What soapy thing have you done today?

[The_Emerald_Chicken]

Here's yesterday's soap, all cut! I need to rinse or plane it once it's harder. Is there any way to plane soap without buying an actual soap planer?View attachment 58754

For whatever it's worth, I haven't regretted the soap planer I got from Amazon for $13-ish a few months ago. Not to try to persuade you to buy more soapy things, but...

I'm sure there're better/nicer options out there, but so far this one's serving my purposes quite nicely!

 

[Vicki C]

I melted up some palm stearin, and wondered why it appears to have some bluish tint to it. Not as if it was, but more like aerogel, Cherenkov radiation, or tonic water. Turns out that palm oil is UV fluorescent. Illuminated with a black light tube, the palm stearin tabs glow in a bright aqua-blue. My first suspicion was that the candle manufacturers added optical brighteners to the palm stearin to offset a yellowish tint (just like common with laundry detergents and paper).
Next test: regular RBD palm oil (with a yellowish tint to it, out of suspicion for added fluorescent dyes) – glows greenish-blue too!
View attachment 58804 View attachment 58805

Does this mean that soap with palm oil glows under UV light? YES!
View attachment 58806
Even better! This is my ZnO/TiO₂ lollipop swirl with 30% RBD palm oil. The swirl is hardly noticeable by eye, I had to increase the contrast on the left to make it visible at all. Its stripes without white pigment and those with the zinc white are glowing bright blue. But those stripes that happen to be brightest under normal light: the ones with TD: don't fluoresce – no surprise that TD and its legendary UV absorption is a common ingredient in sunscreens.

The test with unrefined red palm oil was inconclusive; but as obscenely orange as this stuff already is, I'd have been very surprised anyway.


Who else has their soap under suspicion to glow under disco lighting, bank note counterfeit detector, or face tanner?

This is amazing… you could make secret message soap invisible under normal light! sounds like a great Nancy Drew mystery plot! The Secret of the Haunted Soap.

 

[MrsZ]

For whatever it's worth, I haven't regretted the soap planer I got from Amazon for $13-ish a few months ago. Not to try to persuade you to buy more soapy things, but...

I'm sure there're better/nicer options out there, but so far this one's serving my purposes quite nicely!

I don't need to buy any more stuff since my hobby doesn't pay for itself, but this may end up in my wish list.....

 

[Vicki C]

I don't need to buy any more stuff since my hobby doesn't pay for itself, but this may end up in my wish list.....

I was just joking with my husband about how I run out to intercept the Amazon van every time it arrives…

 

[The_Phoenix]

All this talk of infusions has got me curious about what sort of stuff in the local wilderness I could dig up to infuse. I don’t have a clue what to look for.

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

Indeedy.
View attachment 58792

love your soap' & your colors are just beautiful. This picture the color Pop's...

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

I made soap! I've only made two other batches of soap since mid-May, and both were for the June challenge. I have some mango butter I need to start using up, and I've been wanting a Mango Sorbet soap so it was just meant to be. I'm hoping my layers are straight and it holds together at the mica lines. I guess I'll see tomorrow.

Oooh looking forward to seeing it.

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

I melted up some palm stearin, and wondered why it appears to have some bluish tint to it. Not as if it was, but more like aerogel, Cherenkov radiation, or tonic water. Turns out that palm oil is UV fluorescent. Illuminated with a black light tube, the palm stearin tabs glow in a bright aqua-blue. My first suspicion was that the candle manufacturers added optical brighteners to the palm stearin to offset a yellowish tint (just like common with laundry detergents and paper).
Next test: regular RBD palm oil (with a yellowish tint to it, out of suspicion for added fluorescent dyes) – glows greenish-blue too!
View attachment 58804 View attachment 58805

Does this mean that soap with palm oil glows under UV light? YES!
View attachment 58806
Even better! This is my ZnO/TiO₂ lollipop swirl with 30% RBD palm oil. The swirl is hardly noticeable by eye, I had to increase the contrast on the left to make it visible at all. Its stripes without white pigment and those with the zinc white are glowing bright blue. But those stripes that happen to be brightest under normal light: the ones with TD: don't fluoresce – no surprise that TD and its legendary UV absorption is a common ingredient in sunscreens.

The test with unrefined red palm oil was inconclusive; but as obscenely orange as this stuff already is, I'd have been very surprised anyway.


Who else has their soap under suspicion to glow under disco lighting, bank note counterfeit detector, or face tanner?

Wow' this is to Fab!!!

 

[mamansavon]

Well, today I made some *ahem* landscape soap...ahem, bc it went terribly, terribly off course and probably the theme should now be "The End of Times" soap.
On a positive note, my homemade mould and reusable liners performed brilliantly!

 

[ResolvableOwl]

After emptying a bottle of HO safflower last week, I have today used up my HO sunflower oil too. I will try hard to not go buy replenishment tomorrow

 

[amd]

Here are some pics of my formerly pink bathroom in my former home. The tub, toilet, and sink were solid pink. The only surface not covered in mosaic tiles was the ceiling.

