What soapy thing have you done today?

[Zany_in_CO]

I wish that she wasn't so negative.

Um, I hate ta tell ya, making soap from bacon grease wouldn't be much of a turn-on for me either. Just do your thing. Be sure to cure a full 6 weeks before giving it away to testers, along with a card to write their reactions. As someone recently posted, it wasn't until everyone raved about their soap that their SO became interested. It's just a common thing among family members. It happens, more frequently than not.

I hope I can get my wife to use the soap that smells like all of the "girly" scents.

Um, "girly" scents? Fragrance is a lot like cars... there is no one type that suits all. You might want to run your choices by the ladies here to see which has the most appeal, if any. I'm just saying, I'm not particularly drawn to "girly" anything.

she likes to bake and do crafts in general, I was hoping that I could get her into this "craft" a bit.

We all have our passions. If she's a baker and crafter the biggest problem I see is getting in kitchen time for each of you!

Looking forward to seeing your soaps and especially the bacon grease lard you will be soaping!

HAPPY SOAPING!

 

[KeepItSimpleSoap]

@Zany_in_CO I was just being honest
She does like "girly" scents.
I cure 7 weeks and I only make it for myself. I was making soap before I joined this forum over 2 years ago.
I've already have shown my soaps here. You will have to search my post to find the pictures.

 

[raefrazer]

I went to a market last weekend and sold over $300 of soap and lotion bars (@Zing) with a few painted stones. Luckily my work closes for 5 days over Easter ( including the weekend) so I made soap each day for three of those to try and make up for it.
Frangipani, Grapefruit and Mint, and Egyptian Amber.
Then my sister decided we would go to one this coming weekend as well ( it's another long weekend because of ANZAC day on Monday - google it) so here I am tonight frantically writing up labels and getting platters of soap ready for that. I will leave to tomorrow straight after work - the market is in a coastal town about an hour from here. She has a beach house there and it' school holidays so my son and I will make a weekend out of it.
View attachment 65822

What a beautiful display! I’d buy your soaps !!!

 

[Ladka]

I mixed one level teaspoonful of annatto powder in 250 g of olive oil.
I remember having recently read about oil infusing with natural colourants but can't find the thread for the life of me

 

[KiwiMoose]

I mixed one level teaspoonful of annatto powder in 250 g of olive oil.
I remember having recently read about oil infusing with natural colourants but can't find the thread for the life of me

Check with @Vicki C ?

 

[AliOop]

I picked up a big destash from a local soaper who is moving across country: NaOH, KOH, glycerin, stearic acid, cetyl alcohol, small amounts of luxury oils, some bowls and molds, and a big box of FOs and EOs. She was very generous for the price she was asking. Now I need to start planning and making a whole lot of soaps to use some of this stuff up while prepping for the craft fairs this fall.

 

[KeepItSimpleSoap]

I'm on my 3rd boil of my bacon grease before I call it LARD. I just unmolded my 4th batch of 12 bars made in recent weeks. I really like my silicone molds, they are easy to clean. My recipe works out well for a dozen bars. It is:
3.5 oz of dry LYE crystals
8.05 oz of cold distilled water
25.25 oz of melted LARD
This is an easy amount to work with and fits the molds.
Here is a link that other novices like myself have used to render there own LARD. This website explains it thoroughly.
Rendering bacon grease in to LARD
Today is 4-22 Earthday. It is usually when I start planting my Okra seed. It will have to wait until Saturday.

 

[AliOop]

I'm on my 3rd boil of my bacon grease before I call it LARD. I just unmolded my 4th batch of 12 bars made in recent weeks. I really like my silicone molds, they are easy to clean. My recipe works out well for a dozen bars. It is:
3.5 oz of dry LYE crystals
8.05 oz of cold distilled water
25.25 oz of melted LARD
This is an easy amount to work with and fits the molds.
Here is a link that other novices like myself have used to render there own LARD. This website explains it thoroughly.
Rendering bacon grease in to LARD
Today is 4-22 Earthday. It is usually when I start planting my Okra seed. It will have to wait until Saturday.

Have you tried dissolving any sugar in the lye water, before adding the NaOH? That will increase the bubbles a bit, given that 100% lard soap doesn’t lather easily. Usually 2T per pound of oils (PPO) will be sufficient, which would be about 3T for your recipe size as listed.

The other option is to stickblend some powdered goat milk into the oils (very thoroughly) before adding your lye solution. For your size recipe, 2T would be a good place to start.

You could also do both the sugar and the GMP. I love love love goat milk in my lard bars!

 

[KeepItSimpleSoap]

@AliOop My soap bubbles real well and there is not any sugar in my house. I may be wrong but wouldn't sugar in the recipe attract ants? Also I don't have any goats or powdered goats. Do they like to be powdered?

 

[AliOop]

I can assure you, the sugar doesn't attract (sugar) ants any more than the lard attracts (grease) ants.

 

[gardengeek]

That is so sweet. Even if you are overwhelmed with ceramics I’m sure you are gracious about receiving his gifts.
I am having a terrible time lately with fail after fail. My stripe soap went ok but I have made three attempts at pull through soaps that have ALL failed - too thick, then too thin, then too thick. And I am struggling with crumbly soap, I think because I made a master batch with some palm that was from the end of a bucket, which was dumb because I have about 5 kg of MB left. I made two loaves of lemongrass, always a big seller, that look terrible and have a bottom edge that is almost powdery. I have been trying to make spin swirl soap - I tried it once and it went perfectly .- and ever since then I haven’t gotten anything to work, I spin and the batter just sits there. Wah, wah wah. Also just got rejected from a farmers market because they aleady have a soap vendor. Nuts. Recently got rejected from a different one that charged $15 just to look at my application.
I love my soapmaking craft/business but sometimes I feel like my learning curve doesn’t seem to be leveling out. I feel like I’m floundering!
ok - end of rant.

It's reassuring to hear that someone as talented as you have struggles as well. It makes me realize there's hope for me yet! I feel like everything I've done lately has been an epic fail. Ugh!

 

[KeepItSimpleSoap]

@AliOop Question? If the grease (fat) gets soponified by the LYE, what happens to the sugar?

 

[AliOop]

@AliOop Question? If the grease (fat) gets soponified by the LYE, what happens to the sugar?

Not entirely sure, TBH. I do know that it acts as a solvent that helps lather formation.

 

[Zing]

Not entirely sure, TBH. I do know that it acts as a solvent that helps lather formation.

Recent sugar convert here and now it's a staple in my recipes. When I tweaked my basic recipe by reducing coconut oil, I added sugar at 1/2 Tbsp per pound of oils. Daddy needs his bubbles.
I dissolve the sugar completely in my water before adding lye. When you do add lye, the solution turns a very faint yellow that has no effect on the final colors.

 

[Babyshoes]

Today I unmoulded my one-and-done challenge soap, but it's still a bit sticky so I'll cut it tomorrow. The edges don't look like I've succeeded in getting any straight lines, but I'm hoping the middle might be a little better... We shall see!

If it's not good enough to enter, at least I know what I'd like to try differently next time, because my batter was thickening up slightly towards the end, so I'm pretty sure my last couple of layers won't be very straight...

 

[DianaMoon]

I am obsessed with attempting fluid hot process soap (or high temp hot process soap) so after two fails I tried again last night. Another fail.

The lye and oils were around 210F. But I noticed something interesting: after mixing with a rubber spatula, and stick blending for no longer than 30 secs, I had a lovely pudding-like batter. It came quickly and after very little stick blending. I should have called it a day then, but I had to see that volcano. I'm just weird that way. Maybe I'm lucky to fail at getting the volcano.

So I covered, put the on a very low burner, and checked back every five minutes for about 20 minutes. Batter went through the applesauce stage for at least 10 minutes.... then 5 minutes later a layer of solid soap covered the bottom of the pot, with mashed potatoes on top. No volcano, ever. Temps were around 210 or so.

I took it off the burner, added tepid water, covered, and came back, hoping that would melt the mess. No, so I added more water & whisked. I didn't want to burn out my poor stick blender. I got the batter into ploppable form, added a tiny bit of honey and fragrance (neither of which had any effect, happily), whisked more, and plopped the batter into a loaf mold. It's not beautiful (it has flecks of the hardened soap - not rice pieces but flecks of hardened soap), but the soap will be usable. Since I'm not selling it, all good, but still....

If I had simply quit when I was ahead I'd have had a lovely cold-processed soap that started out hot. Is there a name for this? "Starting out hot and ending up cold process soap"?

