What soapy thing have you done today?

[LynetteO]

Such … beautiful … glycerin rivers

A “broken” 30 year old heating pad underneath my loaf molds help to “create” rivers nearly every time. Which I figured out by accident trying to force gel as a newbie thinking my other loaves hadn’t been. Turns out they all had been going thru full gel without any additional heat needed.

 

[Heather McClain]

I made some cool rainbow cloud bath bombs this evening and couldn’t stand not to test one even though they weren’t dry…..then the soapmaker in me just had to swirl the colors

 

[TashaBird]

I made some cool rainbow cloud bath bombs this evening and couldn’t stand not to test one even though they weren’t dry…..then the soapmaker in me just had to swirl the colors
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You didn’t take a bath?!

 

[MellonFriend]

So I have a question about these amazing rainbow bath bombs: What happens to the color of your water after it's been in there.? Does it get all brown from all the colors mixing?

 

[Heather McClain]

You didn’t take a bath?!

I tested that one in the sink

So I have a question about these amazing rainbow bath bombs: What happens to the color of your water after it's been in there.? Does it get all brown from all the colors mixing?

Well the water in the sink was pretty dark. I’m going to do a full tub test tomorrow and see what happens. Hoping for a dark purplish color and not gross brown.

 

[lianasouza]

The consistency/melting point of palm oil depends on certain heat treatements (fractionation) – certain parts of the mixture of substances that palm oil naturally is, have been removed and/or enriched. “No-stir” palm oil, palmolein and -stearin. This mostly changes the melting point, consistency, and the tendency of the oil to solidify at a certain temperature.
Good news for soapmakers: the fractionation does not substantially change the saponification value. Bad news: it does change how much “hardness” the oil lends to the final soap.

I knew it was too good to be true! Does any calculator have both regular and no-stir palm so we can calculate the difference in hardness?

 

[ResolvableOwl]

AFAIK the no-stir palm oils from soapmaking suppliers (like BB, WSP etc.) are specifically processed in a way that ensures that the fatty acid profile (hardness number) and SAP are close to natural palm oil. They take out the highest (stearin) and lowest melting (olein) fractions, so that in the end, soap has the same net FA profile, but a narrower melting range. So there is no difference between regular and no-stir palm in calculators. (However, some do list said stearin and olein fractions as separate oils.)

Not sure with sources that don't care about FA profiles, though. I have played around with “vegetable shortening” from 90+% of an unknown palm fraction, and was hugely disappointed by it (soft soaps, sometimes even zappy).

 

[LynetteO]

I attempted my 1st embed soap & it didn’t turn out anything as planned. That NEVER happens to anyone else, right?! I don’t know if the embed had holes in it & that’s why butterfly on top left looks “off”. The colors that I chose for an ITPS were not the best either. Oh well. Purple still my fave color. Scented with WSP “Persephone’s Kiss”. The smell OOB not the same as fresh bar. Maybe cured bar goes back to bottle smell?

 

[TheMightySueBaca]

I attempted my 1st embed soap & it didn’t turn out anything as planned. That NEVER happens to anyone else, right?! I don’t know if the embed had holes in it & that’s why butterfly on top left looks “off”. The colors that I chose for an ITPS were not the best either. Oh well. Purple still my fave color. Scented with WSP “Persephone’s Kiss”. The smell OOB not the same as fresh bar. Maybe cured bar goes back to bottle smell?

View attachment 64154

I think he's cute.

 

[scentseeker]

Unmolded frozen oval bars. Love the soap, but a major PITA to unmold. I also prepared labels for two orders to ship, ordered from Sweetcakes, and started dreaming of a few new scents for "March Madness". Not basketball related scents, just a catchy tag line for website menu. Looks like I need to put info under my photo, too.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

I think he's cute.

Please read:
ADVICE TO BEGINNERS

 

[~Dragonfly~]

Today I realized a huge! error in my last soap. From what I found, I could use around 20% of total oils for my indigo infused olive oil. The problem is, I split the batch into 4 colors, and should have used 20% of the total oils for that color, not the total oils in the whole batch. Now I have the pleasure of blue bubbles haha

 

[Vicki C]

Cut my new Wild Iris and White Tea Soap - love White Tea FO, just put it with anything and it always makes a great blend.
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You are the OPW queen!

 

[AliOop]

I made a batch of @earlene's dual-lye Mechanic's Soap, subbing in sorbitol instead of honey - because I was too lazy to walk down the hall to get honey out of the pantry, when sorbitol was right there in the soap room.

