was playing with ZNSB.
The first one was the olive oil with a little castor, avocado, and coconut oils.
The second one had the holy trinity oils in it plus some butters ~ I wanted to see how it would feel when worked like ZNSB recipe. Since I didn't want it too cleansing, I dropped the palm oil down and I had an odd amount of mango butter to use up (96 grams), and in the end my recipe total ended up being 99.99 in the lye calculator but It had OO, AO, Coconut Oil, Castor Oil, PO, MB and SB.
I made both recipes using the faux sea water and her recommendation for water to lye ratio and both batches mixed up so creamy and didn't burn/tingle on my skin when I was filling the molds (it got a bit sloppy ) I also zipped right through emulsion and light trace and straight to pudding with the first batch I'm a bit rusty! It felt good to make soap again ~ I'm thinking about shredding up all my bars I still have leftover and blending them together since they each have qualities I either love or hate ~ maybe if I mix them all together, they will make one good bar?
Anyway ~ I also got to play with the top of my second batch since I made enough to fill the loaf that time but I almost blended it too much also

 

[AliOop]

I made soap, too! I used up a whole bunch of tallow, some older butter that was labeled as kokum (but the ingredient list said shea butter and candlenut butter; huh??), and of course, some of my olive oil from my lucky score earlier this year.

Since I'm running out of my beloved Dragon's Blood from @cmzaha, I used CC's Oakmoss Sandalwood FO. To me, the stronger, masculine scents like those two really disguise the smell of shea (which I love, but others don't), and tallow (which only the dogs love, lol).

Per @ScentimentallyYours' request, I posted pics over here in the Soapy Tips thread that shows how I use a heating pad and overturned box to gel my soaps.

 

[Shelley D]

Whoopsie! Got a crack! And I know how it happened ~ I was trying to keep my oils warm enough so the palm oil wouldn't start to resolidify (because I usually like to soap cooler, and my salty water was indeed frozen) and I kept my pot on the burner a little bit too long so it really didn't get much of a chance to cool down at all before I added the lye solution ~ so it just got a wee bit too warm I guess All the cavity molds look fine, thank goodness!

 

[AliOop]

Whoopsie! Got a crack!

Have any embeds you can stuff in there? If not, and if it's still soft, maybe try mushing it down with a spoon. Or used gloved hands to push it together and smooth it out.

 

[Shelley D]

Have any embeds you can stuff in there? If not, and if it's still soft, maybe try mushing it down with a spoon. Or used gloved hands to push it together and smooth it out.

No embeds ~ thought about doing the smooshie smooshie but I was afraid I would really mess it up so I figured I would just let it be and see what happens. By the time I was heading to bed, it was significantly cooler and some of the crack had settled down and almost closed (the part near the top end of the picture where the crack was less severe). It will most likely be for our own use so I'm not too worried about the looks ~ I just hope I don't mess up the next one ~ the one I plan on giving for Christmas at the end of the year