Soap Updates: Shaving, Salt, and Lavender!

So I've been making a lot of soap over the past few weeks -- just never got around to posting it! 

First off, here are my cut Goat's Milk bars -- scented with Clothespins, a very delicate, clean fragrance.

Also, here's the shaving soap I made, using Jenny's blog post as a guide: http://lather-be-soaping.blogspot.com/2013/01/shaving-soap-then-and-now.html

I also made a Margarita-themed Salt soap bar, using Kosher salt, with a light yellow-green swirl and kosher salt, with a limey scent

Today, after getting my supplies in, I reused two half-n-half containers, one has Cucumber Mint inside, the other, one of the Bramble blends I received -- I'm calling it Dragonfruit!

And last but not least, my latest take on my lavender soap:

Thanks for checking them out, 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!

Let's get down to business...

...and make some soap!

Thursday I lost my day job -- don't worry, the reasons were silly, the company is intensely conservative, and I'm glad to be rid of them. I just need to find somewhere else to do my business. Better news is, however, that I have more time to make soap!

Exciting!

I got my molds in from MRDORIGHT on Etsy, and I was excited to try them out. Today was my "catch up on soap dishes/soap until I drop" day, which included me washing my soap dishes four or five times today, because after I finished one batch -- it became time for the next!

This was my first batch, done using MRDORIGHT's 18-bar slab mold. I'm so happy with this purchase! Everything was easy to put together, and the bars look lovely already. Can't unmold until tomorrow, but dang it -- they're gorgeous. This one I'm going to call "Energize" -- scented with a delicious blend of Yuzu and Lemon verbena, it's strikingly citrus.

Here's a better image of the swirl pattern from above. Fizzy Lemonade and Tangerine Wow from BrambleBerry, done in a simple spider web swirl.

The second batch was a slight bit more of a nightmare.

I wanted to use Whisper, a scent I found at Rustic Escentuals that smelled amazing -- I'm guessing it was a heavy white floral scent, because this was the FASTEST acceleration I've had to deal with yet! It was scary -- hardening in the pot and everything! OY!

I'm terrified with how this will turn out. The base layer is white, with a purple top, and I *attempted* a hangar swirl, though it was so thick I probably just made rivets in my soap. :( This one may just end up on my clearance rack..

It smells wonderful though, even now. The apartment smells of citrusy florals. Weird.

Batch number three!

I'm very impressed with this one. The base is white for this also, but it's layered. The top is a nice light pink -- I used purple labcolor, though it changed in the pot. Fine with me, as the lavender I scented with this suits the nice pink top, and I like the contrast of the shade with the lavender buds that are a striking purple. <3 Lavender buds were also mixed into the soap mix, for a nice little surprise.

My second attempt at a man-bar. Batch 4!

Scented with Eucalyptus blend (which smells very, VERY MAN. Mmmm.), this is a grey based soap, simple, topped with whisk swirls and black glitter. Just for shoots and giggles -- because what man DOESN'T need glitter? :D

The total weight for all of this soap is around 16lbs! Whew! I basically soaped until my palm oil was so low I couldn't make another batch. Which means ordering, and waiting, and ew. My coconut oil is low too, so it looks like I'll be hitting up the Chemistry Store soon. Oy.

All in all, 3 out of 4 of the batches were fine. The last grey batch had a slight acceleration, but nowhere near the Whisper. Needless to say, I think I'll save whisper for a future uncolored soap, or just add fragrance last, after coloring. Definitely not a swirler.

Thanks for reading, guys, and HAPPY SOAPING! I'll update with cut pics of these later. <3

New Soap Recipe + Spatula Swirl technique

Since I began soaping, I've been using very cost-efficient, vegan recipes to get plenty of practice under my belt before taking on the task of formulating my own recipe incorporating pricey ingredients. It's not so bad to lose a batch when your only ingredients are coconut oil, canola oil, and vegetable shortening! Do the same with a recipe with shea butter, palm oil, sweet almond oil, and palm kernel flakes -- YIKES. The list of expenses add up quickly.

Now that I've been at it (extensively) for a few months, I thought it was time to figure out my recipe. This was a big step, as this formulation will become the trademark recipe I make my soap with (so no, no sharing!  (: ) So I sat down with SoapCalc as a backup reference (and to keep track of the INS totals of my recipe) and a list of all the possible soapmaking oils, their INS values, and what each one was good for.

