Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Soap Batch #6 - Rosehip Jasmine scented!

Hello friends! :)

On Sunday, 12/4 I got the urge to make some more soap! I wanted to make soap with avocado oil, and created a recipe and everything. I printed it out and went down to my storage room to pull the avocado oil and it turns out I didn't have any! I guess it must have gone bad and I threw it out and forgot. So I ended up using another recipe I created with walnut oil instead.

This soap consists of the following:

Olive Oil, Water, Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Walnut Oil, Fragrance Oil, Castor Oil, Brick Red Oxide, and Titanium Dioxide.

Here is a photo of the soap after I poured it. Since I liked the way the design turned out last time, I copied the same pattern on the top of this batch.


I checked on the soap an hour after I poured it and I noticed it started heating up and slightly cracking on the top. I decided to just leave it and try and cut it off later if it looked bad.

Today, 12/7 I cut the bars. I was DELIGHTED to see what had happened with the first cut...


I honestly have NO idea how this marbling happened, but I really like the swirly look I got! I think the titanium dioxide didn't fully mix in and ended up with those white swirls.


Here's another view. I was able to cut 13 bars from this set.


Here they are on the drying rack, their new home for the next 4-6 weeks! The ones behind them are from my previous post. It's just about time for me to package these up and ship them off to my Aunt!


I am so happy with how these turned out!!! :-)

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Soap batch #5. Oatmeal, milk, and honey soap made on 10/30

Howdy everyone!

I am fully aware that I have been VERY absent from my blog for many months now. First off, I moved back in July, then started working in August, and just haven't had time to update this thing...

A few months ago, my Aunt commissioned me to make her some soap for Christmas gifts. On Oct. 30, I finally got up the energy to create her soap! She requested that I make her oatmeal, milk, and honey scented soap so that's what this post is about.

The ingredients that went into this soap was as follows:

Olive oil, water, coconut oil, palm oil, sodium hydroxide, sunflower seed oil, fragrance oil, and castor oil.

This soap was superfatted to 5%. The photo below was taken on Oct. 30th right after I poured it. I attempted to make a fancy design on the top of the soap with my spatula. :)



On Nov. 2, I un-molded the soap. To my pleasant surprise, It gelled only part of the way through leaving a cool square in the center of each soap! It wasn't planned, but I thought it would make a cool gift for my Aunt's friends. :)


I was able to cut 13 bars from this batch.


Here they are at their resting place! If you look closely, you may notice that some of the soaps have cracks in the tops of them. This batch super-heated and cracked in some areas. I will be keeping those as "rejects" and most likely using them myself. ;)


I walk past these in my kitchen every day, so I watched them change from what you see above to slowly darkening to what you see below. The squares in the center of the soap are no longer there, it is one solid color throughout. They also ended up with soda ash (sodium bicarbonate, aka baking soda) on the tops of them. I haven't decided yet if I should just leave it on there or cut it off. I'm tempted to leave it for looks. :) What do you think?!?