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My confessions: I bevel purely because it adds copy appeal selling primarily online. I rarely wear goggles because none fit over my glasses. I weigh water, lye, fragrance, and oils precisely, and never pay much mind to anything else. I know what a decent amount of mica looks like. I eyeball...

I am so torn on this one. The foodie in me SCREAMS at the idea of using wagyu tallow for anything but cooking. The experimentalist in me, though, really wants to see what that soap would be like. The marketer in me is excited about the label appeal.

In addition to the suggestions, I've had to learn to just...be flexible. If I'm planning a drop swirl, but my batter decides it's going to set fast...well, I guess I'm doing layers. Maybe I'll run a chopstick or a hanger through, maybe I'll pound it down between layers to smooth them out and...

Oh that is lovely! Good work!

Oh those are lovely! I actually like the purple-y one best - reminds me of a mountain range at just past sunset back home in NC. :)

I've always added at trace, after splitting my batter for colors. It makes more sense to me - there are some FOs that will accelerate, and if there's a discoloring FO I might not want to color white I'm planning to swirl in, and that's when those would need to be added. Rather than keep track of...

I would hazard a guess that it's the castor oil. I'm currently experimenting with a castor oil-free recipe (I have a potential customer who is allergic, and it would be a pretty hefty custom order, so experimentation is WORTH it), and I've noticed that the lather is much more creamy and much...

Since you have kind of a fruity cocktail theme going on, you could shape some of the larger chunks - possibly triangles? - and dot them along the top of a fresh soap. Maybe a fruit medly scented soap, with a white top that's mounded up a little. Give it a fruity drink with whipped cream and...

Once fats are saponified by lye, the properties of the fat (oils and butter) itself change. But lye has a maximum amount of fat it can saponify. Superfatting is adding more fat than the lye can saponify, so that within the soap there is also some fat hanging out. Some fats, like coconut oil...

My Kitty Soaps are finally at their minimum cure, and so today was all about packaging and getting orders ready to ship! Three hours of packaging orders. I'm only halfway through. I'm revising my business goal from "break even year 1" to "being profitable enough to hire someone else to pack...

I get a wee bit picky about the Stuff in my soap. I really like ground coffee for all-over soaps, and blueberry seeds or similar for a foot scrubbing soap. I'm also a fan of biodegradable glitter on top, but that's probably because it washes off after the first couple of uses lmao. (But it HAS...

I am definitely a messy soaper, LOL. There's a reason the whole table gets covered in newspaper first.

I do a little of both temp and hardness. When I can't feel the heat through the bottom of the wooden mold, I pull the liner and soap out of the mold. From there, I usually let it hang out in the liner for a while longer, until the sides of the silicone liner pull away cleanly and it feels about...

I save scraps in a ziplock baggie immediately after creating the scraps, which keeps them malleable for a while. :) I then just reach in the bag, grab a (gloved) handful, and squish it around until it's in a ball shape. Toss them in some mica and they're ready to go.

After a couple of weeks to focus on the not-soap parts of getting ready to sell soap, I went back into the soap dungeon. My INTENT was a small test batch. I had a new mica I wanted to put through its paces, and wanted to play around with a color combination that's been itching in the back of my...

When I know I'm soaping on a given day, I pop the jugs in the warmest room in the house when I wake up in the morning. Since I usually soap in the afternoon/evening, that gives the oils time to soften up some. Then I pop them in a sink or bathtub full of hot water while I'm setting up to soap...

Oh I like it! It's very elegant and clean looking. :D

Oh, that's a very lovely drop swirl! I love the choice of colors.

Those are very lovely! I didn't tilt my mold, just went straight down the center. I also poured very small amounts of the black and orange and yellow, and larger amounts of the white, which made the accent colors a little thinner in the final soap. :)

Thanks, y'all! :D I used the tiger stripe technique! Basically, putting a line of soap batter down the middle of the mold, and pouring alternating colors on top of that line until out of soap. I brought my batter to barely a medium trace before starting, and that helped make the distinct lines...