Then, I asked myself: What do you want in a bar?

Easy enough. I want a nice, creamy, hard bar of soap that lathers well with decent bubbles and stability. I also want it to be hard enough to be very long-lasting, so that my customers don't have to worry about purchasing them often. I also wanted to make sure that there was enough skin-loving oils to make the "necessity" of using lotion after a shower -- well, non-existent. And easily obtained oils were a plus.

Considering I work at Rustic Escentuals, the oil-supply issue isn't much of a problem. I currently get my coconut oil, castor oil, and sweet almond oil from there. The Chemistry Store is where I get my Palm Oil and palm kernel flakes, as those are some of my preferred ingredients. I couldn't live without palm oil in my bars -- it's too nice on the skin and makes them super, super hard! My only other alternative would be to use beef tallow -- and considering I want vegan bars, this isn't an option. Yes, I know the controversy surrounding palm, and I don't agree with it, so I make sure to purchase it from places I trust. TCS delivers, and their customer support is awesome. :)

I also found a great deal on shea butter on Amazon -- 17.99 (shipping included!) for 5 lbs! AMAZING. Of course I bought it -- granted, it's unrefined, pure, natural, lovely off-yellow shea. Some complain about it's natural earthy smell, but I can;t get enough of it. I even use it outside of soaping -- straight out of the bag onto my skin when it needs a little extra nourishing.

So, recipe wise: I had castor oil, which at a mere 5% adds amazing, stable, bubbly lather. Adding coconut oil adds skin conditioning benefits, as well as a more creamy lather. Shea butter for superfatting as well as in the recipe adds a higher level of skin-moisturizing and nourishing properties -- and who wouldn't want shea in their soap? Palm oil is a must, the base for the soap for its hardness and conditioning properties. A little palm kernel flakes for some more hardness, and a pinch of canola oil to pull down the cleansing level of the soap (No higher than 20! And 15 is my preferred.). After fiddling with percentages, I was intensely happy with my values!

Just to make sure the bar was as hard as I want it, I intend to add 1% melted beeswax to the recipe as an additive. Since beeswax takes a much higher temp to melt, and when trying to room-temp melt my hard oils (the beeswax DIDN'T melt at all. HOLY COW), I have to melt this separately and add to my liquid oils while waiting for my solids to melt. Time to go a-testing!

I wanted to make a manly (or unisex) bar of soap, one I can send to some friends I had promised. I melted my hard oils with my hot lye-water, added my liquid oils, and went to blending! Considering my recipe had so many hard oils, I was amazed that it isn't a fast-moving recipe, even after blending in fragrance, adding activated charcoal, and titanium dioxide. I used a 9x9 silicone baking pan as my soap mold ($10 on Amazon with Prime shipping), pouring the activated charcoal first. I then took a mall mix of my titanium dioxide-colored soap and made a grid pattern (being very careful not to pour too high or too fast -- this pattern is only for the top!). Once that was done, I ran my spatula (the soap is still at a light trace! WOW!) through the white lines in a up-and-down motion (if you youtube spatula swirl, you'll see what I mean here.)

I didn't have a chance to take pictures during all of this, as I was focusing on the soap and making mental notes about how it acted through the process, and toward the end of the swirl I circled my spatula around the mold once, for a nice effect.

My beautifully swirled soap in the mold!

A close-up of the swirl

The final bars were already super-hard after 24 hours, and the loaf unmolded beautifully. I originally cut them to be 3x3, though they weighed in at a whopping 7.6-8 oz! I cut an inch off one side (making cute sample bars) to they were 3x2x1.5". I intend to make a smaller batch, as the thickness only needs to be an inch, but I was very impressed with how they turned out. As a finishing touch, I lightly speckled some Diamond Dust glitter over the top for a more fancy finish.

The glitter/size of the bar

They're so thick!

As fragrance, I added 1 OPP of Ezra Fitch type FO (sold by Rustic Escentuals in Amy's line), which smells like straight-up man out of the bottle. It's an insatiably manly scent, and I was hoping it would soap well. After unmolding and cutting, it seemed to morph a little -- it wasn't as strong as it had been, but it had mellowed out very nicely, leaving top notes of a cologne-type scent with bottom notes of heavy musk. The intense-man scent had become a nice unisex one, though this one is still for the guys. ;)

If you guys every have any questions, comments, photos, or anything at all -- let me know! Comments are always welcome!