Tutorials on soapmaking, bath fizzies, lotions and more
Thank you Joanna at Product Body for a wonderful ego-enhancing post about Bramble Berry, this blog and (eyes downcast modestly) me. Click here to read the post.
And then DesperateHorseWife (aka Tracey) has a very nice post, complete with awesome photos about her experience with Otion, Bramble Berry and soaping. It’s a well-written funny missive (just like Tracey is when you meet her in person). Click here to read it.
This is the final ivory overpour. At this point in the swirl soap’s short life, there has been three ivory white pours and two blue pours (white, blue, white, blue, white).Look for a video of the swirling later today.Tomorrow, we will cover the final finishing touches for the swirled soap.
Earlier this week, Renee asked a question about swirling soap. Renee, here’s a long, multiple day answer to your question. Watch for short instructional videos from this goatsmilk batch (scented with Herbal Essence) this weekend and next week.
Preparing the color mixture ahead of time is helpful. Working out clumps prior to the soap being poured makes for less stress and worry during the touchy last few minutes of the soapmaking process. The colorant mixture above is a blend of jojoba oil, blue ultramarine iron oxide and loofah.
Mixing the prepared coloring into thinly trace (goatsmilk) soap. I did (approximately) 1 tsp of blue color, 1 tsp of loofa and 2 oz. of jojoba oil in 16 oz. of soap. The 16 oz. of soap was pulled from the larger 6 pound batch at thin trace. The rest of the goatsmilk soap is waiting in the large stainless steel mixing pot.
A photo of the entire set up with digital scale, Sunnybrook mold and spatula waiting to scrape soap into mold to get the last drops out.
I’ll post photos and instructions of the swirling technique this weekend.
I am speaking at the National Dairy Goats Association trade show coming up in October. I’ll be demonstrating cold process soap, lotion making and advanced cold process soap – all using fresh goatsmilk. I also have a little 45 minute talk on marketing for small businesses. It will be a full day!
To prepare, it seemed wise to make a couple refresher milk batches. I haven’t made goatsmilk soap for at least a year! This weekend, I made two batches of Goatsmilk Soap. This is the first batch. In the photo above, I am stirring the chilled, slushy goatsmilk to break up large chunks, prior to adding the lye.
The soap has been very lightly traced and separated it into three containers for a 3 color swirl. To ensure that I have plenty of time to work with the soap, I have not discounted the water at all and have a full 5% superfat.
Here is the soap, poured into the log mold. It ended up being 9 pours/layers so the color and swirl should go through the entire bar.
The colors used were ultramarine blue (for the light blue) and ultramarine pink with fuscia true tone for the pink. The ivory color is just the natural goatsmilk color.
I taught a beginning cold process soap class at Otion tonight. It was a wonderful class with students from Arizona, Tacoma (WA) and Portland (OR). We had 7 students, two of whom had made soap. It’s always a joy to have experienced soapmakers in class so they can augment my instructions.
We did room temperature (energy transfer) soap for the first batch. I showed my dexterity by pouring lye water all over the table in front of the class. Clumsiness is catching. Erik (Otion Store Manager, also my little brother) poured fresh soap all over one of the student’s papers. It was not our collective finest moment.
As teeth get older, they start to lose some enamel which affects whiteness, shine and luster. Those of us that are more vain are thrilled that scientists are diligently working on a cure for losing tooth luster. Apparently chocolate has the same compounds that green tea does to help prevent enamel loss. Or, you could just skip the chocolate and use a flouride toothpaste. You’d probably harness more of those green tea weight loss benefits if you skipped the chocolate.
My favorite green tea is Pink Grapefruit infused Green Tea from Republic of Tea. It never seems to get bitter, even when I forget to take it out of the cup. Even better is that this tea is affliated with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and Republic of Tea, thus far, has donated $556,000 to the cause just from sales of this yummy tea.
Do something good for yourself and buy some green tea. And, if you’re feeling charitable, make it a Sip for the Cure tea and help others while improving your life.
I’ve been soaping for a blissful fourteen years now. I love it. I crave it. There is very little that makes me happier than seeing a perfect trace in my soap or the smooth texture of a freshly cut batch of soap (big sigh). If I could only make soap all day and never have to actually work for money (you know, answer emails, rally staff, figure out new products, and all the assorted minutiae that comes with running a business), I would be exceedingly happy.
Still, there is a minor downside to soapmaking – safety considerations. To make soap from oil requires a bit of complex chemistry. The short story is that you need lye or sodium hydroxide. Lye is mostly commonly found in things like Draino to clean drains. It is also used to react with fats (like olive oil or coconut oil) to make soap. It is highly, highly caustic and will actually burn you So, when I make soap, I wear long sleeves and long pants and goggles (and look, there’s the photo off to the left to prove it). I usually skip the gloves because I’m pretty used to lye burns at this point in my soaping career.
I don’t like lye burns but as long as I wash them off my hands quickly, I’m none the worse for the wear. And since I’ve been making soap for so long, I (humble modesty coming up right here) am pretty good at it and tend not to spill too much fresh burning soap on my hands. So, no gloves.
I made the most delicious batch of Fresh Baked Bread soap today. It smells amazing, it acted like a dream and soapmaking was a snap. I was set up, weighed, measured, traced and poured in about 20 minutes. Then clean up time. Cleaning up fresh soap is a bit of a pain. This is because it is essentially thick, sludgy oil. It takes a bit of patience, a good degreasing soap and boiling hot water. While I was cleaning up, I managed to pour some fresh soap right into a cut on my hand.
Yowzers! Talk about sharp, intense pain! Note to self and soapers out there: if you have a cut on your hand, definitely wear gloves. Holy soaping gods, it still hurts a few hours later! And my cut is all pink and puffy. It is very impressive in its obvious nature. The take away lesson for me is the obvious one stated above (gloves, you fool, gloves) and also that even with fourteen plus years of soaping under my belt, I am not above making mistakes and learning what every newbie soaper knows: lye burns can hurt.