Soft, translucent spots on freshly unmolded CP soap

Hi there. I've been making soap for years and not experienced this problem. When I unmolded this batch of soap, it had what I thought were dark spots and patches throughout, but after slicing off a thin section and holding it against the light, I realized they are actually transluscent and not dark.

I have done a tongue test and there is no zap on these spots and the taste is the same as the rest of the soap. The spots feel slightly softer than the normal portions and occur randomly throughout the pink part (coloured with pink clay). The spots are not oily and I can't be sure but I don't think they smell stronger than the normal portions. The pink portion is also scented with a blend of essential oils while the white is unscented. It seems only the pink portion is affected which leads me to believe this is not due to the actual recipe itself.

I have made this soap many times before with the exact same recipe, equipment, mold, etc and not had any trouble.

The soap gelled fully all the way through. I did not do a water discount.

If you have experienced or seen anything like this before, I would love some help figuring out what happened. I'm really gutted about this batch. Thanks so much!



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Hi Roxta.
I was looking at the pictures this morning on your blog & I wondered if it might of been a partial gel. Without actually holding the soap in my hand it would be difficult to say completely.
Are you certain it went to a full gel?
Or maybe started to over heat in those areas or something.
Just trying to help by sounding it out for you.

It happened again!!

I made a successful batch after the pink one but the last batch was spotty again. Luckily because of the swirls it's not so obvious.

The soap is meant to be tan with a stark white swirl (with TD) and a calendula swirl (TD and calendula specks).

I used Photoshop to make a mock-up of what I think the large swirls would have looked like if nothing went wrong (first picture). I roughly highlighted the outline of the spot where the soap turned soft and translucent (second picture). The third picture is what the bar actually looks like. It's very easy to see that the TD in the affected areas has been almost completely wiped out. Only a slight white mottling is visible and of course, the yellow calendula specks remain.

Unlike the pink soap, this had no colour/clay added. The tan is from the fragrance discolouring. This has honey in it while the pink soap doesn't. However, the batch before this one that turned out perfect also had honey in it. The base oils and recipe for all three batches were the same.

The fact that this has happened to me twice out of three batches is extremely concerning. I'm afraid to soap again until I figure out what's going on. I think I'm cursed!



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Rosiegirl said:

Hi Roxta.
I was looking at the pictures this morning on your blog & I wondered if it might of been a partial gel. Without actually holding the soap in my hand it would be difficult to say completely.
Are you certain it went to a full gel?
Or maybe started to over heat in those areas or something.
Just trying to help by sounding it out for you.

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I'm 100% positive the pink one gelled all the way through. The spots are too inconsistent to be partial gel marks and there are some only on the edges and all different shapes and sizes.

The tan one actualy does have a slight ring of partial gel, but it's completely seperate to these weird soft spots, which are also randomly scattered throughout the soap. I also purposely made sure the fragrance was mixed in properly this time, yet it happened again

Could that just be stearic mixed with TD in the 3rd pic. Looks like it to me.
I've has soaps get that mottledly look in the centre before, usually when I soap too cool.

There's definitely some TD mottling going on but at the same time, there are also soft spots on the sides and edges of the soap where there is no TD at all. I haven't taken a picture, but on the plain portions of the soap, the spots look like those on the the pink one. I think it's a separate issue altogether.

The spots are also not gradual at all. On both soaps they have a very obvious outline which can be seen (and felt by pressing gently with my fingers). So I can tell if it's just mottling of if it's a spot.

Hmm I always soap at the same temp so I didn't think it couldn't be a temperature issue, but I'm willing to try anything at this point! Thanks so much.

Hopefully someone will come along that might have more experience with this kind of issue.
If I get a run of problems I take a step back with pushing my boundaries & do a simple soap, just to reassure myself I don't have the mockers put on me or something...LOL.

I don't have any helpful advice, but I just want to comment on your soaps. They are beautiful! I know these ones have a problem, but I love the colors and the tops!

Hi Roxta,

I've had something similar once with a Shea Butter soap. I had translucent blobs through the whole soap. It eventually faded out and was un-noticable after a long cure.

I think the spots were unsaponified butters, but I can't be sure.

busymakinsoap! said:

Hi Roxta,

I've had something similar once with a Shea Butter soap. I had translucent blobs through the whole soap. It eventually faded out and was un-noticable after a long cure.

I think the spots were unsaponified butters, but I can't be sure.

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Amazing! You're the first person who seems to have experienced this besides myself. I hope the spots do fade over time, but I doubt the colour/TD would come back. Neither of the two batches contained solid butters though.

I'm not a superstitious person but I'm still going with mysterious soap curse lol!

The spots look a bit like soap that didn't get mixed with your colors. Is it possible that the colored part wasn't mixed as thoroughly as you thought? Otherwise, seems pretty mysterious.

Well, I've made three batches since the spotty tan coloured one and they're all ok. Same recipe, same temps, same place, same time of the day, everything. It's still a mystery!

I really do appreciate all your comments, everyone. Thanks so much.

Did you use fragrance oil?

I think I saw that on another forum- where the FO wasn't mixed in all the way.
Maybe it could be that?

