My cp soap archeological dig

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Joined
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As I've told you 20 times already, I was an avid cp soaper 16 years ago. I moved from the States to Canada and there was simply no room to do soaping anymore, or at least at the level I was doing soap before. Except for the few people begging me to make a batch of patchouli soap, I just put soaping out of my head.

I don't know what happened, but lately I've had the urge to start again. The first batch to be made will, of course, be patchouli! I'm still waiting for a phone call from my local coop to tell me my ingredients have arrived.

So I went to my stash of soap making things and started to go through it. I could not get over how much stuff I had in those plastic bins. I've already told you about some of the stuff, but today I went through a couple more bins. It was disheartening. It seems I have 5 stick blenders. (I have no idea why!) They all work. Then I have dozens of plastic bowls and pitchers from Rubber Maid. What did I put in those? My soap recipes are all very simple. Enough beeswax to last a life time.

Then I opened two more really heavy bins and found around 40 bottles of essential oils and some fragrances. Many of them still had the shrinkwrap bands around the caps. Most of the bottles were 500 mls. A few were bigger. I had 5 bottles of wintergreen, and I don't really like that scent. There were also a dozen 250 mls bottles of eucalyptus. I opened some of the bottles and none of them smelled rancid. In fact, when I came back in the house, my partner wanted to know what scent I was wearing. He said I smelled like baby powder. Judging from all those bottles, apparently I was a regular customer of Snow Drift Farms and A Garden Eastward. It seems both of them are gone now. (Maybe my departure was more than they could absorb. :p )

I'm not going to throw out all that essential oil. I can't imagine what I must have spent on all that. I'm going to try little soaping experiments with them and see how they react. I'll let you know!

I have to laugh a little now that I am in this forum. Times have changed. Apparently fragrance oils have been vindicated. Maybe it was just the forum I belonged to back then, but they considered themselves as purists. Fragrances were no-nos! A self-respecting purist would never pollute their soap with something artificial. That went for most colorants too. I was surprised to find a number of fragrances in my stash today. Guess I couldn't resist the attraction of some of those scents - but I'm sure I never mentioned it to my group!

Well, there's still no room in the house for a soaping area. Guess I am going to have to do it in the kitchen. 16 years ago, I built myself a roomy soap area in the basement. Plenty of space. What luxury!
 
Certain circles still won't let you sit at their table if you use the artificial stuff. TD is under fire lately especially, people say it disrupts your hormones. I doubt itll go anywhere. I thought about only using EO for my soaps, but I can't resist those fun novelty scents.
 
@John Harris - you are too funny! The best explanation is that you had soap mania. I hope you have built up some immunity because you certainly don’t need any more stick blenders. As I understand it, some EOs get better with age, like Patchouli, but I think I recall that older lavender can be a real problem/causes DOS. I would stick with EOs mostly if they would stick in the soap, but many seem to fade quickly. I think you either have to plan on using the soap at a youngish age so you can enjoy the EO, or plan on having unscented soap unless you use FOs.
 
Well, I spent the afternoon with my scents. I have 34 bottles of EO and 17 bottles of FO. Many of them have never been opened. I sampled some of the open ones and they smelled fine. I wonder if there is some unseen chemical change that will appear in the soap. So, as I said, time for some experiments!

I'm thinking of making much smaller batches, but I need some equipment to do that. Have any of you bought one of these? Do you have recommendations?
https://www.amazon.ca/FEEL-Flexible...JEKHAWJ33V6&psc=1&refRID=WWDF07MS4JEKHAWJ33V6

Then I was looking at this thing. Do any of you use one? Recommendations?
https://www.amazon.ca/Handmade-Adju...06XPW42WQ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Any advice would be so appreciated!
 
I haven't bought that exact equipment from Amazon.com, but use a similar mold with silicone liner. If you are going to purchase all of the equipment in the mold and cutter set, you might as well purchase them together.
 
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