Soaping again - disaster looms!

Morning all,

I'm in a couple of soap swaps - I got back into the soaping mood a month or so ago and a couple of swaps were just starting so of course I stuck my hand up and said I'd join in - even though I need more soap at the moment like a hole in the head. I still have over a year's supply of soap!

anyway - I joined two swaps one was a fruit and veg which I made up a few weeks ago and posted about here. The other was the Christmas swap ....

This morning while unpacking some of my soaping supply stuff and finding homes for it all (yes I know I moved house 8 weeks ago - I'm still unpacking OK!) I found these moulds which I had forgotten I had bought.

I pulled out some forgotten melt and pour and melted it and added some gold glitter and then using a paintbrush tried to fill in the bell clappers. Didn't work, the M&P just clogged up the brushes and didn't transfer into the mould. So I got a bright idea and grabbed my supply of pipettes and I slowly used a pipette to suck up the liquid M&P and transfer it into the moulds. This worked relatively well - made a heap of mess and I needed to use 6 different pipettes before I I had finished. Oh well.

I poured the left over gold speckled M&P into star-shaped ice cube trays.

Then I washed everything up and started again, melting some more M&P and adding red glitter for the bow - I decided the gold glitter hadn't given enough oomph so I added some red colourant with the red glitter. I then Used the pipette system to fill in the bows. Maybe because I had a better idea of what I was doing or maybe the colourant changed the consistency, I don't know - but that facet passed by easily - using only one pipette and a few minutes!

I poured the rest of the red coloured M&P into heart-shaped ice cube trays.

After both of these had hardened in the moulds, I got a clean brush and
using my fingernails and the brush I broke away and cleaned up all of
the spilled areas where the M&P had dripped or run into the areas
of the mould I didn't want it to.

I then washed everything up and made a half batch of real soap - the recipe was the same one I had been using recently of equal parts coconut oil, lard, macadamia nut oil and rice bran oil - with the correct amount of lye and almost the full amount of water.

I decided to scent this soap with a Dragonsblood fragrance blend. The particular one I have does discolour soap to a tan shade, so I thought I would add the scent to this batch, colour it green and simply fill in the rest of the raised areas - the bells.

Well I melted the oils, prepared the lye, mixed the two together, added the colourant Chromium green oxide, (that's the colour name - it doesn't contain Chromium!) and started blending. I didn't measure the colourant powder - I simply tipped some in - instead of pastel green - it had gone a lurid shade of teal. Oh well. Mixed it until a light trace - pouring custard in consistency and then I tried to pour it into the right parts of the moulds.

Part way through pouring I realised I had forgotten to add the scent! Oh well.

I had some left over soap so I added a bit of the scent, mixed it again, and then poured that into some heart shaped moulds I had. I then popped the red M&P hearts out of the ice-cube trays and pushed one of these into the centres of the green fresh soap hearts.

Now fresh soap does still contain a bit of lye - so it is quite caustic and not good for you. That's why they always tell you to wear gloves while soaping.

I went back to my fancy bell creations, and using a tissue in my bare hands I wiped out the moulds and excess soap so the green just sat inside the bells like I wanted it to.

Then I washed everything up all over again and made a second half batch of the soap. This was going to remain uncoloured so it would be an ivory colour and that would be the plinth the bells would sit on - ie the rest of the soap bar. Well it was supposed to be ivory - I had forgotten to add the Dragonsblood to the green batch so I would need to add it to this batch so the plinth was going to be tan instead of ivory. Oh well.

I started pouring my oils in together and realised that I didn't have enough macadamia nut oil - so I dragged out my apricot oil instead and used that to top up the mac nut oil portion of my recipe. While the oils were melting I went online and sent this new mix of oils through a lye calculator, adjusted my lye amounts accordingly and added the lye and water together. This was to be the simplest of everything I had done today - just make the soap, add the scent and pour it into the moulds until they are full. Simple!

I mixed the oils and lye solution and started blending - it immediately traced into chunky custard! I don;t know why? Maybe it was a touch hotter than last batch,maybe it was the apricot oil I don't know. I put down the stick blender and grabbed a wooden spoon and beat the lumpy mess into submission and then added the scent. I then glopped the mix into the moulds. This was incredibly frustrating - because it had all the physical characteristics of cold lumpy custard. As I glopped it in, the glop would just sit there. I eventually gave up and using my bare hands I squished the damn things into the moulds. I moved some over loaded ones to lesser crowded ones and by the end I had done some repetitive swearing and I had just enough of the mix to three-quarter fill all 15 moulds. I figured that was good enough. I immediately covered them with cling wrap - then put them all under some towels for insulation and washed my hands - thoroughly!

Soaping usually takes me 20 minutes if I'm all set up - up to an hour if I'm not. This little burst of creativity took me four hours! I've repeatedly washed my hands and I'll have to moisturise them regularly over the next week or so and I've had a spot of lunch while I've typed up this missive.

Now its after 3:30pm, I've not done much else today (besides ordering some Piecemaker needles and some ThreadHeaven) and I still have to wash up and clean up after that last part of the soap making.

The things I do when I let my creativity get in the way of my better judgement. Now I just hope that when I release these soaps out of the moulds in 2 days time, that they actually come out in one piece - and that the layers do not separate ..... I'll post pics if they *do* turn out OK :)

Tired now! Off to clean up, moisturise and then I might do some stitching - or the cleaning I was planning on doing - not sure which .... need chocolate to fortify myself first.


Green soap recipe:
125 gm Coconut Oil

125 gm Lard
125 gm Macadamia nut oil
125 gm Rice Bran Oil

70 gm lye

140 ml water
Chromium oxide green colourant powder

Base soap recipe:
83 gms Apricot Kernel oil
120 gm Coconut Oil
122 gm Lard
45 gm Macadamia nut oil
130 gm Rice Bran Oil
68gm lye
130 ml water


2% Brambleberry Dragonsblood Fragrance oil