What soapy thing have you done today?

[Zing]

On the plus side, I turned curing soaps. Also did another quick trip to my sister's and spent the weekend enjoying washing with some of my soaps that are 2-3 years old. Long cures are awesometastic!

On the negative side, Mrs. Zing made me close my eyes as she dumped my DOS infected batch into the garbage. It was one of my best designs, too. I've made plenty of 'meh' and 'FAIL' batches so why why why??!! I had already given my oldest child one bar and called to tell him to dump it. The really awkward thing though, is I gave away a second bar. We recently stayed at a cabin that belongs to a friend of a friend and we left a thank you note and a couple of my soaps. Now what do I do? Text my friend to forward my text to his friend that says 'one of your guests left you some rancid soap in your cabin.'?? Erg!

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

On the plus side, I turned curing soaps. Also did another quick trip to my sister's and spent the weekend enjoying washing with some of my soaps that are 2-3 years old. Long cures are awesometastic!

On the negative side, Mrs. Zing made me close my eyes as she dumped my DOS infected batch into the garbage. It was one of my best designs, too. I've made plenty of 'meh' and 'FAIL' batches so why why why??!! I had already given my oldest child one bar and called to tell him to dump it. The really awkward thing though, is I gave away a second bar. We recently stayed at a cabin that belongs to a friend of a friend and we left a thank you note and a couple of my soaps. Now what do I do? Text my friend to forward my text to his friend that says 'one of your guests left you some rancid soap in your cabin.'?? Erg!

Or just say it's " Out Of Code" it will be replaced & leave it at that... I so understand your feelings of throwing soap in the trash' eeekkk not fun...

Fantastic WhooHoo

 

[Mistrael]

Wrapped & labeled soaps and stored them in my linen cupboard. If I'm able to make more before spring I may need to add another box to my storage system!

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

Wrapped & labeled soaps and stored them in my linen cupboard. If I'm able to make more before spring I may need to add another box to my storage system!

Very nice' I zoomed in real close so I could get a good look.

 

[Johnez]

I didn't make a soap today, too much to do. I did however start a hot infusion with HO sunflower oil. We'll see how this turns out, definitely posting pics if all goes well.

 

[melonpan]

Cheese/garlic/nutmeg grater

Just a cheese grater, easy peasy.

Here’s a bucket ‘o soap that was grated with a microplane grater and a closeup of the grated soap after I broke it down a little more. I have been thinking about trying to create a falling snow effect in an ombre type soap, but the pieces may be too insubstantial to show up as individual snowflakes. A scale bar would have been helpful! The pieces in the bottom photo are flat and a few mm at most in length.

View attachment 61918
View attachment 61919

I use a box cheese grater. It was daunting at first. I thought it would be too tedious so i put it off. Its way easier than grating cheese lol.

Not, Zing, obviously, but another tool often used to grate soap is the Salad Shooter. I have actually used a food processor and by choosing which attachment, can get very fine to very coarse (similar to finely grated cheese or coarse grated cheese). In fact, with the finely ground size, it's almost like powder.

Thank you all for the help!

 

[Tara_H]

After all the fretting, I went to make shampoo bars last night... And discovered I was out of slsa
I guess in the excitement of mum visiting I didn't keep my inventory properly updated, so I had to order some more but it will take a couple of weeks to get here.
In the meantime I tried yet another new shampoo bar recipe - it has mango butter which I bought a while ago and then forgot why, so I'm glad to have found some use for it. It should have been mango scented also but I can't seem to figure out where my mango FO has gone, there's only one place I keep FO and it's not there, which means it could be *anywhere*... So my golden coloured shampoo bar is now scented with fresh linen and cucumber
Hoping that today I'll get a challenge attempt in, maybe regular soap will be more cooperative!

 

[ResolvableOwl]

I've used mango butter in my challenge soap .

 

[Zing]

Well that was a total bust of a soapy day! I had the last bit of masterbatched oils and lye liquid. I weighed my remaining lye liquid, jiggered the lye calculator with various oil weights to get to my lye weight, calculated various shallow volumes for various molds, converted ounces to grams and grams to ounces several times, heated up my oils, etc. Then I noticed several water drops and small puddles on my counter top. What the h---? My plastic measuring cup for my lye solution had bit the dust and was leaking. Lye is caustic, my friends!
So. Much. Math. Wasted.
I am going to listen to the Universe's message to take tonight off.

