The Wall of Shame - Ugly/Failed Soap

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gdawgs

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I see all these amazing photos of incredible soap you all make. I'm not sure if this has been done before, but how about some failed attempts. I thought this could possibly be a learning experience. Others may have experienced similar problems in the past and found a fix. Especially good for us newbies. Since I'm still new and have no pride (yet), I'll go first.

Here's my first attempt at a hot process batch. I was following the directions in "The Everything Soapmaking" book, and she has you cook the heck out of the soap. I cooked this batch for over 4 hours, which after reading here is way too much. So that plus the fact that I don't think HP may ever look nice, I also got really bad DOS(or I assume that's what this is). It looked ok for a day or two, then started turning brown. This is the only batch of soap that I've made so far that this has happened too. Could it be from the overcook?? Although it looks really ugly, it actually isn't too bad as far as soap goes. Or as someone else here posted a while back "It will still clean your butt".
Is anyone else brave enough to post some ugly soap? Or maybe I'm the only one who makes ugly soap. :)

20160622_195119_zpshgejg0nc.jpg


20160622_195130_zpsnzltrikl.jpg
 
I have made some UGLY soap in my time, soap that makes yours look like fine art. I cleaned up my photo files recently though and deleted all the ugly soap pics.

I don't see any DOS in your soap, looks more like a discoloring FO. What did you scent it with? Its also possible the color change was from over cooking, either way its perfectly fine to use.
 
Bah, that isn't that bad. I've made soap that looked like a cross section from an anatomy textbook. No amount of cleaning up the bars could help that. Another looked like raw meatloaf soap. Blech.

The inside of yours is peachy and pretty. If it was mine, i'd end up hacking off the edges and sending the lovely middles out to everyone on my soap gifting list. :)
 
That's pretty much what all my HP batches look like . . . not pretty! What FO did you use? It looks like discoloration from vanilla and not DOS so it should be fine to use after curing. I've made plenty of fugly soap over the years but I try not to take pictures of those batches ;)
 
I've seen granite counter tops that look like that - so you can tell people that's what you were going for!

My ugliest soap was made with very green evoo, colored with Nurture's purple, blue and green micas in a zebra swirl. It made for a very nauseous looking animal!

eta: it never saw the light of day and there are no living witnesses to its supreme ugliness
 
You guys are funny. I used "Sandalwood Patchouli" FO from WSP. Now that you mention it, it does turn fairly dark brown in CP soap. I just assumed that it wouldn't discolor in HP since I added it way at the end when there shouldn't have been any lye left. But maybe that's not the case.
This soap is 2 months old now, so it should be well cured. It kind of smelled "Meaty" at first, so I haven't used it. That smell has cleared up, so I think I'll use it now.

I did a little hack job on this one, and you are right, it doesn't look that bad.
Kind of looks like marble.
soap_zpselsec3fp.png
 
Here in the photo gallery, we prefer it if people make a thread each time rather than having massive threads full of lots of different pictures from over the months.

Feel free to post threads with any failed batches though, and people can feedback. Of course, if you have questions about a batch then it really should be in the soaping sections rather than the photo gallery
 
I don't keep my ugly or soft or failed-in-some-other-way soaps. I confetti them. I have made a lot of confetti soap and I still have a lot of confetti to use. [emoji2][emoji21][emoji21]
 

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