Cold Process soap making

Here are the cold process soaps i made

turns out i accidentally supperfatted my recipes, to about 1-2% wondering why there was an oil part after most of the soap seemed to have already set, then much later this oil part also set. could it be the superfat excess oil that didnt saponify due to lack of lye or is that just how it goes.  
The lye concentration recommended by the chemist in manila is at 28% and he said that was the minimum so as not to make a harsh soap but ive seen recipes with a 29.something % lye concentration.

Made three different kinds so far. Well four. One is a layered clay soap, one is a plain coconut oil soap with less than a gram of an aromatherapy oil blend, the last is a coconut oil soap and added about a gram of a soothing salve from the expo job.  this one had much more of that excess oil that took longer to firm up after the initial trace. each soap is 100 grams, so the clay soap is 200 grams. its a bit thick. was thinking of slicing it at the layer.

there is some oil left over and will make a couple to a few more bars.... what else can i add? i dont want to waste my essential oils, and i just realized the old fragrance oils i have might not even be for body care (woops)

next to make is a light pink soap with rose and violet leaf. will use way less of the clay so it wont look like a brick. ...
found a soap calculator http://soapcalc.net/calc/soapcalcwp.asp 
and superfatted the pink clay rose soap by 15% and for some reason also added 3 grams of stearic acid. mixed it more because the clay was added with the rose oil and added at trace, then realized i had used the wrong formula and needed to add 12 grams more of lye solution, mixed it again, and did not do that weird oil separating thing. wow. turns out the first bars were not mixed enough.
ok....

 took out the clay soap from the mold, probably two days too early
 it looks super cool. i love how much it looks like a cement block and i love that you can see the folds of the milk box. cant wait to get great at this and also make my own molds.

meanwhile havent done anything about my destash or listing old jewelry stuff up online :/
all i want to do is make soap now. i even forgot about my lotion making. was supposed to get some xanthan and guar gum but i fear the emulsifying wax is wrong. have to try it out anyway. dont really trust the wax or the lady. she didnt really label the products properly and she told me KOH is an additive that makes skin better. so im hesitating. im going to go with what i believe from what she said. i asked her if it was emulsifying wax nf and she said it was emulsifying wax EO, which doesnt exist, so it might be emulsifying wax o (from new directions, because thats where some of her carrier oils were from)
the smell of the clay soap is wafting towards me... a nice fresh, warm hay scent.
hopefully they'll turn out, specially now that ive realized they were not blended properly.
wont even know until a month from now (at least) because they need to cure. damn! im so ready to use them.
next batch will be one large batch and ill use the mixer.

so the next batch to make will be honey and milk soap. found out you add the powdered milk to the oil before adding the lye. and honey after trace and mix very well. someone online mentioned adding the honey to the lye, and tried that and it changed colour to a bright pink.
in manila, we learned to add all the water ingredients to the lye water, so adding the honey to the lye made sense but the colour... couldn't figure out where the milk powder went so after the lye turned pink with honey i added the milk powder to it and it looked like vomit. that's when i threw it out and made new lye water....

this is so exciting! i love milk and honey smelling soaps and lotions.
i love learning how to make new things!

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here is the picture of the unboxed pink and white layer.
the white layer wasnt mixed properly. so it was soft and stuck to the container a bit.
the pink clay layer is great, mixed properly, but i didnt want to use essential oils anymore so i used artificial...and its the best bar. ugh.
didnt buy oil again yet.
really love these naturally coloured clay soaps. not sure if i want to slice the green and grey one. im just going to leave these as is because they are my first ones. the yellow one in the round container is also not mixed properly so its still soft too.

here is the soft white one. it got hard! i like it because its so banged up. poor little bar. it just wasnt ready yet.

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im making soap right now and it 4:30 in the morning. woops. woke up from a nap. bought sunflower oil earlier and now im wondering about adding honey to milk and honey bar
this tutorial helped me realize the first soaps never went through this gel phase, they were just not mixed properly.
https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/adding-honey-to-cold-process-soap-tips-tricks-recipe/
i never make the soaps hot. it seems too tedious to wait for the temperatures to catch up with each other or have to heat one or wait for one to cool down.
like this http://www.soap-making-essentials.com/what-temperature-should-lye-water-be.html the comments are quite useful.
another thing i realized is that some oils are cheaper at the grocery, plus no shipping. now im wondering about the lye water available in chinese groceries, but still havent learned the percentage of lye in that water. because otherwise theres a hefty hazmat charge for shipping lye and im almost out of my little 300g container. (oh the hardware stores got lye, duh)

added honey to the soap and the little globules are not dispersing with no hand mixer. i hope this soap turns out.
10 mins later
well it wont because the honey keeps sinking to the bottom so i poured it off and will again before it goes into the mold. besides i measured the oil wrong so the container im going to use is slightly too small. turns out thats perfect because i dont want to add honey to soap anymore until i know how or why im doing it. the honey smell comes from the beeswax but its not very strong at all. i used about 1.5%
so far the soap smells really nice, mildly honey and slightly creamy.
i hope those damn globules of honey dont pour in when i mold it. theyre gonna sink to the bottom and its gonna be weird. oh yeah. itll get weird. reading these comments https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/adding-honey-to-cold-process-soap-tips-tricks-recipe/
guess my main take away here is dont add liquid honey to your soap. just make tea and drink it instead.
15 mins later
um, wow. maybe im an idiot savant or something but i just finished pouring out the soap, poured it twice to remove the sunken honey, and it fits *perfectly* into the container now.
so im really excited for this soap and i hope it firms up. i wont try to remove it prematurely like all the rest. im so excited to slice it!!!
here is the picture of my little loaf
its a plastic desk organizer.
and of course the oil is Unico because i am indeed, nico.

oh pic later the ones i just took are all blue and bad.

hey the soap is still at light trace.
its been at least 10 hours.

found this http://www.soap-making-essentials.com/sunflower-oil.html which says sunflower oil takes forever to saponify and is a soft bar, glad i added beeswax... but its still liquidy :(

i think i like coconut for soap the best. even though ive only tried two different oils ><
got to get a blender to reach trace quicker. my vintage mixer is splattery.

its been over a day and now the oil seems to have separated on top. not sure if it should be remixed. its pudding like

well here it is, june 25, the soap is done. so done i am throwing it away!!!!

 there are little dots of orange oil seeping out

 i think its the powdered milk particles

 it was crumbly and smelled weird... gross.

when i made the melt and pour with powdered milk, i mixed the powder with 98% alcohol, and nothing happened to the milky melt and pour soaps, one is sitting in a wet dish by the sink ever since i made them, they have stearic acid to stay hard and the milky melt and pours dont have any problems..... but this milk and honey bar is broken. so its going to be thrown away.
doesnt it look like a bad brie?