Rebatching

Sometime last week I decided to do some color and fragrance testing in a basic batch of cold process soap. I think I was trying to convince myself that I didn't need to buy new colors, that the ones I already have would work just fine!....but first let me prove it to myself.... It didn't really work. I ordered more. They are supposed to be "the most reliable and easy to use soap colorants on the market." Damn well better be for the price..... We'll see when they get here.

Colorants in cups, patiently waiting for soap batter!

I tried out a fragrance I hadn't used in soaping before then too, Sweetgrass. It's a very fresh, sweet, herbally sort of scent. It was lovely and held strong. But I admittedly just kind of slung all the colored soaps into molds without caring what they looked like when they came out, and they were pretty unshapely. I really had this grand plan to make them into curls with a vegetable peeler. Or at least practice the method....and practice was as far as I got. So I decided to shred em up and melt em back down because I really liked the fragrance. I worked on some melt and pour projects while the shreds were cooking down. My kitchen smelled good!

Even though the soap was still pretty fresh and soft, I did end up adding a little distilled water and aloe vera liquid to keep it from drying out or scorching. Here is the rainbow of soap shreds in the crock pot before it all started to melt.

I figured with my luck it would end up some pukey greenish brownish disaster. In the end though, the pinks and reds won through for a presentable sort of burgundy. I slopped it into some single cavity molds. We'll see how they turn out tomorrow when I get home from work.

This type of soapy look is often referred to as "hand-milled." If you are interested in trying soaping but maybe scared of working with lye or don't care to buy all the different oils, you can actually buy bags of pre-shredded soaps fairly cheap online, to melt down like this, or in the oven or a double boiler. Most bar soaps you buy at Wal-Mart etc won't work for this because they contain a lot of detergents and chemicals. Or I'd be happy to hand over a bag-full the next time I make a royal mess of a batch of soap. :)


Thanks for reading!

Fluffy body butter!

Oh man, my hands smell good!


Just finished my first attempt at a batch of whipped shea butter. I found some great starter recipes for non-soapy body products on a site I often refer to for soaping ideas, and printed them out a few days ago. Seeing as how I am running awful low on pomace olive oil, and the huge jug I ordered won't be here until probably sometime next week (not to mention I don't want to pay outrageous grocery store prices for EVOO that will give my soap way too dark of a color).... I decided to take a break from soap, and work on a few more things I want to have done before my next sale May 11. So I went with the whipped shea butter recipe. If that sounds foreign to you, just think of it as a fluffy and light lotion, but heavy on the moisturizing!

I doubled the size of the recipe listed, using 1 cup of shea butter, 2/3 cup oil, etc. I'd gotten my shea butter to a really nice creamy texture and was just about to start adding the olive oil I'd infused with calendula petals earlier today, when my hero the UPS guy arrived with two boxes of sample sized fragrance oils from one of my favorite suppliers. Squee! After sniff sniff sniff sniffing through all the bottles, I decided to save the infused olive oil for another all-natural project, and measured up some sweet almond oil instead to make this batch with a delicious smelling Cotton Candy fragrance.

Glad my mom decided to start making cupcakes and bought this....

It took a while, slowly adding in the oil, to get it to the perfect fluffy consistency. But it was worth it. I should've had the forethought to turn the A/C on though, because the mixture got pretty warm and soft (or maybe that is normal?) We've had such nice weather here this week, that I've been opening windows and just running the ceiling fan. Besides that my kitty cat doesn't complain so much when he gets to lay in the open window. After coloring and fragrancing, I put the bowl down into another bowl filled with ice for a while before finally spooning it into my favorite 4 oz jars. In retrospect I think I should've chilled it a bit longer, and maybe I wouldn't have made such a mess filling the jars. Next time!

For now, I have the jars resting in the same bowl of ice. I'm sure they will stiffen up a bit with time. This will definitely be a product you'll want to keep in a cool place, if not the fridge. They smell amazing and came out the perfect shade of cotton candy blue. Yummy!

UPDATE: I couldn't resist diving back into another batch of this amazing whipped shea butter, and of course this time I mixed with the A/C blasting and chilled the mixture over ice for a bit before filling containers. Was able to stretch it to five 3oz (by weight) jars versus the four from the first batch. Same amount of ingredients. Could be that I just whipped it longer, but I don't think I did.  Here is the brightly fragranced Tropical Blast (sweet and refreshing blend of tropical fruits) whipped shea butter, in a light orange that the iphone camera didn't quite capture.

Some of the fragrances I got in the mail today were pretty great, and I'm really excited to use them in some glycerin soaps, bath fizzies and sugar scrubs, if not more hot process soap batches before the sale. Here's a few that I particularly liked, let me know if you see a favorite! I can make anything in any scent by request. :)

Banana Pudding (I'll be using this in some foaming sugar scrubs!)
Bay Rum (mmm, manly!)
Hot Pink Pomegranate
Chamomile
Warm Vanilla Sugar
Apple Butter Caramel
Monkey Farts (sweet banana)


Thanks for reading!

Charcoal soap, and getting rid of ashy soap tops

Everyone raves about those charcoal soaps! But what exactly is this charcoal, and why is this soap so great?

Activated charcoal is derived from bamboo, and also known as bamboo powder. It is harvested and "carbonized" at extremely hot temperatures to increase it's surface area, and therefore it's absorption capabilities, allowing the charcoal molecules to absorb large amounts of impurities (dirt, toxins, oils) that clog pores. Oh, and odors. Woohoo. The charcoal also has antiseptic properties that can help to heal wounds (aka ZITS), and is used for everything from industrial water filtration to medicinal supplements. Sounds pretty awesome, huh? Oh yeah, and it's a terrific, all-natural and reliable soap colorant. :)

Fun fact: it is said that one teaspoon of activated charcoal has the surface area of 10,000 square feet! Holy moly, my 2 pound batch of soap has two teaspoons of this black goodness mixed in.....20,000 square feet!! That's a lot of soap....

I love crock pot soaping!

I pour over soapmaking forums and blogs and youtube videos pretty much every day, trying to soak up information, tips and tricks. I've learned from making mistakes, that a little research beforehand pays off in the end. I hate wasting supplies!

Anyway, I've read a lot about hot process soaping. I say read, at first it was more like looking at pictures and moving on, because I just wasn't crazy about the clumpy, rustic look some HP soaps tend to have. (Hot process soapmaking is basically cooking a mixed cold process (lye) soap batch, like the one illustrated through pictures in my previous post here, into a full gelled state and to a safe ph before putting it into a mold.)

But a few weeks ago, I brought a book to work one morning hoping for a slow day. I got one thankfully. The book was "The Everything Soapmaking Book" by ____. (My mom apparently ninja purchased it who-knows-when, and I happened to spy it shoved in a pile under an endtable.) I never buy these kinds of books because, well....the internet is free knowledge. (If you don't count that bill we get in the mail from Suddenlink every month....) Granted, there were no pretty color pictures for me to oogle aimlessly, so I ended up actually reading most of the book throughout the day, flipping from section to section as they interested me. Finally I came to the Hot Process chapter. I wasn't doing anything else but keeping my desk chair warm, so I might as well read it. Oh, well this looks easy! I must know more!!!