Teach Soap

Seems to be a theme of my soaping attempts lately: failure.

I recently made beautiful layered flamingo embed soaps each colored and fragranced differently. I'll post a pic in awhile to explain.

I went to do the first embed today, which involved my white flamingos on yellow backgrounds and fragranced with grapefruit Lilly. I put them at a slanted angle in the soap tray. I poured in the clear M&P that was also fragranced with grapefruit Lilly.

What happened? Well, despite being very well assured that the temp of the M&P was 120 degree or less (it was so cold it even started clumping a little), the yellow from the embeds started doing that nasty swirl into the clear melt and pour I was pouring over them, indicating a failed project.

After they hardened enough, I spent over an hour scraping carefully to try to salvage as much clear melt and pour as I could.

Im so annoyed. I'll just say it, I'm pissed. I feel like I tried to do everything right. Was it just simply too hot??? I was so careful about the temp, I was sure it was fine. Apparently not. The yellow was Yellow Oxide from BB, which is apparently non-bleeding.
It had to have bee the heat right? I mean, what else could it have been???

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now know as Gwenann's Sudz...

Thanks MellisaBrown that was a really nice post. I'm using one of those "instant read" cooking thermometers from Walmart. I calibrate it each day before using. Granted, it's still a crappy thermometer, but I just don't understand, the soap was so cool it was actually clumping up. I just can't imagine what's going on...

The latest update is that I tried it again, using a whole other set of embeds I had prepared that were composed of fushia flamingos and a dark pink background. This time, I waited until the temp was 115. It was clumping up but I just had to see what would happen at a temp that cool. And again, failure. The dark pink background started doing that swirling mess after several minutes of sitting there.

This time it's pretty creepy because the dark red swirling looks like the Flamingos are bleeding or something. Ill definitely take a pic tomorrow before I rip these failed soaps apart again. The only thing I can think to explain what is happening is that perhaps it has to do with the *amount* of colorant in the embed is too much and it just easily "leaks" out of the embed or something. Bizarre, but it's the only other explanation I can think of right now.

I'm going to call it a night for now, being 2am in Alaska and I've got two terrible soap setbacks under my belt for the day.

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now know as Gwenann's Sudz...

When I do embeds, I put them in the fridge for a while so they are cold. I'm sorry your project didn't work out.

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

I've had this happen as well! It really is frustrating

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~~Heather~~
Mad [soaping] Scientist

Sorry about your projects, that's frustrating. I always put my MP embeds in the freezer first for 15 mins, that usually solves any melting issues.

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Soap Blog:

Thank you for the tips about putting them in the freezer or fridge until they are cold! I'll try it will some non-critical soap in a different mold today and see if it helps.

I've also been unsatisfied with this box of plain clear melt and pour. It has a yellowish green tint, and it has all these bubbles in it when it dries, no matter how slowly I stir or how much alcohol I spray on top. I realized today looking at the dried second batch of soaps I made after midnight last night, that I wouldn't be happy with them even without the melting embeds, because the "clear" color of the M&P is actually a yellowish-green, and there are so many bubbles and glops suspended in the clear soap that it looks so messy and kind of gross.

My solution to all of this today is to just make colored clear melt and pour soaps and "glue" the flamingos from the embeds on top, so that they are more like decoration.

Eh, I'm guessing this is one solution.

I had the same thing this week! I tried using these cute tiki molds, and when I poured clear over it, bam! My faces melted. I cried. No joke, literally lost it in my kitchen! Ughhh... Soaping can become emotionally and physically exhausting! Lol

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now know as Gwenann's Sudz...

Um, I just thought about something, which may or may not revolutionize the M&P craft, lol. Just kidding, I'm sure it's an age old trick, but I just thought of it:

What about embedding the embed in an just a little bit of soap by just drizzling just a little soap over the embed, and then embedding that into the larger soap? I don't know if that makes sense. Hmm...I'll have to try it sometime.

The latest is I made a semi successful batch of green, grass stain scented soaps with little flamingos embedded on the top. They're still kind of ugly, but at least I don't see that ugly melting cloud stuff. I think it worked because I placed the embeds on top, sticking out a little from a second layer. Plus the bottom layer was darker so if there is any clouding it's much more hidden by the darker base layer soap. I'm guessing that's what worked..

I'm making more now. Yellow soaps with pink flamingos. Will post pics from the whole adventure later. Thanks for your comments.

First of all, as for the colour of your clear M&P have you tried bluing it? You can check out soapqueentv episode 4 around the 2:40ish mark on how to do it That's also the one where she talks about embeds..it might help you out!

When you pour your first layer of clear and embed, are you waiting for it to cool before you pour your coloured background? This will make a big difference, if it's not cooled (hard) it's going to swirl with your coloured background. Also, are you using non-bleeding colourants? If you're using something that's going to bleed, and you heavily colour your embeds then they're going to bleed out.

Hopefully that helps you out some Good luck!

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~Krystal~
Sweet Destiny Candle Company

thanks for your reply misskat22. I'm pretty sure the colorants I used were non bleeding. The first bleed failure was using the BB Yellow Oxide, which is supposed to be non-bleeding. I waited until the soap was below 125 degrees before I poured it over the embeds, and it still bled. I feel like I did everything by the book. So I am still pretty much at a loss about what went wrong. I cut up the first failure before I got pics. I do have pics from the second failed attempt, which I'll post in a minute.

I've embedded on top rather than on the bottom for a couple trials now, and I think it's working much better. I don't know why...I guess because the embeds are cooler sitting on top of poured soup rather than sitting under a bunch of hot soap.

I finally went and logged on to my old photobucket account again. Haven't used it in about 5 years. Hope this works. This is the second failed attempt. You can see what I was trying to embed, it is a flamingo on a circular background. I just tried clear, uncolored M&P over it, which was ugly anyway, so looking back I'm pretty much glad it failed and I had no choice but to start over.

The last image was too big. I resized this one so hopefully it will look better. This is my third attempt, where I just bit the bullet and started embedding or rather, "gluing" on top. These are still ugly...want to redo them. But they are for the men anyway, so if I don't have time to remake them, I'll just wrap them up.