My first soaping video!

On our last soaping day (and last holiday soaping day /sadface) we made videos of each of the three batches. Knowing that we were shooting video made me oddly nervous, and we both admitted to each other after it was all over that soaping wasn't as fun because of it. My honey said it made him feel left out when he wanted to help with the soaping. Aww. :( Haha, I know while the camera was rolling it felt like everything was going wrong from trace to colors, and I just knew all of the soaps were going to turn out horribly. But they didn't. Maybe other soap video makers can clue me in: Do you feel nervous each time you film a soap batch? Do you ever feel like you have to do things differently for the benefit of the camera? If you ever felt like that, did it get easier with time to just be yourself or any "game time" tips? 

....So who knows if we'll do any more, guess we'll see what kind of feedback we get.

Some things to note about this video:

• It's really long.
• I talk a lot. About everything. And then some. (Who would've guessed, for all the rambling I do here...)
• We are bad at editting.
• I said I was pouring over my spatula to prevent lye bubbles, but I meant air bubbles. (And it took me watching the video at least a dozen times to catch that....)

The soap I made in this video is fragranced with Santa's Spruce from BB, but I think I'm going to call it Sugar(ed?) Spruce. 

Here it is cut:

It gelled to a very very hard soap, and was almost difficult to cut, as you can see from the small jagged-type markings on the face of the bar. I still love this scent, it's very nice with just the right amount of sweet and evergreen. 

And just for funsies, here's a sneak peek at the soap made in the next video we are working on editting. ;)

Ooh, what could it be??

Thanks for taking the time to watch my super long video, I hope you all like it. I would love to get any advice or tips, likes or dislikes from you all, so feel free to comment here or on the video. 

Felted soap

I've tried felting some of my soaps two or three times in the past with less than stellar results. I'm not sure what the problem was then, maybe it was the type of roving I bought. I did a good bit of research, but it could still have been general cluelessness!

A recent blog post from Amanda at Lovin Soap (and a part of Bramble Berry's Givember too!) inspired me to finally try felting again, and I'm glad I did. It worked out a lot better for me this time. I bought some beautiful wool and handspun yarn from a nice lady at a craft market a few weeks ago. I remember specifically thinking that because she also was selling felted soaps, that her wool "definitely must work!" Hehe.

I made these a little over a week ago using some bars I'd made in single-cavity molds a few months back to test out fragrances, and also a couple of lemongrass soaps that were a bit rough around the edges. The two oval bars are Frankincense & Myrrh (BB) and Bella from Majestic Mountain Sage's Twilight-inspired collection.

The only difference in the way I felted was for my final stage (the rubbing part), I put the soap inside a knee-length panty hose, which really helped to tighten it all up and keep it together through all the rubbing action. 

When I went to Lovin Soap to grab a link for this post, I also noticed Amanda posted a second felted soap tutorial (using panty hose) but with added needle-felted designs. (I don't think I am quite ready for that yet!) You can check that out here.

I haven't tried these out in the shower yet, but I promise I'll let you all know if they fall to pieces! 

Soap cutter

Forgot to mention my newly acquired wooden multi-bar soap cutter, and to give credit for it's beautiful craftsmanship to Mr. Bud Haffner. I got my amazing new cutter from his Etsy shop, and it is truly a work of art. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around how to put something like this together, and I absolutely love mine. I'm thrilled I have finally found a soap cutting tool I am 100% happy with, after going through numerous knives, crinklers and cheese slicers.

My main reason for choosing Mr. Haffner's cutter over other suppliers was the bar size. I like thick, hefty bars of soap, and the model I purchased slices into a generous one and a quarter inch thickness. And you can't beat his prices! As for shipping, I ordered my cutter on a Sunday afternoon and received it the following Friday.

It might seem silly of me to say that the cutter is a big time-saver for me since I am not really a mass production type soapmaker, but it certainly does leave me time for other things. :)

I've used the cutter on five different loaves now (my apologies I wasn't able to get any good photos), three were 100% cold processed and two a mixture of cold process and melt and pour soap. Of course it cut all of the cp loaves beautifully. Of the CP/MP loaves, I gelled one and fridged the other. It would not cut through the MP portions of the fridged loaf, but cut the gelled loaf just fine. Not sure if this was a design issue, as most of the MP in the fridged loaf had all sunk to the bottom.