Completely loving the pink and blue bathrooms. One of the houses we looked at had a similarly designed lime green bathroom, that I fell in love with. Still trying to talk the hubs into letting me do that in the house that we ended up buying (sadly no funky colors in this house, it's pretty boring).

My soap thing is making a new soap friend. She's my daughter's friend and she's 13. She was at our house for dinner last night and was raving about how great the hand soap is. My daughter said "Mom, you have to show her the soap dungeon." I spent about 45 minutes visiting with my new friend about how soap is made, along with some of the B&B I make. She was soooo curious! I told her to come help me when I get back to making soap in the fall. In the meantime I sent her home with some sugar scrub and a couple soaps.

Oh, and last week I scored a killer destash from a local GM soaper who closing shop. For $200 I picked up
16lbs lard
64lbs NaOH
18lbs KOH
4 full 16oz bottles of fragrance (WSP True Lilac, NG Love Spell, NG Strawberry Rhubarb Pie, and NDA Peppermint EO 33.3 oz)
4lbs BTMS
a big bottle of Jojoba (unopened)
20oz Germall Plus (unopened)
a case of shopping bags - the good boutique-y kind
200 small sized muslin bags that will fit my endcuts,
... a couple other small things I don't remember...
and the BIG deal is the slab cutter!!!!

I might go back for her boxes of tottles and lids. Now I'm just waiting for lumber prices to drop and I'll have my husband make me a slab mold. I have some maths to do to decide how big to make it and make sure I have the right size containers for making the soap (and making sure my stickblender is long enough or if I have to upscale that too...) sigh. Go big or go home.

 

[TashaBird]

3rd times a charm. Not perfect, but good as I can do. My hands are SO tired!!! Guess I’m getting them a work out for me getting back to work. (Massage therapist)

 

[mamansavon]

My reusable liner .
Made from a plastic placemat and duct tape.
(Please ignore the awful soap)

 

[Zing]

Your request is granted, madam...I only have a partial pic so you can't see the blue tub that would be on the left side of the pic. Note how the tiles are a grey blue and the sink and toilet are more of a turquoise blue. Great memories of throwing that tub out over the upstairs deck into the yard below. Wheeeee! Buh-bye!!
View attachment 58795

I actually love this blue! I would replace the whiteness with blueness. I know I'm totally off the subject rails here but this is a room that is committed! I like the retro and the saturation and my fave color is blue. Should I start a separate thread for blue and pink bathrooms??!!
With apologies to @AliOop, Lord knows the motion sickness I experienced with our old space odyssey bathroom and I know photos can mask a lot.

 

[AAShillito]

Today I am shrink wrapping, labeling and weighing for my friends order

 

[Vicki C]

All this talk of infusions has got me curious about what sort of stuff in the local wilderness I could dig up to infuse. I don’t have a clue what to look for.

I am testing a theory that anything in the Polygonaceae family will make pink or red with the roots, as turkey rhubarb does. I don’t know California flora but this looks like a good resource for plants in this family that grow in California. You can narrow it down to your county, even. Polygonaceae of California, US
Likewise I wonder if anything in the madder family, or rubiaceae, might work if you make a tea from the roots.Here are some madder plants in CA. Observations
Of course, you’d want to be careful not to dig up anything rare, or poisonous. The plants I dug up for the gardening challenge are plants I’m familiar with and both are weeds. Good luck!

 

[TashaBird]

Halp! If I split my batter/recipe into 3rds, and poured the bottom 1/3rd but forgot SL and FO, can I add the FO (I know not the SL) to the top 2/3rd?

I knew I was too tired to soap.
Edit: Nevermind, don’t want to risk messing it up worse than it is.
I did the EXACT same thing last time, but I forgot to add the FO to the upper 2/3rds. The hubs has helped me both times by using a pippette and adding batter to my crevices in my embed right before I put it into the mold. I’m blaming that distraction.

 

[AliOop]

@Zing @amd oh yes, I actually loved the house with it's crazy colors, inside and out. And just to keep this soapy, did you catch the in-wall soap dish off to the right of the blue sink? Very impractical as suds were dripped on the floor as the soap traveled between sink and wall.

Found another shot of the pink bath with the tub and floor, for your viewing pleasure...

ETA: what I didn't like in the blue one is that the turquoise-blue fixtures really clashed with the grey-blue tiles - it didn't show well in the pic but the clash was awful. Also, the tubs were unfortunately in pretty bad shape, so there was no keeping them. Plus, the back wall of each tub/shower was rotted out due to incorrect window installation. It all had to go.

 

[KiwiMoose]

Made my sister’s favourite- Rose soap. Added some little Rose-like thingies I made out of soap shavings to the top. Hopefully they pass as roses!

 

[Tara_H]

Likewise I wonder if anything in the madder family, or rubiaceae, might work if you make a tea from the roots.

Fascinating! I just checked up on cleavers (velcro plant, galium aparine) which grows rather too well here, and found this: