When life gives you lemons, make confetti soap!

[Georgeandstella]

This is for the entertainment of the veterans (and newbies) on this site-Any comments or thoughts are very welcome.

I made soap with my nieces. I never say no to them so we had too many colors and too many fragrances. The soap set up very quickly, and we ended up glopping them into the molds instead of the pretty swirls that we wanted. When we finished making our single-mold soaps, I carefully wrapped them up and put them in a preheated oven (150’) and turned off the oven. In my confusion over making lunch, I turned on the wrong oven to 300’ and “cooked” the soap to the point that it volcanoed out of the molds. (See picture below). To save the soaps, after they cooled off, I cut them to the point they will be usable-ish soaps (See picture), and then cut up all of the volcanoed bits and set them into confetti soap, so that they will have more soap from the day.

From our after action review (yes I have these with them because I’m the fun aunt), and from researching on this forum (thank you so much!), we learned the following lessons:

1. We mixed the lye with the oils too hot for swirls (at 110’). My next batch we blended at 85’ which gave us time to swirl.
2. The fragrances accelerated trace. We now put them in last minute, and research the behavior of the individual fragrances on trace prior to adding.
3. Don’t bake the soaps!

 

[dibbles]

That’s a pretty spectacular volcano! I’m glad you were able to salvage it.

 

[AliOop]

I'll say! Those confetti soaps are especially pretty.

One thing I would recommend is not to put your soaps on metal racks. Even if they are stainless steel, often the stainless coating will develop cracks or peeling. That will expose the soaps to other metals underneath, and that causes DOS.

 

[BWt]

What a marvelous lesson and such fantastic results. Love all the soaps. They each are so pretty. There is no better way to learn than through the occasional trial and error.

 

[Georgeandstella]

I'll say! Those confetti soaps are especially pretty.

One thing I would recommend is not to put your soaps on metal racks. Even if they are stainless steel, often the stainless coating will develop cracks or peeling. That will expose the soaps to other metals underneath, and that causes DOS.

Thank you for this!

What a marvelous lesson and such fantastic results. Love all the soaps. They each are so pretty. There is no better way to learn than through the occasional trial and error.

I agree, we learn so much from our mistakes