Playing Catch-up

With Mother's Day come and gone, all of my mother's day baskets that were ordered completed and sent out, as well as soap finishing it's cure, I feel I'm playing catch up. Or have been the past few weeks.

Tomorrow and Wednesday are my last finals for the year, and between soaping and personal life I havent had much time for education. Granted, my professors are amazing and understanding, and have been flexible enough with me to where I am still able to complete my assignments, though I still find myself spinning my tires.

The job hunt is going well at least - I interviewed for a job int he copy/print center of Office Depot, which seemed to go well enough, now just waiting to hear back from them, hopefully, by tomorrow.

I've also finished packaging a selection of soaps to take to several stores along Main Street in the next week, seeing if I can;t find some wholesale clients, or even dropping some off at the consignment store in the library (though their rate is kind of balls, if the items are more expensive -- learned the hard way from a slightly-more-than-half cut for one of my pricier handmade journals).

In terms of soapy news, however, I have cut the bars form my latest two batches: the peacock and the coffee soap!

As you can see -- I'm experimenting with outside pictures. Woo!

I entered into Bramble Berry's Instagram contest, #soapcrafting, using the following images. Let's keep our fingers crossed for these!

I'm also trying to find the time to be more health conscious - I wouldn't mind dropping a few pounds, and my OBGYN said it would help over the next few months anyhow, as I'm changing my prescription for birth controlf rom a pill tot he 3-month shots, and weight gain is common with it. My arms feel like limp noodles from all the reps I did in the apartment weight room -- yowza! We'll see how they feel tomorrow, as I need to make a special order cherry soap for a client's husband.

So how was your Mother's day?

Peacocks and Coffee

So today I finally got around to making some soap!

Ten pounds worth, to be exact. I even took some pictures of the "during" to share with you guys. :)

First off, I wanted to make a odor-neutralizer soap for the kitchen sink, inspired by the gardener's soap from Soap Queen. In several books I've read about CP soapmaking, it's suggested to completely replace the water in the lye solution with double- or triple-brewed coffee. Utilizing this technique, while adding the used coffee grounds, I attempt making a kitchen soap. :)

I thought it was cute that my little ball of tussah silk perched on top of my triple-brewed (chilled) coffee. It goes into every batch, and I wouldn't have it any other way!

Pouring my (now steaming) coffee-lye mix into my oils to melt them. Room temperature soapmaking is the only way I go, just because I'm too impatient to wait for temps to stabilize.

Mostly melted, only slowly stirring with a spatula. Went ahead and added coffee grounds before stick blending, to make sure it was only a nice exfoliation that was added.

Blending! Random blue tint.

You can barely, BARELY see trace here. Time to pour!

This is after letting it sit several minutes. I wanted a textured top, but my original batter was too thin. I waited, and finally sprinkled fresh coffee grounds over the top of the soap for smell and texture. The soap is scented very lightly with RE's Morning Blend fragrance, a nice, slightly sweet coffee scent. I took a spoon and folded the coffee grounds into the soap batter to make sure they stick, and to add that lovely swirly texture. :)

Onto soap number two!

I've been wanting to do a peacock/boquet style swirl for ages. I tried once, except the scent was a floral and it accelerated way too fast, so I just dumped everything together. My second attempt had the base soap accelerate as well, though my stripes were unscented. It didnt come out as nice as I'd hoped.

I guess third time is the trick, because I certainly succeeded with this one..

Before the bouquet/feather grouping. :) I scented this one using lavender, peppermint, and eucalyptus EO (smart move, they move slower) aaaand a hint of musk. :)

I only scented the base soap again, which is a spatula-swirl style with the blue, green, and purple. Colors from the Conservatorie.

And then the dividers!

I can't wait to unmold these! :)

So, is there any technique you tried and tried at again, or one that was difficult to master?

Soap gremlins and Mica swirls

So I wanted to try the peacock/bouquet swirl, and the above photo is the soap I got instead.

"But it isn't even close!"

No, I know. Because soap gremlins.

I HATE soap gremlins.

Granted, I was using a fragrance oil I knew accelerated, I just forgot HOW FAST. Tried adding more water, nope. Got stuck in my soap condiment bottles. Ohmygod. Dumped bottles out into soap, layered, hoped for best.

Instead, I got CRAYOLA BARF. Oy.

So I rebatched, sliced the soap up nice and thin, put it in a crock pot (it was still soft and squishy after 3 days from all the water I added) for about an hour, stirring occasionally. Plopped into mold. Still smelled of Freesia, silly white florals, and had a lovely lavender color to it:

Brushed the top with some oil-mica and glitter.

Decided to try a heavy olive oil recipe with my other planned batches for the day, to slow things down a bit. Soaped a green tea and willow silk/shea soap with french green clay, wanting to try the oil/mica swirl again. I was impressed! Soaped well, smelled beautiful, and look at the SWIRL!

