MellonFriend
Well-Known Member
Well this soap that I made yesterday and cut this morning had pretty much every cosmetic issue that could go wrong, go wrong. I've got morphed colors, steric spots, and soda ash.
Let's address the steric spots first. My lye solution was 83* and my recipe had cocoa butter in it, and I think I might have been edging over the melting point of cocoa butter (oils were at 93* cocoa butter melting point is 95*) so if don't let my lye solution cool that much, I assume I will be better off. If It does cool too much, is there any way to heat it up safely?
Now lets talk about the soda ash. It's not horrible, but I do have little white crystals here and there on the top. I've heard that you can spray 99% isopropyl alcohol on the soap after it's in the mold. I have some 70%, can I use that or should I track down some 99%?
On to the color morphing. I'm figuring this is because I'm not using a real brand name mica. It's for cold process soap, but it's just a generic mica that I got off of amazon. Is there any possibility the colors will come back after curing further?
Well here's the culprit. The swirls were supposed to be brown, red, orange, and yellow, but I'm only seeing yellow and brown. On the bright side, I think my first in the pot swirl and first mica line look great and my new recipe behaved wonderfully. It smells amazing too. I used Rustic Woods and Rum from BB.
Let's address the steric spots first. My lye solution was 83* and my recipe had cocoa butter in it, and I think I might have been edging over the melting point of cocoa butter (oils were at 93* cocoa butter melting point is 95*) so if don't let my lye solution cool that much, I assume I will be better off. If It does cool too much, is there any way to heat it up safely?
Now lets talk about the soda ash. It's not horrible, but I do have little white crystals here and there on the top. I've heard that you can spray 99% isopropyl alcohol on the soap after it's in the mold. I have some 70%, can I use that or should I track down some 99%?
On to the color morphing. I'm figuring this is because I'm not using a real brand name mica. It's for cold process soap, but it's just a generic mica that I got off of amazon. Is there any possibility the colors will come back after curing further?
Well here's the culprit. The swirls were supposed to be brown, red, orange, and yellow, but I'm only seeing yellow and brown. On the bright side, I think my first in the pot swirl and first mica line look great and my new recipe behaved wonderfully. It smells amazing too. I used Rustic Woods and Rum from BB.