What soapy thing have you done today?

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I took a bubble bath. We have been fighting the "crud" at our house and I think I finally face defeat. I have a show in 2 weeks that I have been trying to get organized for. I bought 6 long and shallow totes to haul soap in - the most soap I have brought to a show. Chris has been busy making more trays for the display table. I have a few batches I need to get done for my soap of the month club, and a few custom orders before I start packing the soap lab. Move date is officially May 12!
 
Just bit the bullet and bought a whole bunch of butters and oils to play with. Shea Butter, Babassu Oil, Mango Butter, Jojoba Oil, Argan Oil, Meadowfoam Seed Oil, Neem Oil. And Polyglycerol-3 Beeswax, which apparently is a nice beeswax alternative that prevents graininess.

I've used jojoba, argan, meadowfoam and neem directly on my face and I really like them all, so I have plans for making some lotion bars with them for personal use (very light on the neem for obvious reasons). Babassu is for trying that 50/50 deodorant recipe. And I'm definitely going to play around with a dandelion salve once the weeds start blooming.

I've been pouring over the Swifty Crafty Monkey blog, it's opening up a whole other world for me!
 
After coloring, reading the forum, and staring at the ceiling for several hours... I did some dishes, fantasized about Babassu oil, considered a cookies and cream scrubby bar, and finally gave in to soaping. I made a small batch of charcoal face soap with lavender and Rosehip oils, incorporated in a a honey melt and pour base.

Not as black as I expected. I think I need a way to more evenly distribute the charcoal in the alcohol before adding to the soap base... but I'm looking forward to trying them. :)

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Made my first attempt at circling Taiwan. This is only 1lb but I feel the dowel was too big. I'll try a smaller at the next go round for tighter swirls. Very pleased that my cardboard dividers worked so well. Now to tweak the recipe amount to reduce the waste from the cut.

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Planning Blacksmith soap for my brother. While at Spring Training, he told me his favorite of the 3 options I made for him, his favorite was the combo Borax & Pumice soap. This time I will use Carolyn's Dragon's Blood FO and some colorant that goes well with darkening.

I realized yesterday that discoloring DB doesn't work well with pastels of Easter Egg soap. Guess I wasn't thinking clearly on that one. But interestingly enough, there was no discoloration of Bath Bombs fragranced with the same DB. But I'll hold onto the ones I made a few nights ago and watch to see if they do discolor, as I did use 2 while they were still new and maybe it takes more time, like it did with the Easter Egg soaps.
 
made a peach pie soap with my new crust and lattice mold and peach slice embeds. Needed 4 arms to get the lattice just right but it still turned out. Can't get that peach e.o. to hang on though. Tried and tried more and more and still just goes away. I think next time I will put the e.o. just in the m & p peach embeds. You all can laugh but the very first soap I ever made was soap queen's pumpkin pie. Yep, just dove in. It turned out perfect. I thought soap making easy. Well let's just say 2 months later and 63 recipes later (yes I said 63) some of it "ain't so easy". I would like to say thank you to all the wonderful soapers out there for there wisdom. I very seldom post but whenever I type a question into the computer it always goes straight to Soapforum. Honestly there is nothing you folks don't gab about. I learned how to get rid of ash here. Why my icing kept crumbling( too much TD). Room temp method, which changed my life. Not to panic about soft wet soap and there is no bad soap just rebatch opportunities. I now add my milk at trace instead of freezing it, So many tips which have taken the stress out and kept the fun in. I have 57 more recipes to go and I should have a nice stash of my master recipes. Onward and upward!
 
I made a three colour swirl using black tie FO and it smells amazing, altough I have some micas clump. I'll suspend them in glycerin next time.
 
I started making 1 pound batches of soap testing various percentages of sheep tallow to see what I like. While I'm at it I'm testing my ounce sampler fragrances from Candle Science.....today's is Mimosa and Mandarin...a powdery orange scent....I'm also playing around with higher percentages of coconut oil having never gone higher than 20%....todays was 24% tallow and 25% coconut with avocado castor and olive making up the difference. Lovin' soap has a recipe for tallow that's 34% coconut....we'll see.Thats tomorrow.
I will put in a favorable review for the combination lye method put forth here several months back. I've only used it on high oleic acid soaps to date but I stand here in amazement over what that 5% KOH does for a soap.
 
I've been really behind on soaping lately, but I made 5 batches yesterday of WSP Black Raspberry Vanilla, BB Grapefruit Bellini, WSP Eucalyptus Spearmint, SC True Rose, and Nurture's Honey I Washed The Kids.

Today I am making eo Eucalyptus Tea Tree (I had it ready last night but ran out of coconut oil) and Nurture's Lily Savon which was my favorite Lush scent.

I'm also finally making my black soaps from the March challenge today with Carolyn's Dragon Blood and WSP's Nag Champa. Better late then never I guess.
 
Today I have been working on plans for my April challenge soap, as well as an Easter Soap project. But I won't be soaping until tomorrow when Hubby goes back to work. Today I am focusing more on laundry and cooking and relaxing while listening to the apparently endless rain.
 
I've been trying to get all my soaping projects done by the end of April. I have them written on a large board in my lab, and numbered by importance. On Saturday I noticed that there were two write-ins and they had a ranking of #1 and #2. My kids decided they better get their soapy requests in, in case mom never makes soap again.

For my son I made a bacon molasses soap with no fragrance out of used bacon grease, coconut oil, and castor oil. I used a -10% superfat to make sure no oil remained to go rancid. It's going down for a long cure. My son knows this is totally experimental, but he's still excited to see how it turns out.

For my daughter I made a pumpkin beer soap. It's a soap I made once about two years ago. My second time using beer and my first time using pumpkin. My daughter loved it and hoarded as many of the bars as she could. (She thought I didn't notice.) Her stash finally ran out and she has been boycotting showers ever since. (I did manage to bribe her using some of my precious bars from I Am Handmade, but it's a struggle!)

Tonight I am going to be doing a bubble scoop marathon for a show on Saturday. I'm not sure how time got away from me so fast, but it did. I did inventory for the upcoming show and I have 75lbs of soap, which is the most I have ever taken to a show!

Other projects include working on a tattoo soap, trying out Susie's Soap 2 Go recipe, trying to find a way to organize my soap ideas (I have scraps of paper with ideas jotted down all over the place. It's ridiculous), and finishing up the club soaps and fragrances I haven't tried yet.
 
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