If you are looking to upgrade to a multi-bar cutter, I highly recommend these handcrafted beauties. 

photo from Bud Haffner on Etsy

Trying new liquids

Last week we tried out some new liquids in our soaps. That is, we used liquids other than just water (or my only other deviation--goat's milk) for the lye mixture in a few batches of soaps. We learned a lot both by doing and in-the-moment OMG!! internet research, and now I'm not sure if I can ever go back to soaping with just plain ol' water again! 

Our first alternative liquid was an alcohol, frozen first of course. My favorite for several years now has been hard apple cider, and we recently picked up a new brand we'd never tried before called Angry Orchard. The packaging was really "gnarly" and fun, and the bottles were a bit bigger than the brand I usually buy. And it was yummy, so we soaped it. :) 

The fragrance we used was a mixture of cedarwood, apples and spices to mimic a non body safe Cider Barrel fragrance. It smells like sweet cider soaking into an aged wooden barrel, mmmm. Not sure if it was the fragrance or the alcohol, but this soaped moved pretty quickly and we ended up with some air pockets sadly.

Next up, we made a 100% heavy cream lye solution. We were a little freaked out by how the lye/cream mixture actually started to saponify as we mixed it, getting very thick like accelerated soap batter. But a hastey internet search told us that this was normal since the heavy cream is actually so fatty. It ended up stick blending in quite smoothly. I expected this soap to trace really quickly, but it actually didn't. After a good bit of stick blending the batter was still fairly thin and creamy. However, when we added the fragrance--holy moly, did I have to start moving fast! The fragrance was Woodland Elves from Bramble Berry, and I'd heard mixed reviews from other soapers about the way it behaved in cold process. I can tell you from my experience, that it was a real mover!! It's a really strong fragrance too, so I think I could've gotten by with a little less than my usual half an ounce per pound of oils. I also wasn't able to pick up on the fruit and floral notes in this FO so much. I mainly just smell evergreen, but it could just be my sniffer! Still a nice choice for an evergreen scent I think.

I made up an unscented batch of soap using a spoon swirl technique
in Christmas colors a few weeks ago for these tree cut outs, soap balls,
curls and a few bars left over for shredding but wasn't quite sure what I
wanted to do with it all.....

....but kudos to Heather from Winberg Bathworks for the design idea!

After heavy cream came coconut water. My honey loves all things coconut (the coconut milk shampoo bars I made months ago are still his favorite of all soaps), so he was pretty excited. Like the heavy cream, we froze the coconut water first because of it's sugar content, and still got a slightly yellow final lye mixture. This didn't affect the color of the soap batter at all though, and I had no problems with acceleration. My honey wanted to use a tropical sort of fragrance because of the coconut water, but I picked Frosted Cranberry from WSP instead. I fell in love with it when a soap forum friend sent me a sample piece a while back and just had to buy my own bottle. :) It really is a beautiful, beautiful fragrance in soap! The website shows it having a 1.00% vanillin content, but almost two weeks into cure I haven't noticed any discoloration in the soap at all.

I topped this soap with Opalescent Bourdeaux mica from BB.
It's always been one of my favorite micas.

And last but not certainly not least, I soaped what I think might just be my new favorite fragrance using the usual water lye mixture, but with a little frozen heavy cream and a tempered egg yolk added in to the warm oils before adding in the lye mixture. I am really excited to try this one out soon! Such a nice and creamy texture, I think I may be addicted to egg and cream in soap now. I bought this new favorite fragrance Spicy Apples & Peaches from Rustic Escentuals after reading about it on a couple of fantastic soaping blogs recently, and boy was I not let down! I am head over heels in love with this one y'all!! Mmmmm. I did an ITP swirl for this soap using four different colors: natural soap, orange oxide, burgundy pigment and gold mica. I'll admit I probably overcolored with the gold because I really wanted it to stick and shimmer, and that it did! I was very pleased. Even though the soap got a really good gel, the tops still ended up a little ashy (probably because I peeked while it was abed!), so I steamed the bars this morning to help get rid of some of it. 

Squee, gold!!

It actually kinda looks a little spicy, don't you think?

I think I am happier with this ITP swirl than any I've done before.

What's your favorite "alternative liquids" to soap with and why? I'd love to try them out, so do share!!

Thanks for reading.... now I am off to stick my nose on some spicey soap!