 

[Martha]

I made this batch of soap following Oh Yvonne’s video. I’m very happy with the swirl, but a bit confused with the color. The main area is colored with indigo. The side that was exposed turned pink. Will the rest of the blue soap turn pink now that it’s cut? Or is this one of those magic tricks where it will all eventually turn blue again? I’m hoping for blue because this pink doesn’t really match the other colors. I had orange, gold, white and blue in the swirl and you can’t really make those colors out very well. I want to try this again with different colors.

 

[Mommawolfe]

Wrapped & labeled soaps and stored them in my linen cupboard. If I'm able to make more before spring I may need to add another box to my storage system!

Does anyone else HATE wrapping and labeling soap more than I do?

 

[ResolvableOwl]

but a bit confused with the color. The main area is colored with indigo. The side that was exposed turned pink. Will the rest of the blue soap turn pink now that it’s cut? Or is this one of those magic tricks where it will all eventually turn blue again?

Expect it to stay this way. For some reason, indigo quite often fades whenever not fully saponified soap batter is exposed to air. You can actually be happy that it only happened to the top, and your sides are fine. Could be worse.

 

[Babyshoes]

Yesterday I wrapped up a bunch of cured soap to share with friends at our games weekend coming up this weekend. I'm very excited.

 

[Tara_H]

Well, yesterday I did a bunch of the prep for the challenge soap.
We're still in the process of converting the old cow shed (some may remember it as the kill room) into a proper craft room, but everything is in odd places at the moment. It took me an awful lot of energy to find all of the ingredients and most of the equipment and by the time they were all assembled I decided to take my own advice and come back to it today with a fresh brain.
I got hung up on the point of calculating the percentages of different coloured batter I want and then translating it into grams of mica (no, not mice, autocorrect...) but I think I have a handle on that today ... Not that I haven't done it many times before anyway.

 

[ShirleyHailstock]

Hi, I haven't done much in the past year. While I never got the Corona virus (took the vaccine), the lockdown and news took all my energy and concentration. I did make some Christmas decorations last January. I painted them this month and I'm ready to display them for the holiday.

 

[Zing]

View attachment 62025

I made this batch of soap following Oh Yvonne’s video. I’m very happy with the swirl, but a bit confused with the color. The main area is colored with indigo. The side that was exposed turned pink. Will the rest of the blue soap turn pink now that it’s cut? Or is this one of those magic tricks where it will all eventually turn blue again? I’m hoping for blue because this pink doesn’t really match the other colors. I had orange, gold, white and blue in the swirl and you can’t really make those colors out very well. I want to try this again with different colors.

Good to see you and that soap is gore-juss!

 

[Martha]

Good to see you and that soap is gore-juss!

Thanks @Zing! I’m glad to be back. Making soap for friends and family for the holidays.
I’m very happy with being able to replicate the swirling technique. I would like to tweak the colors next time. I will have to read up some more on indigo. I just thought I would get a nice denim blue. Didn’t realize there were many (random??) color possibilities.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

https://www.greatcakessoapworks.com...how-to-use-indigo-to-color-cold-process-soap/Such sites read quite optimistic at times; it can indeed be frustrating to figure out why one's own indigo doesn't quite behave as well as everyone's other seems to. Indigo is a great colourant, but one that doesn't forgive protocol mistakes.

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

Well, yesterday I did a bunch of the prep for the challenge soap.
We're still in the process of converting the old cow shed (some may remember it as the kill room) into a proper craft room, but everything is in odd places at the moment. It took me an awful lot of energy to find all of the ingredients and most of the equipment and by the time they were all assembled I decided to take my own advice and come back to it today with a fresh brain.
I got hung up on the point of calculating the percentages of different coloured batter I want and then translating it into grams of mica (no, not mice, autocorrect...) but I think I have a handle on that today ... Not that I haven't done it many times before anyway.

I'd love to see your new craft room once completed, How exciting. Happy Soaping

https://www.greatcakessoapworks.com...how-to-use-indigo-to-color-cold-process-soap/Such sites read quite optimistic at times; it can indeed be frustrating to figure out why one's own indigo doesn't quite behave as well as everyone's other seems to. Indigo is a great colourant, but one that doesn't forgive protocol mistakes.

Wow great info.

 

[SoapSisters]

@Martha There's a Holly's Soapmaking video that addresses this issue of getting both blue and pink from an indigo powder infusion.