Teach Soap

It all started out with hope and good intentions. I was trying out a new soap recipe and my plan was to make a batch of soap that would be bluish in color, scented with blueberry, and it would have a little blueberry seeds thrown in for texture. I had never made a soap like this, and had never used a blueberry fragrance before. The first sign of trouble came when I realized I didn't have enough blueberry fragrance for the size of the batch I was making.

I planned on using Bramble Berry's Blueberry Delight fragrance but there wasn't quite enough. So I measured out some Bramble Berry Summer Fling so I could make the fragrance amounts come out correctly. After all, I could name the soap "Blueberry Fling" and who would be the wiser.

So I poured in both fragrances and my blue soap promptly turned green. . . a very weird, unnattractive green. So I added more blue colorant (Hyacinth High pH from Bramble Berry) but that just turned the soap an even weirder shade of green. Bramble Berry's web site said the Blueberry Delight fragrance would discolor soap but I was thinking they meant it would discolor a bit brown or something; not this neon grasshopper shade of green that I was looking at in my mixing cup. Maybe that had something to do with using two fragrances (?).

I decided to cut my losses and not add the blueberry seeds since this obviously was not going to turn out like the picture in my head. I dumped the soap mixture into a silicone loaf mold while trying to think of a new name for this soap that smelled good but looked horrendous.

I was mourning the loss of my cute and appealing blueberry soap while I began cleaning up the mess in my kitchen. Then I started making notes in my soap recipe book when I felt my heart sink. Oh s@*#! I had mismeasured my lye and this batch of soap was lye heavy!

I immediately got on Teach Soap and posted to see if anyone knew if it was possible to save a batch of fresh, lye-heavy soap. It was suggested that I MIGHT be able to salvage it if I added more oils to it. So I scooped the ugly soap out of the mold and added the extra oils to it.

If I thought it was ugly before . . . that was nothing compared to now - it was so thick and gloppy that I had trouble stirring it and my arm actually got sore. I ended up tearing a hole in my old, heavy duty blue soaping gloves - still not sure how that happened. I added distilled water in an effort to thin it down enough to stir. It was the thickest, ugliest, sticky mess you ever saw, but I finally got it mixed and glopped it into the mold. I put it in the oven to gel, and got back on Teach Soap, only to find out that adding water was a no-no and that, although this soap MIGHT be saved, it would not be something I could sell.

So this batch of soap has been through the wringer and so have I. I opened up the oven this morning and pulled out the soap for slicing. It was no longer a neon green. That was good. But now it was an ugly gray. Not good. It was also still a soft, sticky mess. Just for the learning experience, I'm going to go ahead and let the soap cure and see what happens to it.

I went to get my camera and take a pic of the soap to share with my Teach Soap friends. When I walked back into the kitchen, it struck me that my soap looked exactly the color of wet beach sand. If only I hadn't put too much lye in it, and if I had used some kind of summery, beachy fragrance, it might not have been a total loss. I could have given it a sandy, beachy name and it might have been a good-selling soap. If only.

So I'm trying not to think of the wasted soap, oils, and fragrance this morning. I'm trying to think positively - I've learned how to make soap that looks exactly like wet sand . . . in case there is ever a worldwide demand for such a thing.


by , on Flickr


by , on Flickr

Don't beat yourself up over this! Sounds like my first 3 months of self-learning. No local mentors, etc. Oh, the dreams I had, and the weird concoctions I came up with. The advice on this forum is so good--keep notes, keep notes, and keep more notes. I live by this saying: "The more you learn, the less you know."

Wow-you really had a time with this batch. It looks almost blue in the pictures. If it were my soap, I'd rebatch about half of it and add more blue color to see what would happen. But then again, I like to rebatch. (I can hear supersoaper, aka Idiom Man, saying that "I'm a few bricks shy of a load" for enjoying rebatching!)

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

That is good advice, Sandy!

And, ljm1180, in real life this poor, overworked soap doesn't have any blue in it , it's very gray. My pics may make it look bluish on your end but, unfortunately, it's not. I could try to rebatch it just to get that experience under my belt, but I'm wondering what color it would turn out in its next incarnation, LOL! I don't think there's any attractive place to go when you are starting out with gray soap.

The irony is, if I were to ever try to purposely make soap in the future that looks like wet sand, I'd never be able to recreate it.

Ok ljm1180. I'm at a complete loss as I don't know a comeback idiom.

Midnightstorm.....I made a similar mistake with color and fragrance a while back and the soap turned gray....just like yours. It had some neutral scent (cant remember what it was). I decided to package it as is (gray color and neutral scent) and I put a picture of a pirate on the label and called it "Pirate's Grog Soap". Moms went crazy buying it for their 9 year old kids who were on a Pirate kick. I personally don't think the soap looks bad at all. I wouldn't get overzealous and start doing stuff with it just yet. Let it cure, try a bar and see how it turned out. You may be able to salvage them for gifts at least.

Alright, ljm1180....I got it. Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed today? (Yes!!! He strikes again!!)

SuperSoaper, you think like I do. Before I found out this soap was lye-heavy, and when it was in its neon green stage, I was thinking that it would appeal to kids if I gave it a kid-friendly, Dr.-Suess-type name. But before I could think of one, it morphed into another color before finally settling into the gray.

And I'm a big fan of idioms myself. My mom, who was from Kentucky, was the Queen of Idioms and was known for such colorful statements as "He was so buck-toothed that he could eat an ear of corn through a picket fence."

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

It's going to take me awhile to clean my house today because I'm slower than molasses in January.

This place is going to hell in a handbasket with all the idioms! Thanks Supersoaper.

LOL. Yup. He'd better mind his P's and Q's!

_________________
Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

I think the soap looks good for what it has gone through. Chalk it up to experimentation and move on.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

This is why I am looking into felting soap. I am sure your soap is just fine. It is just a color issue. The whole rebatching thing is not something I like doing. I have also had grey soap. It was the only batch I actually threw in the garbage can. It pissed me off so much I didn't even want to look at it.

Ok....we're hijacking this thread and it's not right. You guys know we're only supposed to talk about soap in here and not have a good time playing one with the other. We're turning this forum into a horse of a different color. (YES!!!)

Never tried felting soap either. Although I just made a lavender with loofa last night with goat's milk. Turned out better than than I thought it would but, "I played it on the straight & narrow" with a recipe I already know is a good one. (Double YES!!)

Was your loofa imbeded in a single bar mold? I am wondering is I can put loofa in a loaf mold and cut it. I am going to grow loofas this year. A fresh grown loofa is a lot softer than a store bought loofa.

My goal for the day is to recalculate my two favorite recipes for 1 pound. Yes. I will do the calculations in grams. Every new fragrance or technique is going to first have a trial run as a one pounder. I will keep a detailed lab book. I know. I know. I should have done this in the beginning. Excuse?? Slow learner.