What soapy thing have you done today?

earlene said:

I'd love to learn a little bit more about how you achieved these lovely soaps!

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I used a sewer pipe with a strainer I trimmed (I have 2) and a friend of mine made me a handle out of SS. with this one I used yellow, orange, blue, pink and I cant for the life of me remember what the other color was (old age) put the strainer at the bottom of the pipe insert funnel in the top of pipe and alternate pouring different colors. do a google search or even go to M&Ms site--there are some very beautiful ones out there. I saw one that looked like a cross section of an orange. I need to do some more practice though. but its a fun technique.

Thank you, Marilyn. Yes, the pull-through method. I have only done it a three or four times myself with the pull through, a couple of times with the pour-through method. I liked the results I got with the pull-through method best. But I haven't done it with a round mold. Your soaps look really gorgeous.

Have you seen the ones done with pickle strainers? Someone here gave that a try with a round mold and there are some youtube videos on that as well. I'd never even seen a pickle strainer in my life until soapers started talking about making soap with the pickle strainer. I had to Google it just to find out what this odd contraption was.

So which strainer made which design? Just curious. And how thick was your soap batter when you poured? I found that if I poured too thin, the colors became muddy, but it I poured too thick, pulling through was more difficult. It was a fine line trying to decide when to pour the batter.

earlene said:

Have you seen the ones done with pickle strainers?

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I haven't been able to find a pickle strainer. this strainer cost me $1.29 at the grocery store. the strainer with the handle attached is the one that I used on this pour. the other one gave me a psychedelic look. I poured a thin trace. I try to move as fast as I can cuz it does cause issues when it thickens up . I have been seeing the loaf pours that use a nylon netting bag from fruit that I really want to try but need to do some more research. thanks for your kind words

Marilyn Norgart said:

I haven't been able to find a pickle strainer. this strainer cost me $1.29 at the grocery store. the strainer with the handle attached is the one that I used on this pour. the other one gave me a psychedelic look. I poured a thin trace. I try to move as fast as I can cuz it does cause issues when it thickens up . I have been seeing the loaf pours that use a nylon netting bag from fruit that I really want to try but need to do some more research. thanks for your kind words

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I used a cuties bag (mandarin oranges) to make my Pink Man Group soap (in my Soapy Photos album) via the pull-through method. The first time I tried it about a year or so ago, it was a total fail, so I did not try again until this past May. I had a surprise success with it, but when I tried to improve on it, not as good with the subsequent tries. The hardest part about that was weighing down the mesh to stay at the bottom of the mold while pouring AND to use for pulling out once the batter was all poured. I weaved wooden chop sticks on the long sides that fit tightly inside the mold and gear ties inside the short ends of the mold length. But I think a stainless steel rod of some sort would be heavier and less likely to float up as the batter fills.

I took video of part of the making of that soap, but never did compile a soapmaking video to put on youtube, like I had planned. I don't even know if I got enough footage of the important parts of the process to create a decent video, so I may never do that.

earlene said:

I used a cuties bag (mandarin oranges) to make my Pink Man Group

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yours is the one I was thinking of.

Marilyn Norgart said:

what causes the sweat? does the sweat just go into the soap then? and what does it do to the cure?

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Good question lol and I have no idea what this amount of sweat does to uncured soaps. These are just two weeks old.

It is humid here, as it is always, but we're in the middle of a series of storms (we're gonna have em one after the other for the next 2+ months or so) so it is rainy, windy and cool as well. The ceiling fan in that room is on for the greater part of the day and it's also the coolest room in the house. AC is rarely on nowadays coz it's not hot (3rd world issues lol).

Maybe @earlene can answer your questions better. Thinking of creating a new thread and having this discussion there? Getting too often and too long for here. Earlene has some great observations and theories, maybe I'll quote them all there too?

Lin19687 said:

@Dawni doesn't that just kill ya ?

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It does. Makes you go all googly eyed n panicky and you don't know if you should touch em or not lol

Dawni said:

These are just two weeks old.

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are they sweating cuz they are only 2 weeks old? Earlene?? Dawni??

They attract the moisture due to the Salt

Marilyn Norgart said:

are they sweating cuz they are only 2 weeks old? Earlene?? Dawni??

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As Lin said, it's the high water content in the air being attracted to the high salt content in the soap. How quickly it happens depends on how much moisture is in the air, the percentage of salt & other water loving ingredients and how far into cure they are, as far as I can tell from my own observations.

