Lemongrass Lavender Coconut

My father-in-law made me a new mold!  Now how do I line it =\  One of my mailing lists recommended craft foam, so I may give it a try.

 

Yesterday I made a new soap using Celene's swirling and texturing messages.  This is Lemongrass Lavender Coconut.  I need to find a creating naming formula!

 

 

 

 

Rebatching Photos

I wasn't thrilled with the Spiced Chestnut & Pear soap that I made earlier this month, so I rebatched it.  My husband asked me to let him try adding more liquid than I was, to see if we could get it pourable, so I let him.  Apparently I'm just too cautious on some things, because it worked out well.

 

 

Shreds added to crockpot with a dusting of dry milk and 1/4 cup of aloe vera juice, then we added more juice as needed.

 

 

 

This was as pourable as we could get it.

 

 

 

Now husband and I want nachos...

Finally figuring it out ~ Chai Tea Soap

I have watched just about every swirling video put out by The Soaperstar and I think I might finally be getting the hang of it!  I made this on Friday:

 

Wet:

 

 

Cut:

 

 

Closeup:

 

 

This is a Chai Tea scented soap with FO from Rustic Escentuals.  I found a local distributor of oxides and glitter - so happy!

 

 

 

Coffeehouse

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving here in the States!  I tried a new swirl technique that I saw on Youtube for a coffeehouse scented soap - my husband's coworker asked if I could make one.  Not that he's paying, mind, but it gave me an excuse to order some new fragrance oil.

 

Wet soap:

 

 

I used a light tan base, then swirled near-white and darker brown on the top.  It was still a little squat, like the chestnut/pear soap from last week.  Need to work on my volume!

 

 

Smells nice and coffeelike, though!

 

 

 

Spiced Chestnut & Pear

Here's the soap wet in the mold:

 

 

And when cut:

 

 

It's a little squat for my taste.  This is the result of my not taking notes .. I can't remember which was the successful formula, i.e. # of ounces, that filled my log mold.  Back to the drawing board, and taking notes this time!  But this soap smells really good.

 

I took this up to one of my client sites last week:

 

 

 

Gave it all away!  The soap went over very well.  Even got a paid order for 3 green tea bars out of it.  Huzzah!

 

 

Cut Pics - White Shoulders 2.0

 

I'm very happy with the swirl!  This is much more along the lines of what I was thinking of for White Shoulders.  I do need to clean up the bars but they're still very soft.  I'm not sure why - Soapcalc listed my recipe as falling within the recommended range for hardness.  I imagine they will firm up while curing.

White Shoulders v. 2.0

Here's what the final version of that first attempt at White Shoulders soap looks like.  As you can see, it turned very dark brown.

 

 

However, in the shower, it's WONDERFUL!  It has so much slip and it smells very nice.  It was outstanding for shaving. It smells too much like my mother-in-law for my husband to be 100% comfortable using it himself, but you know.  Men.

 

As I said in my last post, I wanted to try again, so I bought more White Shoulders FO from Bitter Creek and just tried it again, this time attempting a pink and blue and white peacock swirl:

 

 

Now, I bought the Neon Blue Gel Colorant and Neon Pink Gel Colorant for this soap.  I used perhaps 10 drops in each bottle of raw soap (about 8 oz of soap per bottle).  As you can see, the colors are pretty faint.  I would have had to use the entire bottle of each to get a really bright hue.  Should have used more, but my recent mistakes make me very cautious when trying new products.  We'll see if the color fades out or stays in the swirl.  Will post cut pics soon!

New cut pics - swirl attempts

Here's the cut pic for my Gunpowder "Manly Man" soap that I tried to make for my husband but that traced and thickened too quickly to try a peacock swirl on:

 

 

And here's a more marbled soap that I made with Coconut Cream and Curry FO's from Save On Scents:

 

 

I've decided to try to redo the White Shoulders bars for my MIL's Christmas present because they have seriously darkened to a very dark brown.  Serviceable, but not very pretty.  Will hopefully be doing that this weekend; just waiting on some more FO.

 

 

New peacock swirl effort

 

The actual goal was to swirl purple, blue, and brick red with some "Gunpowder" FO from Save on Scents.  Unfortunately, it traced super fast - I don't know if it was the FO or my recipe (I'm still searching for the perfect one, am narrowing it down).  So I had to glop + pray.

 

So this one is a whitish base with purple swirled lightly in it, with this peacock swirled blue top.  Will post the cut pics soon!

In Which I Make A Mess

Note to self when using Brambleberry's column soap mold - make darn sure the cap is on before thumping it on the table to get the soap to settle.  Behold:

 

 

 

Eh, oops.  I was very glad that I put down a vinyl tablecloth and THEN a textured mat to catch spills.

 

This was Snickerdoodle soap in the column mold.  I tried to make it one uncolored plus one brown color swirled, but the uncolored part turned yellow on me.

 

 

Not a fan of the sickly yellow color.  Thankfully, because I'd added a titch of Vaniglia de Madagascar (Vanilla) FO to the uncolored part, it turned it brown.  So the soap is currently a nice solid darn cinnamon-y brown.  Very nice!