What soapy thing have you done today?

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Wow. Major soaping thang today! I met @GemstonePony in real life, wicky wicky what?! In a strip mall parking lot, like an exchange on the down low, LOL. She's destashing and I got a ton o' goodies! I feel like a little kid on Christmas morning! Can't wait to start experimenting with new essential oils, raspberry seed oil, mango butter, aloe vera something, and all kinds of stuff! I am fresh out of rosemary EO and now I have it to make my fave recipe. Bless you, @GemstonePony and best wishes on your transitions!
 
Had started new batches of some soft oils, and they misbehaved (instant thick trace after a mere second of SBing, I'm hearing you @AliOop 😐). I wanted to get to the bottom of it, to better know which of the oils is troublesome before making my next full-size batch.
So I started a somewhat systematic trace/saponification speed test: EDIT I just realised that it is appropriate to start a new thread for this:
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/tracing-saponification-speed-test.84685/
 
I made face bars with triple butters, triple milks and basically every additive I could throw in! The pink ones are rice milk and vegan. Essential oil blends, smells so good! My whole house smells like them! .
 

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Mum has just gone home, we did some great making during the week and finished up with some soaps yesterday. First lard recipe for me, so I'm very curious to see how it comes out!
Mum picked the colours (mix of red, purple, and activated charcoal), the fragrance (dragon heart) and the confetti (black and white).
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I was hoping the lard recipe would give plenty of working time, but it was hard to tell if it actually did, because I was doing a lot of talking and explaining while making it. It was getting fairly thick by the time we got it in the moulds.
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Omg I’m actually making soap today. I’ve had these batches prepped for a MONTH! I’ve been taking some time off, and also deep in a bath bomb rabbit hole. Last night I dreamed I was at my farmers market booth and I was almost out of soap. My client cancelled today, which sucks because money. But, I’m free to make soap! Yay!
 

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I had a great week, worried about my first mulled wine but it’s okay, scented with orange peel, cedar/lavender, cinnamon and clove. Added red clay and yellow dock infused oil hoping it will stay red.
Pumpkin spice latte hp with pumpkin spice, coffee grounds and instant coffee and vanilla extract for swirl.
Mojito muddle because I didn’t have enough to fill 2 molds so quickly made another sm batch to put on top (should’ve swirled first😬) scented with peppermint, spearmint and lime eo and made with coconut milk for white and colored with indigo and green clay with barley grass powder.
Last is my hp sunset(?) red clay and indigo. Thought the two mixed would be purpley but not☺️. Scented with a citrus blend and lavender.
 

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Made a very complicated batch of soap today for the July challenge. It took half the day assembling and mixing and waiting and waiting, then more mixing and waiting and mixing and weighing and maths. By the time I was finished it was time to take my daughter to work. Yikes!

I’m yet again waiting to hear back about a job. Good grief. This one is extremely promising and the people I’ve interviewed with have been fabulous. The last job offer I got (and turned down) told me more about the company and culture than I probably wanted to know. Monthly drug test…WHAT!?!?

Anyway, this job, if I get it, would offer me loads of geeky science stuff to be on the periphery of, including forensic stuff. If I don’t get it, ugh. The last conversation ended with “We’d love to have you come to the office to meet with the rest of the team.” Seems like a good sign, right?

I’d like to be at a place where making soap isn’t the highlight of my day but rather a cherry on the top of my week.
 
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Finally pulled myself out of the rut I was in. Last night I had a dream that I was at the farmers market and didn’t have hardly any soap! 😆 My subconscious trying to tell me something?
Got my new bath bomb molds and my air brush. Now to try and learn how to use them.
I feel like I’m back in the saddle!
Yeehaw!
 

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Oh my goodness. Hello there! New plates, who disc?! The red one was a good co sister you for how fine the detail was. But for the fat design of the blue one, I would’ve gotten more detail if batter was thicker. Both FOs seemed to actually decelerate! Somali Soul and Satsuma by NS.
 

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My soapy thing today was, wait for it, making soap! I made my very favorite I call Spring Clean. Thanks to @GemstonePony's generosity, I got rosemary essential oil and combined it with lemongrass and cedarwood. I just love it. I did a TD/uncolored mix. Everything went perfect and I'm proud of my emulsion and not doing just one more stick blend. Everything's tucked in and cozy and gellin'.

@TashaBird, you just keep topping yourself! How do you stand it?! They are so psychedelic -- you would have made a killing at Woodstock.
 
My soapy thing today was, wait for it, making soap! I made my very favorite I call Spring Clean. Thanks to @GemstonePony's generosity, I got rosemary essential oil and combined it with lemongrass and cedarwood. I just love it. I did a TD/uncolored mix. Everything went perfect and I'm proud of my emulsion and not doing just one more stick blend. Everything's tucked in and cozy and gellin'.

@TashaBird, you just keep topping yourself! How do you stand it?! They are so psychedelic -- you would have made a killing at Woodstock.
That orange/red one makes me feel like my eyes are out of focus. 😳
 
I received in the mail the gift that I got to choose for five years of loyal service to my employer. I chose a Kitchen Aid scale. The small platform can measure to hundredths of a gram! My old one can only go to whole grams. I’m pretty excited.

The last conversation ended with “We’d love to have you come to the office to meet with the rest of the team.” Seems like a good sign, right?
Good luck to you! I’m in the job interview process as well. It’s so nerve-wracking!
 

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Finally finished putting this thing together! After a couple tries I got the drawers moving smoothly. Now just need to maybe add cloth to extent to keep dust and stuff out. I’m pretty happy with it. I’m going to make a couple more shelves too I think. I really like the T&S soap bars and they fit well in the drying racks as do my 3” rounds. So I think 2 more racks will be plenty.
I can now reclaim my desk, table and linen closet…
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Did you make this from scratch? If so, totally awesome - coming from someone with NO skills in that area! I'm very impressed!
 
Did you make this from scratch? If so, totally awesome - coming from someone with NO skills in that area! I'm very impressed!
Honestly I’m pretty impressed with myself as well! Lol! I pondered this project for quite a while and just decided to go for it! Only had to take it apart twice… but may need to level some shelf supports at the top that are crooked.
I’m done making soap for a bit… 5 small batches over the past week and only 1 was completely successful to the end! I keep trying to test my square column mold to see if it leaks & either my FO accelerates or someone turned the AC down two degrees colder than normal and it accelerates or after the perfect pour I go to pull my plate out and it break off the rod half way up. So I poured it back into my big container and then re-poured it into a round column mold and hide it in the garage so I don’t have to look at it!
I think tomorrow after work I’m going to just make some shampoo bars cause we’re running low and then pull out my sewing machine and finish up some projects there and put away my soap stuff for a while.
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I made CP 100% lard soap yesterday for my dry skin pals this winter. I like them better when they've cured a long time. I added citric acid, sugar, and goat's milk hoping to make it bubblier. I gelled a loaf and poured the remainder into bar molds- the individual mold ones are so white! The loaf mold bars are cream colored. Hard as a brick in less than 24 hours!
 
I don’t normally make soap on Sundays. Today, I did. We went to a comic book convention yesterday in Los Angeles and waited in line for three hours (!!!!!!!) so that my hubby could finally meet his comic book idol. Just standing there for three hours tuckered us out. That’s on top of the three prior hours of walking around and looking at stuff. With our masks on to boot.

Normally we wake up early on Sundays and take the dogs for a walk on the beach then grab breakfast. We woke up this morning and decided the effort to drive to the beach was itself even too much for our bodies. Guess we’re not used to being out in society for that long. 😂🤦‍♀️

Finally settled on a design for EBB’s Patchouli Honey FO. Decided to use half the batch uncolored to take advantage of the FO discoloration. Then added a little td to the rest then split that off with green and purple, leaving the rest just with the td. Cross your fingers it doesn’t look gross.
But is smells sooooooo divine! The green morphs from a gross green to a nice light green color. The purple looks gross right now but that morphs as well.
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I unmolded my soap and so very happy about it. I'm not bragging -- my angsty anxious self is just relieved! Ghosting action
The photographs aren't the best. Sheesh, between my inventory guy and my photography guy, Imabout to lose it already!

For my soapy week I've got to kick in to labeling mode, big time! Later this week we are having our regular reunion with good good friends. I'll give four couples my gardeners soap, my pink/black alternating wall pour, and green/white AWP. Also, each will get my only four surviving soaps from the recent Taiwan Swirl monthly challenge (the cutting was beyond me -- a 10" loaf yielded 4 bars, yes that's 4, don't judge me, being vulnerable here, with the swirling action.)
 
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Yesterday I ordered some castor oil from WSP as that was on sale. Also some fall and winter fragrances that were on sale, cause who can resist that. This morning I saw that ALL fragrance oils are on sale! I was out of some of my favorites- eucalyptus mint, fresh bamboo, etc. I was able to add onto my existing order, so saved the handling fee. So I got $100 of stuff I really needed, and $100 of stuff that I didn't but wanted anyway. Now I gotta go make soap to make room for more fragrance oil bottles...
 
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