Dawni said:

Soap inspection. My salt bars swimming in their own sweat...
View attachment 40723

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Dawnii
This (for me anyway) is annoyingly normal for salt bars and we don't have the extreme humidity that you do.
I put them on a tea towel (cotton towel) and change it every day if necessary (as soon as it gets wet) and I have recently started to use an electric humidifier to take the humid air out of the room. I will also pat the soap dry if necessary. I use pure sea salt with no additives (no anti-caking agent or iodine).

Unlike Earlene it takes my salt soaps about 6 months to stop sweating so I don't give them away until they are 9 months old. I have found making them at the very end of summer means the 6 months cure is in the cooler months which means they sweat less.

If you leave a tsp of salt on the benchtop on a humid day it attracts moisture too so I just figured the salt in the soap was doing the same thing.

Your soap colours look beautiful.

I mixed up all of my TD (for oil) by pouring a bit of almond oil straight into the jar and stick blending it to death. Let it sit all day and stick blended it to death again. It’s nice and smooth now and ready to use at the drop of a hat.

I made soap! I'll post once it's cut.

Yes @penelopejane, very annoying lol.. And thank you

I also decided to make mine only now that the summer is officially over, although it's still hot n humid here, but these rains are just irritating.

I also change that cotton cloth they're sitting on, it's folded over so once in two days seems to be fine. I also wiped them down after I took that pic.

My salt soaps are sweating to death, including the 6 month cure and new soaps...sigh. I change my soap towel every two days also. Even the ac doesnt seem to be doing enough, should have tried a dehumidifier.....? Monsoon season in AZ--mid June thru mid Sept officially--can be incredibly humid, high dewpoint etc ...

I made HP soap, I experimented with using carrot juice for coloring. I blended carrots and water in blender to get the carrot juice. Seems to have a nice orange color. Hopefully it comes out nice.

runnerchicki said:

I mixed up all of my TD (for oil) by pouring a bit of almond oil straight into the jar and stick blending it to death. Let it sit all day and stick blended it to death again. It’s nice and smooth now and ready to use at the drop of a hat.

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I have water soluble TD. I mix a big empty ketchup type bottle with distilled water and TD. I add in a couple of stainless steel marbles, mix, mix, mix and it’s ready to go for several months.

I made some deodorants today. I ran out and had to use some commercial until I had time to make more and it really made me realize how much I love my homemade ones! Changed up my recipe hoping to make them harder and am really excited to see how they turn out.

Struggling through the heat (no A/C in the house and the soap dungeon sits next to the boiler), so I have been trying to NOT make soap and failing. I think this is what I've made since I last posted on this thread:
Apple Juice cupcakes scented with Apple and Oak
Apple Juice bars scented with Apple and Oak
Vampire Bites soap (it has an m&p vampire teeth embed on top) scented in Bite Me
18 bars Lilac
18 bars The Perfect Man
600g soap dough
and just cut today 18 bars Cucumber Splash - my first time using cucumber puree (IKR the queen of weird soap ingredients has not used cucumber before)

I masterbatched 12lbs of oil yesterday and was scrounging for castor oil, so I had to place an oil order. Included some palm so I can start testing for adding a vegan lineup. (My idea is to switch all of my aloe soaps to vegan, and keep my coconut milk and buttermilk recipes tallow based.) I talked myself into switching over to the tall and skinny molds rather than trying to resize my batches. My labels are a bit too big for the regular bar size, but fit perfectly when rotated 90° on the tall and skinny bars. It seemed the most logical solution. Anyways, I also placed an FO order with BCN now that the website is fixed. I need to place an order with M&M tonight for a few colors, and apparently the mini tall and skinny mold (I have a 12" and 24" but the 6" would be nice to have) hopefully it will fit in the box my hubby made for my 12".

Tonight I will be beveling and stamping the cucumber splash bars, and then playing around with soap dough. Y'all who used soap dough in the rimmed soap challenge got me to thinking and now I have an idea I have to try. Maybe I'll be able to get this rimmed soap to work after all.

I made another batch of Zany’s no-slime Castile soap. I ended up really loving my last batch - and made a larger one this time. Aside from Zany’s recipe I added Silk to the lye water, kaolin clay to the fragrance oil. I used Bamboo & White Grapefruit. And I colored this soap with Nettle powder and TD.

@amd You forgot the PIC

linne1gi said:

I made another batch of Zany’s no-slime Castile soap. I ended up really loving my last batch - and made a larger one this time. Aside from Zany’s recipe I added Silk to the lye water, kaolin clay to the fragrance oil. I used Bamboo & White Grapefruit. And I colored this soap with Nettle powder and TD.

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Nice.... Pics?