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.
I let the students choose the oils so we had a very soft recipe with all the moisturizing goodies they wanted in the soap. The recipe ended up being:
5 oz. Sweet Almond Oil
3 oz. Castor Oil
1.5 oz. Jojoba Oil
10 oz. Coconut Oil
10 oz. Palm Oil
10 oz. Olive Oil
15 oz. water
5.21 – 5.65 oz Sodium Hydroxide Lye (range of 10% superfat down to 3%)
We did two batches. One with a 3% superfat and the second one with a 10% superfat. I like doing soap classes this way so that the concept of superfatting/lye discounting is clear. On the 2nd batch, the students mixed their own oils and got the hang of taring the scale, using a stick blender and scooping out the Coconut and Palm.
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.
The second batch was a normal CP batch. Some of the students got ambitious and did swirling. We did have a few fun trace accelerators. Sea Moss and Applejack Peel really acted up.
The last of the students departed just before 8 p.m. I’ll be teaching a Goatsmilk CP Class and a Goatsmilk Lotion Class at Otion next month. Look for the sign up sheet online in the next week.
The batch to the lest was extra soap from one of the batches. I mixed 2 parts Wineberry Mist (Labcolors) with 1 part Fuchsia LabColor to get a perfect red.
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I totally love teaching and think it would be ideal to do a long Soapers Weekend – where we did CP I, CP II, MP, Lotions and did a bunch of classes and socializing.
We’re thinking about doing something like this next summer so keep bugging me about that! =)
Anne-Marie
Oh, how fun that would be to have a group get together for soap making 🙂
East coast girl here~ I have only seen one or two “soap-making” classes offered here~ and they are never close and offered through the rec departments…one day I would love to teach-several friends have asked. Everyone in Bramble Berry Town, I mean Bellingham…sure are lucky :)!
HOW FUN!!!! I want to come (as I wonder how in the world I can drive from one corner of the world to the other just for a soap class!)
Jeannie….in the opposite corner.