Weekend soap pot June13-17

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Tabitha

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 21, 2006
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Location
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What's cookin' this weekend?

I have already made:

LIP BALMS:
coconut
melon
peach
honey
cherry
grape
banana

FLAVORED MASSAGE OILS:
strawberry banana
peach
chocolate coconut
 
Lotion and conditioner -50 each

Soy Votive -Black light responsive-10 each
Lime
Wild Cherry
Black Razz Vanilla
Fruit Slices
Mango Papaya

Votive Samplers-Lime 50 ct

CP Batch- Lilac & Vanilla Creme'

White Tea & Ginger Shampoo Bars

I haven't even started yet :oops: :?
 
I've been preoccupied by getting my photography better, built a really nice light box from PVC pipe with mylar and paper from an artist store. I still can't take good pictures and it's driving me nuts. I returned the halogen work lights to HoDep and thinking of trying daylight fluorescent. My good camera is broke and not likely worth fixing, and it's somewhat of a challenge to try and get good pictures out of my shirtpocket Sony. I may have to get off the stick and buy that new Canon XSi.

I've also modified one of my mini-molds with a reusable liner system, to be tested this weekend. So it looks like I'll be making a 1# batch to test the test mold modifications. :) Maybe I'll try making non-dark-brown avocado soap. ;)

Also in the works is my new mold design, hinges instead of bolts, held up at the mostly done stage awaiting the liner test results. I don't want to add the liner system until I know whether it works or not.

I got my order from SoapSupplies.net yesterday, happily surprised since I didn't get any meaningful tracking. I got some FOs including Paul's recommendation WVS, and several of the oxide colorants. Their prices beat WSP but even better I ordered stuff from WSP within hours, both on Monday, and my WSP order is still on the truck! The good news is that I've got an amazing new colorant system (the oxides) to try out in the next few days. I was surprised at how much 8 oz of a colorant is. I bet each baggie has enough colorant for 100 big batches! Needless to say I want to try the new colors soon.

I've laid in supplies for most of the things I want to try soon, and with my WSP order arriving Monday I'll have plenty of EOs and FOs too. I've been trying to cut the roadblocks out of the way, not having the right colorants or right scents, relining the molds. The new system should cut out the relining part.

So to sum it up I'm going to do something soon probably today but I don't know what yet.
 
Last night I made Sweet Orange Oil with Sandalwood. Smells awesome. Can't wait to unmold and cutting. I think cutting is my favorite part of the process.
Opalgirl
 
I built my own molds :D 6 3lb ones :D easy peasy so proud of myself less than $40.00.

So I had to test them out. So fa I made:

Beer Soap (100% miller) w/ Bay Rum, Dark Musk, a dash of Frank & Myrh and Ginger Lime for a kick sprinkled Red Roobios Tea on top for color

Carrot, Oatmeal, Milk & Honey
100% Carrot Juice, with Buttermilk & Honey..sprinkled Oats on top (unscented)

Vanilla FO swirled. Sprinkled Brown soap shreds on top

Lavender EO & Spearmint
Swirled (I hope) with lavender buds & peppermint lightly on top...


Today I will be making
Cedar & Saffron
Black Vetyver Cafe
Summerland
Ocean Water

I may think of a few more to do. I have market on tuesday
 
BTW: I got all of my shipping out (every LAST box) & the kids fed lunch all by 11:58 today! I feel productive.
 
I finally got my soap made and just molded it a bit ago. My husband had
asked me if I could try to make a suntan lotion scented soap. Not sure if what I came up with is close....but it smells like it to me. I also did my first double swirl...actually...the first swirl that "seems" to have turned out **crosses fingers**. I'll probably make another batch tomorrow. I have some calendula...a GIANT bag, I want to infuse some of it in oil or water...so will do that today also. My H is away on a fishing trip, so I'm also going to order some General Tso's Chicken, WonTon soup and chill this evening.
 
Ok, 12 lbs of soap down

So far:

100% Olive oil. I used the Euphoria eo blend from Wholesale Supplies. I was so paranoid about the long trace, I discounted the water and stick blended it and it got really thick. :shock:
I tried RTCP with this one, worked great!

