What soapy thing have you done today?

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All I can do is think about all the soap I need to make and cannot due to the heat. My house is 100 and just too hot to soap, so I am stuck in the one room that has a window air conditioner. Flat-top roof wood glasshouses are Miserable in the summer, and impossible to cool when no walls go to the ceiling. Sadly our hot month is usually Oct, so I will really be cutting it short on curing time for the holiday craft fairs. :(
 
Soap inspection today!
Soapy thing: Given how my soap made with rice water is my hardest soap, considering neither lard nor the two butters amounts are not high at all, I decided to test my theory that the starches in that water contribute to a harder bar.
I think I may be on to something here.. After a week the bars with rice water are firmer than the ones without! This calls for further testing hehehe
 
Lol three posts in a row.. You guys must be having an awesome weekend lol

Soaped three batches today.. Two tiny, one slightly bigger but pics tomorrow coz I was lazy to take some haha

I inspected my Castiles again.. And noticed this really cool effect of the ghost swirl I attempted.
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Thankfully no sign of DOS on this bar and all others, except the single one I posted. Must have gotten contaminated.
 
made 2 fall soaps today--cranberry pumpkin and cinnamon spiced vanilla. took pics of the soap I made yesterday--cypress and berries (oob I didn't think I would like it but it smells pretty darn nice but am not happy with how it looks). I have enough lye to make one more batch today, just have to decide what I want to do--maybe one with pumpkin puree??
 
I made pumpkin embeds today. This is my first foray into embeds! I used CP and not melt & pour. These are chunky embeds and I'm going to put them in a fall soap recipe next weekend. I'm waiting for my new mold from Nurture Soap to get here. I needed a slightly bigger mold for this idea (that was my excuse anyway). So 3 parts orange vibrance and 1 part really red from NS make a pretty good pumpkin color. My fragrance oil will discolor some, and they are now looking more like a pumpkin pie color where they have been exposed to air, but it will be fine for gifts in any case.

I've been working on some soapstones,
View attachment 41263
with pumice
View attachment 41264
maybe I should call them polishing stones? o_O
If I didn't know these were soaps I'd swear they were actual rocks. Wow.
 
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I have tried two different soaps useing the soaping 101 dollar tree soap videos and bombed huge with both tries being that this was my first and second tries i believe i am just going to walk away from trying to soap
 
I have tried two different soaps useing the soaping 101 dollar tree soap videos and bombed huge with both tries being that this was my first and second tries i believe i am just going to walk away from trying to soap
Please don't give up just yet! While I think that soaping 101 has some wonderful tutorials and recipes, I wouldn't have as much faith in the dollar tree soap videos. I think there is too much room for error with the mixed oil blend. I highly recommend searching soaping 101 for a different recipe to start with and trying that first - or search this website. Another option would be to get the book Smart Soapmaking by Anne Watson. She has some basic recipes where all ingredients can be purchased right in your grocery store, and they are good starting points. The Kindle edition is only a few dollars!
 
Those look amazing! What did you do to get them to shine?

Thanks! I used a pretty good amount of hard oil in the batter and polished them up with microfiber cloth when they were hard enough. I was pretty surprised myself at how shiny they got, now I'm gonna be running around polishing all of my soap. o_O
 
Hallo sisters and brothers :) I finally got the courage to make TAR soap. I got Pine Tar and did 10% PT soap. My plan was to make CP soap but I started soaping at about 135 F and ... it became HP soap. My soap almost started boiling but finally I managed to mix it and put it the mold. And ... voala:

It smells really strong. I added some Tea tree, Rosemary, Lemongrass. On the next day it was so hard.
 

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