This is after drying a bit. Yay!

Wanting to take the opportunity to use the gremlin-free soap time, I started on another. Purple sandalwood, colored with a purple mica and activated charcoal. Smelled yummy and odd, musky. This is BEYOND my favorite mica swirl to date:

SO PRETTY. <3 Finally, after all those tries, I got it. Took me long enough, LOL. Can;t wait to see the inner swirls with the green tea and sandalwood soaps. Exciting! I'll just have to wait longer to unmold due to extra olive oil. Here's another pic of the lovely purple swirls!

So happy with my soap results today. The gremlins were beating me down for a while.

And here's the paradise soap cut!

Love the hanger swirl, just wish the colors had come out brighter. I'll get usage rates down soon! The green and purple seemed to do fine, so we'll see. :)

Thanks for reading, and HAPPY SOAPING!

Mica Oil Swirl Experimentation

Ever since seeing everyone's lovely soaps for Amy's Great Soap Challenge 2013, I loved the mica oil swirl the most. I recently ordered new micas from The Conservatorie, and I was ready to try them out!

First off, they all blended beautifully into my sweet almond carrier oil. And I love the shimmer they have! Gorgeous. As an over achiever, I wanted to do a four-layered soap using a hanger swirl, with the mica swirled top -- repeating all four colors. I'll tell you now, lesson learned.

I scented the soap with a blend of 2 parts Almost Paradise (RusticEscentuals) to one part Just Peachy (also RE). I was keeping my fingers crossed for NO SOAPY GREMLINS.

Well. So much for that.

The soap base accelerated really fast with NO FO. Oy. It was my first time using tussah silk in my lye, however. I hope that doesnt become a common thing. I seperated my FO blend into four parts, splitting them into the colors, just in case of acceleration.

Good thing I did. I layered green, blue, orange, and then yellow -- by the time yellow was layered, it was THICK. Ugh. I grabbed my hanger, swirled really fast and swirly, then plopped droplets of the mica-oil mixtures on top. Swirl away!

 

Even with the thick batter, it didnt seem so bad for a first try/ The orange and yellow blended into the top layer anyway, and the blue is showing nicely. The green was a tad light, I think I might have been stingy with my mica, but overall I like it. I think I'll call it Summer Paradise.

Layering wise, I was thinking ground, ocean, and then a sunset-ish picture. I'm quite happy with it in the mold, I'll just have to wait until tomorrow to unmold my beauty to see if I REALLY like it.

Thanks for reading, and HAPPY SOAPING!

16lbs of Cut Soap!

You guys remember this lot from yesterday, right?

Oh yes. Getting all of this soap out of the molds was a challenge in itself, but cutting it -- whew! Hand cutting it, I might add. The bars arent all even (let me tell you, I LOVE my slab mold now - it does it for me!) but money is tight, so I'll have to wait for a special day to invest in one of the fancy wire cutters.

But here are the soaps!

This is my Energize bar. A nice little (no column!) swirl done in my slab mold. It's got a bit of ash on the top, and some of the bars are sweating, but it smells heavenly. Scented with a blend of yuzu and lemon verbena, it's strong citrus top notes have a nice, sweet undertone. Lovely for morning showers!

This is the batch that accelerated so much it nearly hardened in the pot! Whisper, it was meant to have a hangar swirl (which is present in like, two bars) but whatever. It smells wonderful, a nice, heavy white floral (which I know accelerates anyway, duh) with a slight tinge of perfume. The tops of these are ashed as well, though I'll be using my soap planer/beveler from Soap making Resource to clean all of these babies up!

You can see how bad the ash is really well on these.

Probably my favorite one in terms of design out of the previous bars, this is Pink Lavender. Scented with a blend of lavender and some nice light florals, it has lavender buds sprinkled along its textured top. Lavender buds are also present throughout the middle of the bar (meaning there were some streaks when cutting). I used purple labcolor from RE to color the top part with, with TD mixed into the whole batch. Not sure if it's the TD that mixed with the labcolor, or the CP method that made it turn this delightful pink color. Happy accident, yay!

And, finally, Rustic. This is scented with a blend of eucalyptus and musk, a nice manly scent. I went with a simple grey bar, dusted the top with black glitter (more manly than -- pink glitter? I don't know) and ohmygawd it smells amazing. This bar and the Pink Lavender were softer out of the molds, more sticky -- though they were 3lb batches versus the 5lb of the others, so I'll account it for a cooler saponification temp.

Yay glitter!

These are some of the more professional soaps I've made, as these will be the ones I show to a wholesale client later int he week (wish me luck!) I never would have imagined that my hobby would have evolved this fast, and I have all of you to thank for having such an amazingly insightful community of soapers for me to explore! 

Happy soaping, my lovelies -- I will be updating more past batches until I get more palm oil in, as I barely have enough for a 3lb batch!