70% Coconut & 30% Lard. Laundry soap. Used Orange eo.

25% RBO, 25% Coconut, 30% Lard, 15% Olive. Honey Oatmeal eo blend from Wholesale Supplies. Added Oat flour and vanilla bean seeds for visual interest!

Will definitely make more tomorrow!
 
Yesterday I made a sore muscle soap for a friend and clover soap. Nothing today but tomorrow will be 8 pounds of lemon/lime shampoo bars and several soaps that are currently undecided
 
So far I've made 10 gallons of liquid laundry soap and restocked my stores of colloidal oats to get ready for bug bite and poison ivy/oak season. I will probably play around with some hand-milled recipes later after the Fathers Day festivities are over. Steaks on the grill and cold beer! Mmm....
 
I sell it in powder form to a couple of my regulars by request, other than that I do not retail it.
 
This is a batch of Aqua Spa that seized on me. I rebatched it into Old Fashioned Soap Balls

235_1887-1.jpg
 
Oh, what a lovely picture. I love that bowl. Where did you get it? I saw someone else on the forum had that same bowl in one of their pics. BTW, I love the color of those soapballs.

Laurie
 
Laurie said:
Oh, what a lovely picture. I love that bowl. Where did you get it? I saw someone else on the forum had that same bowl in one of their pics. BTW, I love the color of those soapballs.

Laurie
Thank You Laurie. I bought the bowl at Flower Factory
 
Well I ended up making a test batch of 100% EVOO in my newly lined mini-mold. If this works I'll have a mold that doesn't require relining with freezer paper, instead having permanent plastic lining that needs only rubbing off or water washing before reuse, maybe and a bit of mineral oil rubbing. I'm experimenting with permanently bonded liners and floating, removable liners, or a combination of both. The truth will come tomorrow when I unmold my 100% Castile and see if the mold is either reusable as is or maybe reusable after rubbing off or washing in water. If I can avoid freezer paper then the new lining system will be a success. I already have a different mold design using hinges that is awaiting the design decision that the new liner system is working. With Home Depot and a few lumber yards within easy driving I've got everything I need to make even better molds.

I repeated my avocado oil experiment (now #3) of a 50% avocado oil soap, again including 1 oz ppo avocado pulp, but this time without any FO to accelerate the reaction. My swirling efforts didn't appear as good as my previous avocado #2 with the FO problem that turned it brown, but if this batch goes brown then it's the avocado pulp, and might as well find out right now. If this goes well as far as appearance then I'll return to the lime mint scent.

So the 100% EVOO is looking good for the new mold, the 50% avo is looking good for not turning brown-black, and I'm working on a new "whiter" formulation for contrasting with swirl colors, mostly coconut plus other whiter oils. Those oxides I got from SoapSupplies.net are drawing me, the black and ultramarine and chromium green and the brown oxides are calling!

And I've got a bunch of FOs and a few EOs comin' from WSP. Scents are the hard core drugs of soapers, many losing all restraint when purchasing them online, but maybe I'm not quite that bad. You should see what I've got coming, enough that I hope to develop a staple of 5-8 of those good enough to use over and over and over. That WSP Dreamsicle FO was good enough to reorder! :) I'm sure the WSP lemon lavender too. I already ordered 16 oz of it so much am I sure it will be a winner, enough for probably 16# of soap.

The final frontier: the artsyness of it. Good soap: It cleans you, it smells good, and it looks pretty. I'm having a lot of success with my various recipes, getting different qualities, different kinds of bars, but the scenting has been really challenging, enough but not too much, enough but not too little, the right scent vs. the wrong scent. I've given up that you just need to try a bunch of them from different sources and find out which ones smell good to you, then hope that you are a good judge of what your audience expects, or maybe even know what's better for them than they do, in which case you need to figure out how to inform them.

So that leaves me closing in on having a few good repeatable scents in my stable and being able to focus on the artiness aspect, something I can imagine has no limits, or at least only your imagination limits what novel appearances you come up with. I have some good ideas that are almost within the grasp of my present skills.
 

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