The pink soap is essential oils only and the tan one is a mixture of essential and fragrance oils. In the tan soap, the parts with TD and the calendula specks were unscented, yet you can see that they were also affected by the soft spots and the bright opaque colour of the TD was washed out.

When I had only made the pink soap, I thought it could have been incomplete mixing of the essential oils, but after looking at the tan soap, I don't think this is the case. I even put extra effort into making sure the fragrance was mixed in properly when I made the tan soap because at that time I suspected it was what was causing the problem.

It would also be horribly unlucky that after 8 years of soaping and always mixing my scenting oils in carefully that I would have this happen in two out of three batches. Not that I haven't been horribly unlucky recently...

I am truly curious and hope that someone who has experienced this, will chime in. I can't stop studying your soap.

What would be very helpful is if you listed, exactly, ingredients used to make this batch. Down to how old your oils were. (Though, do we ever really know, past before we received them?) What really bothers me is that you say the translucent parts are softer than the rest of the soap. It may be fine when it cures out; but still it would be nice to try to finger the cause.

For a while I questioned my recipe and base oils. Perhaps my supplier sent me a particular oil from a bad batch? But then I have actually been using the same batch of oils, same recipe, same everything in the previous 10 or so batches and not had problem.

And since the tan soap, I have made 6 batches of perfectly normal soap. Same batch of oils, same recipe, same everything. I've been soaping in a constant state of paranoia, praying it doesn't happen again...I went back and checked every single bar of soap made in the batches leading up to these spotty ones and they were fine.

I chopped up the pink soap and even the bars that looked unaffected on the outside would have at least one random spot, somewhere in the centre of the bar. Definitely softer but no zap on my tongue for sure, and when I dug some out and ran it under water, it didn't feel harsh.

Now I monitor every soap carefully as it gels, because it's at some point during this stage that the spots start to appear.

Just some update pictures.
The first is the pink soap that I chopped up, with random sized spots throughout.

The second shows the tan soap after darkening more. When the soap was lighter the spots didn't look so bad but now I've decided to chop up this batch as well. You can see a darker outline where the spot is and everything contained within the spot is affected, coloured or uncoloured, scented or unscented. In the top right hand corner you can see a small section of the swirl (just to the right of the spot outline) that has been unaffected. This portion of soap is stark white and has yellow calendula specks throughout. You can imagine that everywhere within the spot with those yellow specks would look exactly like that if it was normal. Finally, on the bottom left hand corner, a spot right on the edge of the soap. This is why I can't tell if the spots have to do with partial gel or overheating in the centre. There is no specific trend in where the spots appear, it is completely random.

The third picture shows the slice held up against the light and how everything within the spot has gone transluscent. Even the TD that is normally opaque and would block out the light has just disappeared. The spot's affect an area, not a particular portion. The tan portion is scented but uncoloured. The white portion is coloured but unscented. All are affected equally.

My current theory is not that something wasn't mixed in properly (fragrance, colour, oils, lye, etc). I have always been very careful about this and I don't see how I could suddenly be so careless in batches made so close to each other. I believe something caused a chemical or substance of some sort to separate out into the spotty areas during gel, but what and how, I'm not sure. Perhaps glycerin? I don't know much about making transparent/translucent soap but isn't glycerin one of the things you need to add to make the soap clear? It may also explain why the spots are so soft but not caustic at all. Taking a stab in the dark here. I'm still surprised that hardly anyone has had this happen to them before. I feel special, but not in a good way.



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Please tell me that you kept one bar of this "weird science" soap!

I agree, that it was some sort of bad chemical reaction.

About the glycerin, I watch this lady on youtube who owns her own shop, she was making some soap on one of her videos and began to chat. She said that she wasn't going to mix her colors with glycerin anymore because it was doing something strange to her soap. She didn't harp on it, but said that she noticed something funny about her batches since she started mixing it with the colorant instead of the oils. She does CPOP. My ears perked up when I heard this because when I saw her using the glycerin, I thought I might try this, but after her comment, no. I will listen to her vid again, maybe she elaborated and I wasn't paying attention.

Good luck with the rest of your soaping.

kellistarr said:

Please tell me that you kept one bar of this "weird science" soap!

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Absolutely! I'm going to keep observing it over time. I'm also hanging onto it just in case I need it for some voodoo spell to rid me of my curse!

roxta said:

Absolutely! I'm going to keep observing it over time. I'm also hanging onto it just in case I need it for some voodoo spell to rid me of my curse!

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How did this turn out in the end? Did the softer translucent spots ever fully cure/harden? I just unmoulded my 4 batch I have ever made....got a little more adventurous and added charcoal and a green colorant (used glycerin for the colors) and this is my first time I have soft "clear" spots in a few spots on the edge.

Hello @m_verg - this post is more than ten years old, and person who started it hasn't been on the forum since then. So you probably won't get a response.

Typically you will want to start a new thread to ask a question about your soap. But from what I can see in your picture, the "clear" spots are just glycerin rivers. They usually result from using a low lye concentration (high water), Fortunately, they are just cosmetic and don't affect the safety of your soap. Some people even try for them on purpose because they look kinda cool.