Soaping fail

[Lynusann]

So just over two months ago I figured I would add a wine soap to my repertoire. Everything came together perfectly, no lye volcanoes, nothing... But i was crazy unhappy at unmolding. At first it did have this beautiful deep red color but the most gawd awful smell. Then the day after cutting it I noticed it had completely lost its red color and turned this ugly ugly tan-ish color... So now I have a stinky, ugly looking soap on my hands. I considered for a fleeting moment just tossing it but in all the batches of soap I've ever made, I've learned to give it time.

So what did I do? I stuck it in the furthest back corner of my storage room where I couldn't see it and LITERALLY forgot about it until yesterday. Two months later it has the beautiful deep red color back and smells of this amazing mixture of French Vanilla and merlot! I gave a bar to a guinea pig... Errr... Friend... This morning and she texted me earlier telling me it's her new favorite soap of anything I make! That it has the perfect combo of creaminess and lather and the scent left behind after the shower is to die for. I took a chunk off and used it in the sink on my arms and I have to say it probably is just as good as my great grandma's recipe I use.

So where is the fail you ask? I CAN'T FIND THE STINKIN RECIPE I USED!!! I spent hours looking for it tonight!! I get the feeling that I was so mad about how it looked right out of the mold that I probably scrapped it... Grrr! Please tell me I'm not the only one to have such a big fail!?!

 

[Susie]

Nope, most of us learned the lesson to save the recipes for the failures as well as the successes the hard way, also. Welcome to being human.

 

[lsg]

Glad your soap turned out great. I have lost recipes too, but I have learned to save them with my Soap Maker software.

 

[skayc1]

I'm keeping my recipes & notes in a notebook, definitely will learn from others to not throw away a recipe till the soap has had a good amount of time to cure.

 

[snappyllama]

Check out Evernote as way to keep your recipes forever. There's even a plugin that will let you import them into a new note right from SoapCalc. You can set reminders for cure dates, easily search, and attach pictures to them.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtnlmitrNeA[/ame]

 

[ourwolfden]

Do you remember what ingredients you used? Maybe you can re plug them into soap calc and get something similar. The wine and the longish cure time may have also affected the feel of the soap so don’t be discouraged if it isn’t amazing right away. Heck you may even come up with something better.

Can I ask what FO you used, Merlot and Vanilla sounds excellent.

 

[Lynusann]

I remember what ingredients I used, but I sort of got "creative" and separated the batch. I remember using 1/3rd of the oils and using no water/lye discount for that, and then the remaining 2/3rd I used 100% discount for the wine, but the way the calculations came out it was really weird (until recently I used to do everything by hand because I had no idea there was any such thing as a soap calculator since I was working off of a very old handmedown recipe). I didn't actually use any FO's in this batch, the scent was completely random! The wine was a homemade merlot style wine from a friend with a HIGH sugar content though so I imagine that's where the merlot scent came from, but no clue how it pulled in a french vanilla-ish scent as well.

 

[tryanything]

Wow that Evernote thing was awesome! I am so not computer savy so to see that tutorial was great! Thanks! Off to set up a new journal!

 

[Cactuslily]

My guess would be the vanilla is coming through the Merlot wine that was used. Hope it comes back to you next time you make it.

 

[not_ally]

Snappy, thanks from me for the Evernote tip, too. It looks fantastic, I finally have hope that I might be able to recreate something someday!

 

[cmzaha]

I send all my soap calc recipes to Microsoft One Note