Since I don't have Crisco, I also used my "custom blend of recaptured oils" - aka my cleaned roasting oils, about 70% tallow, 30% lard. Yes, we eat a lot of bacon, steak, and ribs, what can I say?

With a little yellow mica, and a refreshing EO blend of lavender, chamomile, and pine (thank you @cmzaha for this combo), they look cute and smell fantastic. These will be a gift for our mechanic, who is such a treasure. My husband recently found out that this wonderful man has terrible reactions to all detergents and strong fragrances, so we are hoping these will work for him.

 

[LynetteO]

I’ve always loved all things paper. Quilling, decoupage, scrapbooking, card making etc. I recently bought a soap stamp from local supply shop. Last night I had soooo much fun stamping soap!!! ANY excuse to fondle my soap. It was a hard decision but the hearts in the stamp won me over. I also fall easily for items with & (Hearts &/or Stars). Excuse the cut on the bar, attempted a free hand cut & well, it didn’t work out.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

I attempted something similar to unmoulding to a dual-lye bar soap (8% KOH, 92% NaOH). Poured at thick trace, it had got a thorough CPOP treatment + an extra day of waiting, but it's been still soft and sticky as of now.
Not an overly exotic recipe, hence I really blame the KOH – not by chance, knowing enough of liquid soap to actually be not surprised at all. On the other hand, I've had dual-lye soaps that hardened up very nicely over the weeks of cure.
I'm inclined to formulate a rule of the form: Increase setting time in the mould by 3–6 hours for each % of KOH in dual-lye soap.

Dual-lyears: Have you noticed an effect of KOH on solidification speed?

items with &

or𝄞 and 𝄢 depending on the conditioning of your Freudian subconsciousness.

 

[Kari Howie]

After 1-1/2 years of not making soap for a variety of reasons, I feel like a beginner soap maker all over again. Intimidated as I was, I was nonetheless happy with the results of my rebatched soap of old end pieces and aloe juice. Now it’s on to a really simple soap recipe.

 

[ScentimentallyYours]

I attempted my 1st embed soap & it didn’t turn out anything as planned. That NEVER happens to anyone else, right?! I don’t know if the embed had holes in it & that’s why butterfly on top left looks “off”. The colors that I chose for an ITPS were not the best either. Oh well. Purple still my fave color. Scented with WSP “Persephone’s Kiss”. The smell OOB not the same as fresh bar. Maybe cured bar goes back to bottle smell?

View attachment 64154

I wish you would figure out how you got those spots on that butterfly. It’s a wonderful design element! Just imagine if we could put those spots any place we wanted in a soap. Plus they would be perfect for moth designs.

 

[KiwiMoose]

I attempted something similar to unmoulding to a dual-lye bar soap (8% KOH, 92% NaOH). Poured at thick trace, it had got a thorough CPOP treatment + an extra day of waiting, but it's been still soft and sticky as of now.
Not an overly exotic recipe, hence I really blame the KOH – not by chance, knowing enough of liquid soap to actually be not surprised at all. On the other hand, I've had dual-lye soaps that hardened up very nicely over the weeks of cure.
I'm inclined to formulate a rule of the form: Increase setting time in the mould by 3–6 hours for each % of KOH in dual-lye soap.

Dual-lyears: Have you noticed an effect of KOH on solidification speed?


or𝄞 and 𝄢 depending on the conditioning of your Freudian subconsciousness.

I recently made a dual lye soap ( only coz i ran out of NaoH) and i didn't notice it taking any longer to harden. Mind you - we're not talking much KoH. 163g NaoH to 30g KoH when the recipe called for 185g NaoH.
What I have noticed is how wonderfully creamy the lather is! However this could be for several reasons - I used coconut cream in the recipe ( which I often do and have not noticed this much creaminess before), I used a lesser superfat than usual, I used more RBO and less OO than usual, and I used the KoH. Possibly all of these contributed to the creamier, denser lather and now I will never know which.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Good to know! In fact you have used quite a lot more KOH than I did (12mol% of hydroxide, 15% by mass).
Maybe I should refine my hypothesis to Increase setting time in the mould by 3–6 hours for each recipe modification.

I'm also after finding out what magic dual-lye does to soap, how much is quite right and how much is too much. The lovely lather of KOH seems a real thing. Maybe to switch to dual-lye masterbatch some time?

(And plz, stop teasing me by using a lowercase o for the Oxygen part in the formulas NaOH and KOH)