Teach Soap

Wow.. nice soaps folks! Lots of good work with colourants!

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~~Heather~~
Mad [soaping] Scientist

Anna Rose, I like your cut soap too.

Nice Christmas soaps, ahutchins!

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Linda

I learn so much when I can't leave well enough alone!

I made my first CP soaps last night. I am one of those people who ignore warnings to start out small and work up.

So the first recipe I started out with was 100% Coconut Oil Soap with 20% super fat from Soap Queen (http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body- ... tra-swirl/). I made my first mistake by adding my FO into my oils before I added my lye. The FO I was working with (White Nectarine from Rustic Essentials) made the batch trace superfast. It went from watery consistency to thick pudding in seconds. So instead of having a nice batch split in half with one part colored and the other part colors with a swirl I just added my color (Coral Mica) and stirred with a spoon. I glopped it into the mold and while I was playing with the top it looked like it was starting to boil under the surface, so I dumped it all back into the bowl gave it another stir and then added it back into the mold. I was however able to cut it 3 hours later and after licking it and not getting much of a zap I decided to go ahead and use a piece of scrap to wash my hands. Was pretty nice so far.


The second was a CPOP from this recipe (http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body- ... op-swirls/). As of this morning it is still pretty liquid. I scented the red and green portion with Sleigh Ride, and left the white color unscented so it wouldn’t discolor. The only thing I see that I did wrong was when I copied the recipe over to Brambleberry’s lye calculator I completely forgot about the coconut oil when I resized it. On a good note I followed the recipe that came out of the calculator as far as lye and water went for the oils that I did use, I just foresee that this batch may not be as hard or quite as bubbly, but we will see. I think the spots on the top are ash, but I’m not 100% sure.

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~Manda from Our Wolf Den (our blog on home improvement DIY and all the other hobbies and passions that make life enjoyable).

Congrats on your batch Manda! Coconut oil with a 20% superfat I need to cut within about 4 hours and while it's still hot. Some FO's do accelerate trace or heat up. It sounds like this FO was one of them. I always add any fragrance to my cooled off oils. On your second batch, which oils/butters did you use? The softer the oils, the longer it will take for the soap to set up.

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

I was worried about the 100% coconut one getting too hard on me, so I kept a close eye on it. I couldn’t believe how good the scrapes felt already when I washed my hands.

For the second one I used olive, palm, sweet almond, and sunflower. I don’t know how I didn’t see the coconut when I added the numbers into the lye calculator to resize the batch. *Head desk* I don’t have my notes with me at the moment but it was somewhere around 22 ounces of olive, 16 ounces of palm, and 12.5 ounces each of almost and sunflower. I am sure it is still salvageable, it just may take longer to harden up.

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~Manda from Our Wolf Den (our blog on home improvement DIY and all the other hobbies and passions that make life enjoyable).

Here it is cut:

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~Manda from Our Wolf Den (our blog on home improvement DIY and all the other hobbies and passions that make life enjoyable).

Looks good ourwolfden!

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

this is my drop swirls soap, scented with wsp first snow and it got thick fairly quickly and i think riced a bit in me(you can see it a tad bit in the pic) and of course since it's a snow themed soaps there is glitter on top!!

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Anna Rose @-}--
blog

My first attempt at a hanger swirl, actually my 4th loaf ever made. I'm hooked!!
Its a peppermint cream scent, smells soooo good!

Good job rosie99 and Spoilyourself!

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

It's pretty, Ourwolfden, and hopefully will cure out just fine.

I like your drop swirls, Rosie! Nice work!

Good job with the hanger swirl, Spoilyourself! I bet it smells great.

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Linda

I learn so much when I can't leave well enough alone!

I've been slowly making my way through all these pages, all the soaps are so beautiful!

However my browser stops me at page 158 to tell me about malware



Not sure who to inform about this so I thought I'd just mention it here? Every page up to 158 did not raise red flags, and so far the next 10 or so after seem okay. I have pretty good antimalware/virus protection besides, but I didn't want to try my luck just now.

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"Effective questioning brings insight which fuels curiosity which cultivates wisdom"

Sephi, contact either BrambleBerry or Bramblemama via private messages here.

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

Sending this link to our web guru now! Thanks! =)

Here's my latest effort:



I used a blend of lemon, lime, and litsea eo. It smells awesome!

This was the first time I got a batch to come out of the mold perfectly! (no waste)

It's still a little soft, so I'm going to wait a few days before beveling.