(Note: I had not at that point put in the honey or the fragrance oil. Perhaps that would have resulted in a disaster. Just reporting what happened when I combined lye & oils at approx. 200F.)

Screenshot of formula. I picked up a cheap shea butter with a lovely caramel/cream color at a dollar store so I decided to use it.

 

[Vicki C]

Check with @Vicki C ?

Oh wow, I am bad at checking for mentions! I haven’t used annatto powder only whole seeds - I infuse about an ounce in 16 oz OO, heat them on very low heat in a big roaster pan thing I found at a thrift store. Then I use the oil in place of the OO in the recipe.

It's reassuring to hear that someone as talented as you have struggles as well. It makes me realize there's hope for me yet! I feel like everything I've done lately has been an epic fail. Ugh!

We’ll, that is a very big compliment and I will take it. I think I need to somehow keep a “lessons learned” diary so I stop repeating dumb mistakes.
Here are a couple of soaps I made recently. The blue terrazzo one has cut up rim pieces from the challenge here last year for lollipop soap (is that the name?) I am going to call it Seaglass soap. Scented with 8th and ocean from Nurture.
The other one has terrible ash from TD I think. TD and I will never be friends. But I’m going to keep trying on this soap - I’m calling this one Little Starfish Big Wave. Scented with Salty Sea Air from EB&B

 

[KeepItSimpleSoap]

I made my 5th batch (1 dozen bars) today. I had got up early morning and got everything ready. We had company for lunch so I wasn't able to do my soaping until late afternoon. I've been using my fat/grease/LARD cake holder/handle that I made after my very first batch 2.5 years ago. It has really helped make the rendering process less messy. Here are pictures from back then.

The grease solidifies around a metal disc

A piece of 1x2, 1 carriage bolts and washers and nuts hold the disc and handle in their respective places

In this picture you can see the disc.
What is nice about the handle is that you can that you can take your pan out of the
refrigerator that contains the solidified grease and water under the grease, Use of knife
to go around the edge of the "grease cake" to release from the pan, pull out, wash out
pan and put in new water to do your next boil. This is a patient part of the process.
The grease takes several hours to solidify in the pan in the fridge.

 

[AliOop]

Well, I planned to make a batch of Shave Soap Recipe #8 (slightly modified) from Carrie Siebert's book. Unfortunately, what I thought was a container of rendered tallow in my garage fridge was actually neem oil (clearly labeled as such, but the label was turned around towards the back where I couldn't see it). With no tallow, I decided to try the lard-based Recipe #10 instead. More on that later.

I also decided to try the slow-cook setting on my older Instant Pot for melting the oils. Wow - game changer!! My IP has a stainless insert/pot that is much lighter than a heavy ceramic crock. It's a better shape and size for stickblending, won't etch over time, and heats up so much faster than a ceramic crock, too. Should I wish to HP, my thrift-store glass lid works perfectly. Of course, you can pay too much and order the Instant Pot brand of the same glass lid from Amazon if you prefer. Anyhoo, now I have an option other than going to the kitchen (or buying a mini-burner) for heating oils, bain marie, and other stuff that I'd rather not do in the microwave. Beats me why I didn't think of this before.

Back to the shave soap: the plan was to pour it into a cylinder mold to get the clean finished look of bars cut from a log instead of plopped in cavity molds. Alas, I thought the mix wasn't quite fluid enough for a pour, even after giving it a shot of SL. Halfway through spooning it into the cavity molds, I realized that I probably should have poured after all, and I should have mixed the corn silk powder into the hot lye solution, instead of adding it to the extra water. I'm not sure if the speckles of corn silk will end up catching on the blade. When I did a lather test with a scrap, they seemed to dissolve into nothing.

Oh well. I want to try another batch with tallow anyway, so there is more shave soap in the near future. Meanwhile, I've squished all the cut-off tops (thank you, Caterpillar) and scraps from the bowl into some pucks that I'll use for personal testers. At least they smell good - sandalwood vanilla.

 

[Vicki C]

I picked up a big destash from a local soaper who is moving across country: NaOH, KOH, glycerin, stearic acid, cetyl alcohol, small amounts of luxury oils, some bowls and molds, and a big box of FOs and EOs. She was very generous for the price she was asking. Now I need to start planning and making a whole lot of soaps to use some of this stuff up while prepping for the craft fairs this fall.

Wow now I’m REALLY jealous! I was already jealous about the SS table.