Teach Soap

The best book I've seen is The Everything Soapmaking Book by Alicia Grosso.

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

Well everyone, my very FIRST batch of soap is in it's mold as we speak! I'll let you guys know how it turns out. Is 48 hours the norm for leaving in the mold before you cut?

Thank you for all the tips!

I had a few things go wrong. Fist I used ice , so I froze my water, then I ended up needing to wait to HEAt the lye up in a warm water bath... so next time i'll just be using chilled not frozen water!! The other thing is my stick blender fell over and caused soap to splatter, luckily on my covered surface, but I did lose a bit of soap And the gloves I used were some hubby got me, those really thick poly something green gloves, they were so stiff that I could hardly pick up my containers etc. So also will not be using those same gloves next time. Then a real funny thing happened, when I went to tape the wax paper to the mold, it wouldn't stay so I was going to tack it inplace... Of course I couldn't find tacks so I used little nails. Then as I was pouring the soap one of the nails popped off and into the soap!! It stayed afloat for a bit but my stiff gloved hand could not fish out the nail, digging in with a spoon I could still not find the nail... So now that in the soap LOL!! The other was that it traced very fast I could only get the lye to about 90 and the oild were at 110. So it traced with stick blender in about 5-10 mins. Other mishap was salt would NOT dissolve and just stuck to the bottom of the container, which I then proceded to scrape out.... gooo. There you go, my very first time I'm no longer a soaping virgin

The book that soap buddy has recommended is a good one. I have that book and it is really a good book.

LOL, sounds like you had fun. Anyway, 5 to 10 min to reach trace is about right if you're using a stick blender, IMHO.

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

Thank you Soapbuddy I will watch out for the nail!!

I just checked on the soap, it's gelling in the middle and going from a pretty light white color to a yucky brown. I hope it lightens once it cures Otherwise I will try that fridge or freezer method because i liked it all pretty looking, heehhee.

Well, my life is full of comical errors... I'm used to it. Compared to most thing in my life this went rather smoothly LOL

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

Yay Soapbuddy, thank you that would be great! I will keep practicing and see where I get for now... Next recipe will be with palm or coconut oil (hard to find locally).

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

Soap turns darker while it's gelling, but lightens up when it finishes. Soapbuddy is a non-gel soaper, and I gel all of mine - both methods make nice soap.

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http://www.magichandsworkshop.com
http://www.magichands.etsy.com
http://www.magichandsworkshop.blogspot.com

The palm oil was not hydrogenated it's mechanically pressed, is that just plain palm oil or different?

That's plain palm oil.

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http://www.magichandsworkshop.com
http://www.magichands.etsy.com
http://www.magichandsworkshop.blogspot.com

I just made this soap:

coconut oil 7 oz
avocado oil 5.6 oz (thats what I had left from a lotion batch )
crisco 18 oz
olive oil 18 oz

18.5 oz water
6.5 oz lye

it's gelling right now but looks really weird. Now I'm thinking the e-oil mix i added screwed it up I added a 1oz mix of lime e-oil and ylang ylang e-oil. BTW it smells gross right now. When I mixed it it smelled pleasant now it's nasty... LOL So we'll see i'll post pics if I can. Yesterdays soap is looking good, it's already really hard and lathers well.

Ylang is very strong and can take over a blend. How much of each did you use?

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