Galactic Soap - First CPOP

After seeing Anne Marie's post on CPOP on her Soap Queen blog, I wanted to try it. Beautiful CP swirls but with the HP processing -- what more can a girl ask for? Especially one as impatient as I am! Before I started, I noticed my oven's lowest setting was 200F, quite a bit over the 170F that was recommended. I preheated the oven to 200, but let it sit a while off, so it cooled down. Once it was around 170-180F, I knocked it to warm. One step down!

I made up my soap, choosing to use activated charcoal, titanium dioxide, and fizzy lemonade pigments from Bramble Berry. I also wanted to try a spooning technique I saw on a blog post, though now it eludes me. :( (If anyone knows what I'm referencing, let me know and I'll give credit!)

Layering the first bit of soap. I gues the concept here is plopping it down in somewhat straight lines. Or drizzling.

Looking at the pictures, I realize I got much wider in my lines. Which explains why this didnt turn out the way I wanted it to. :(

Cant have swirled CP soap without a lovely swirled top! Kept this one simple, as I love the mantra-style swirls.

In the oven!

I left the mold and soap in there overnight, popping it out around lunchtime the next day. The colors were SO VIBRANT, especially the fizzy lemonade. It just POPPED.

However, I didnt turn off my oven for about an hour and a half, causing the top to get these little bubbles in them. It made a weird texture, but I ended up leaving it on the bars. Apparently, this happens when you bake your soap! Oops! :)

Here you can see the textured tops. Look how bright the yellow is! Wow!

I packaged this bar very simply, and I'm calling it Galactic. It's scented with SnC Cucumber Melon, but it faded/baked off a bit in the oven, so it isnt as strong. Other people don't notice, but soapmakers might. We're an odd bunch. ;)

As always, thanks for dropping by, and Happy Soaping!

Cinnamon-Clove Textured Soap

I've really been wanting to experiment with textured tops and soap. I always see these amazingly detailed soaps, but I always pour at too thin a trace. Well, tonight while making soap I realized that my scent was accelerating very quickly, and hit a nice gloppy medium-heavy trace. Time for textures!

I wanted to swirl this one like I had swirled my charcoal detox bar, with a deep black against a nice dark red. Which is the other color, by the way. It's hard to tell in the picture. That brown is a grungy burgundy, promise!

I used Bramble Berry's Merlot mica, and activated charcoal (yay deep blacks and clear lather!) and layered the black colored soap int he bottom of my silicone pan. Next I zig-zagged the red in, and folded it into the black with my spatula. We'll see how well that works tomorrow when I cut the bars -- but man, once I took a wisk and detailed the top, it became so lovely. I couldn't stop taking pictures of it.

Here are some more:

Look at all that texture! <3

And it smells of delicious cinnamon-clove. Mmm. Maybe more of a fall scent, but I had a few customers specifically ask for bars like this. Yay!

Bramble Berry's M&P Soap Swap: Oatmeal Milk & Honey Cybilla

So I've been hankering some more soap making recently, and have been struggling to get up the urge to just DO IT. It finally happened today, as the stress of a failed motherboard in my gaming rig and my starter being shot in my car culminated into an "I NEED TO SOAP" distress. Soaping honestly gives me time to myself to really focus on something other than what's going on around me. It's an escape, and the only thing I'm thinking about is the soap. No kitties, no lovers, no car, job, home, etc. Just soap. measuring, calculating, taking notes about the process, what changes, what's different, what was successful, etc. I record these in my soap-book, where I keep ideas for soaps, recipes, and new scents I want to try cataloged.

With the Bramble Berry Soap Swap coming up, I knew I needed to get to work on my second batch for the M&P swap! I chose to do Oatmeal Milk & Honey Cybilla, since I had that one on-hand from the sample scents sent out with last month's order. I also LOVE how that kind of fragrance colors white M&P base.

For this one, I wanted to incorporate organic jojoba meal and dry oatmeal into the bars. I only had normal white glycerin base on hand, non-suspension formula, so I knew ahead of time this bar would end up "layered". With that fact in mind, I embarked on filling my molds!

I heated the soap base int he microwave, adding fragrance and the jojoba meal into the melted mix. After stirring for a while to make sure the meal was incorporated, I poured it into my acrylic log mold. 

IT SMELLED AMAZING.

Seriously, I've never smelled an oatmeal milk and honey fragrance I literally wanted to eat. Most of them seem to be too sweet smelling for my liking, and some even turn my stomach. But this one was so fresh and delicious, mmm.

Once it was in the mold, I spritzed it with alcohol, and then added a layer of oatmeal. I also sprayed this down with alcohol, causing some of it to sink down into the bottom of the loaf mold.

After waiting several hours, I popped it out of the mold and cut it! Yum!

The meal and oatmeal stayed ont he top or bottom of the bar, so I guess that means someone can decide whether or not they want exfoliation during their shower, LOL.