Batches 12-19

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PrairieCraft

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Experimenting with small batches to try out FOs.


Gardenia


Green Tea with Tea Leaves Left in fridge a day to avoid gel. Tea leaves still bled into soap after taking it out. If anyone knows how to avoid this please advise the leaves looked so pretty until they "steeped".


This is the green tea right after pouring


100%CO soap with Coconut FO Can't smell FO only a chemical kind of odor. Tried to avoid gel by putting it in fridge, didn't work. This smells so bad I don't even want to use it.


The 2nd coffee batch I have effed up. Did a 10% lye discount and then added 10% coffee butter as superfat. Meant to do one or the other, not both, that's what I get for not checking after printing out my soapcalc sheet.


Orange Cucumber Natural FO from sweetcakes siezed in a bad way, should have just let it set up in the bowl it was nice and smooth one minute and a gelled blob the next my attempt to smoosh it into the mold did not work.


Happy for Men FO


Fresh Cut Grass this layering did not go as intended, don't even ask! It overheated and the brown ran down into the white and made it look purple -ish.


My first GM soap Honey Almond Oatmeal


First lotion bars, love these things. On left is Cocoa Butter & Almond Oil with Almond FO and the right is Shea & grapeseed with Apple FO, my sister has a nut allergy that includes some nut oils, hopefully the shea blend will be alright for her. The cocoa butter smells so stongly of chocolate that it overpowered the almond FO.


My favorite bar yet, even though I messed it up. This is a Bastille scented with Twilight Wood. I tried for no gel and still ended up with gel in the middle, should have went all the way. I was so surprised when I cut open the tan bar to find it pink in the middle. So far the fam has liked the two tone effect but I can't imagine recreating it since I don't know how I ended up with this in the first place.


100% OO with 0 superfat Hardened up really quickly with no zap after 24 hrs. Hope to try some liquid soap made with pectin that was mentioned in a thread somewhere around here. The chunk in the front was not gelled the bars were, should have stuck it all in, really white bars would have been nice.



With most of these batches I kept a smallish bit aside to either gel or not gel, opposite of what I was doing with the rest of the batch. It's a great way to see what the difference is and some look better gelled and others not. With two of these batches, the gardenia and the happy, I did not gel the batch and after about a week of curing a spidery web of lye developed over the outside of the bars. This did not happen on the bit of each batch I kept out and forced to gel by heavily insulating. It was like they were from different batches but it was all the same. Does something about not gelling make this happen? When I cut into the bar it looked fine and there was no zap on the inside.
 
This is a months worth of soap making efforts. Can't say how I like the round soaps yet as none have cured long enough for me to use. It'll depend on how it rolls around in the washcloth :)
 
PrairieCraft said:
I was so surprised when I cut open the tan bar to find it pink in the middle. So far the fam has liked the two tone effect but I can't imagine recreating it since I don't know how I ended up with this in the first place.

What did you use for a colorant, if any? Some FO's will do crazy things color-wise as well. I know of at least 2 or 3 that go mauve-ish purple like that if they are gelled.
 
Love the one with purple on the inside ;) I had a batch of chocolate soap turn dark, dark brown in the middle and tan on the outside . . . no clue how it happened!
 
ChrisShepp said:
PrairieCraft said:
I was so surprised when I cut open the tan bar to find it pink in the middle. So far the fam has liked the two tone effect but I can't imagine recreating it since I don't know how I ended up with this in the first place.

What did you use for a colorant, if any? Some FO's will do crazy things color-wise as well. I know of at least 2 or 3 that go mauve-ish purple like that if they are gelled.


I used carmine from TKB, think it is sold as natural red. Not red really more of a magenta but then this was a mostly OO batch so... My craziest discoloration from FO happened a couple days ago with an uncolored batch it went to a dark (dark) tan, it was Black Canyon from Peak. I kind of like a little discoloration though, it makes things unique. I'm not a huge fan of synthetic dyes as they seem like a waste, especially for me at this point.


Thanks to all for the looks and comments :D Back to the soap station!
 
Oh I wish I had taken a picture--- I had a cocoa powder and coffee soap do a weird red thing like the purplish one you have--- the center was red- like a steak!,, while the outside was brown. It looked like I had cut into a piece of rare tenderloin or something!!! Luckily, it's COMPLETELY brown now, and absolutely wonderful. Here's a link to a picture of it: http://barsoapnatural.com/our-handmade- ... -soap.html

I bet yours will be fine after cure. The picture on my site was taken after about a 5 week cure.
 
PrairieCraft said:
I was so surprised when I cut open the tan bar to find it pink in the middle. So far the fam has liked the two tone effect but I can't imagine recreating it since I don't know how I ended up with this in the first place.
Don't you love it when that happens? Ah the joy of handcrafted soap making..
I used "sapphire blue" and it morphed in cp and came out the most stunning purple.
 
Just used the natural red colorant in a shaving soap batch. The gelled bars held on to a little bit of the color but very unevenly and the couple that I didn't gel were a gorgeous purple in the fridge for the first day but after 2 days faded to absolutely no color whatsoever.
 
I would hate to think that TKB is lying about it, it's apparently used in various products even as a food coloring in yogurt! Weird huh, if people knew what it was they maybe wouldn't eat it.
 
If you email Kaila at TKB, she'll answer whatever you throw her way. She's really friendly and helpful.

I had issues with their "naturally derived" pop micas... and how natural they really were. We exchanged several emails back and forth-- they're made with only ingredients that are identical to natural, just not found naturally. So, the ingredients, although laboratory created, are no different chemically from natural mica, except that they don't have the impurities a truly natural product would have.
It made me much more comfortable about using them for my "natural" customers. At least I can explain it to them, and the customer can make up their own mind.
 
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