no one broke into my place and stole my phone sheesh

 it was on my bed. so dumb. 

im going to go meet up with christine balmes along college at some turkish cafe later this afternoon. shes such a doll giving me some mending and a couple necklace projects cos i dont have any money since the last four casinos never paid me any of the money i won. im out $600! shes giving me $50 for the projects. and now that were meeting later i have more time to shower. im not sure but i dont think i posted pics of us during the afro fest earlier this year. my pins i bought are gone- literally totally missing. not like phone yesterday which i found on my damn bed. but the pins i bought are totally gone from my apartment :( i dont even know where the top is either. i think its in my laundry somewhere. still have all the darks to do…. 

here we are during afro fest in woodbine park i think its called

these are the pins that are missing from my apartment

i think they were ten each i cant recall

we did some reading out loud when we got back to my place

and we each bought a sexy candle

New Soaps

hey i realize now i cut the soaps too early.
this is a 250 gram total custom bar,

scented with the basic fougere, essential oils and veramoss and coumarin wow it smells Amazing!!!

 This is the oranger crystal fisco, turned into a bunch of tom thompsons. go figure. scented with the stationary scent (gotta call it something else now) my first synthetics only fragrance smells quite edible and cosmetic
(its now slowly turning darker beige / tan)

the stash awaits its paper boxes

some glycerin soaps i made with no recipe - the purple one is sooooo great mild and bubbly great for my hands while working on the projects i always have to wash and my terrible habit of cutting and usng the soap too early sometimes causes my hands to get extremely dried up so these glycerin soaps i make are now my fave for right away use. these and the liquid soap. oh yeah ive made two different liquid soaps!

*new update with details! *

here are the soaps on the shelf

 

this is the lava soap made of african black soap and coconut oil soap and activated charcoal (its the one that i tried to make look like lava) (actually it was an accident and i went with it) there are 3 but this was the most artistic one

strawberry pinq soap !


this was a shea butter addition soap with a lavender alcohol bottom (that line on the bottom of darker soap is the most clear and lovely soap) but i didnt temper the batch or something so the shea butter was grainy and it didnt lather that much and it smelled weird i didnt scent it or scented it strange (which happens frequently i use a weird perfume as a soap fragrance because most times the weirdness disappears and its a nice smell but this was not one of those times)

 some table scraps... my poor dog

 this is rose swirl im not sure if they look grotesque or not. im just gonna say they dont, to save my feelings.

 these are fresh lilac bars they smell great, heady, lilac, floral, not for those who dislike flower scents, this is that classic lilac scent

these are my *favorite* but i hacked the loaf very badly and all the bars are unevenly cut (so sad) these soaps were measured perfectly and theyve cured to perfection,,,,,the scent of blackberries and violet leaf this soap is divine

these are lack lye fiasco bars that finally cured into the mildest full of glycerin bars, and they are quite large, much larger than all the rest at 750 divided by 3 (250 grams per bar)

these are little tiny soaps made into a bigger tiny soap. they are shards of mainly glycerin soap trials and colouring experiments and they are super adorable i love the colours. they are made using ice cube molds.

 

these are the strawberry soaps so cute i made them spur of the moment in a burst of creative energy (but according to camh thats called mania and needs to medicated with sedation drugs? )

 these are glycerin bars that took forever to cure - too long to cure actually
they smell ok, not my fave but i love the colour, i havent tried them, i think they are super mild though i wonder about how bubbly they are!

 

this is a new process i came up with that makes the cold process soap more translucent, i called this soap happy soap and i created a lemon verbena like scent for it.

this is another glycerin soap same time i made the aqua one. its SUPER bubbly !!!! but not very clear at all. you can tell its got a different texture and it smells nice. it should smell like grapes but it smells like something sweet.

 there are also loads of soap blocks which i havent taken pictures of. im trying to batch some lye but its taken me 4 days i havent done it yet i am very distracted with trauma stress right now (no weed) and no food (hungry and cant think clearly)

Liquid Soap from Rebatch Lye Heavy Soap

Making liquid soap from rebatched lye heavy soap is super great! Only thing is you need to know how much oil to put in. Ive made two liquid soaps from a rebatch and this last one was the best!
Because I knew how much oil i forgot. But now what Ive winged it 4 times and followed with great success two online recipes i think i can eyeball the amount of extra oil i can add into the rebatch and still come away with something soapy. Alternately you can make a small amount of new soap to add in the rebatch if using over fatted glycerin river type soaps.
When you rebatch for liquid soap add alcohol to the grated soap and heat it in the crock pot. i was lucky to find an unused looking mini one at value village. i havent died from using it or any of the soaps so i guess its ok to sell soaps made using the second hand crock pot? like what if they cooked chopped up dogs that passed of old age, or road kill squirrels? would i know?
So back to rebatching the grated soap, ive been using the ratio i found online from evik and the french lady on youtube, for the extra liquids you add melted stearic acid in the end, but during the process you add in glycerin and sugar and salt and ive been using xylitol because i cant get sorbitol right now, ive also used sodium lactate, ive added ipm at the end, i only use distilled water, i use the strong ethanol with camphor because its the only one i can find at 94% proof at the shop, and dilute it for spraying, it makes the soap smell cool and as if it smelled like what evaporation would smell like. but not evaporation from hot sidewalks or car roofs. more like the evaporation of a strong mint tea, or a pot of simmering herbs, and cold. the soap to water ratio aimed for is no more than 100 grams total until the end of procedure for up to 300 grams soap for a solid soap, but for the liquid soap its up to you how watery you want it, but i add the water at the very end. im not using potassium hydroxide which is what youre supposed to use for liquid soap. i cant find it locally. so making the soap is difficult and long because i always peek and need to stir and sometimes scrape down the sides but apparently i saw on youtube you can cover the pot with plastic wrap and never stir it but im not sure i have the right pot for that. so i add first alcohol, up to 50 grams,  cover pot and let that dissolve the grated soap in heat. after a while, since my little pot is little, 15 mins or so, i check and give it a stir, spraying top of soap with alcohol so it doesnt dry out. i add a mixture of sugar xylitol glycerin salt water a bit at a time, up to 50 grams, ive used more, sparying the bubbles that form as i break up the soap paste, i keep doing this until it forms a uniform paste and cover, at some point the paste start to liquify at the base and i usually keep adding more grated soap until the pot is full, about 500 grams. until the entire thing is full, paste, and starts to liquify, i keep spraying it with alcohol and cover it and leave it covered until i can blend in melted stearic acid. i have been adding half the recommended stearic acid for liquid soap, about 20 grams for about 400 grams soap. when the soap is liquified (the top usually has bubbles which i remove because im impatient) i pour in the melted stearic acid and blend the soap in the crock pot and remelt the entire thing, occasionally spraying the top so it never dries out, then this clarifies again and then you can add water, at this point,  the soap should not be cloudy. Add preservative at cooling! No way is this soap going to go bad I want to keep it forever because it took so long to make. This is a long process that takes hours but yields an insanely mild and lovely liquid soap. I am using the melt and pour glycerin soap recipe from evik (curious-soapmaker.com) and a comment from her blog, a translation from a french youtube video for the structure and ratio concepts. I have a huge bottle of home made liquid soap now and im going to experiment with it for shampoo, and other washes because i got some SLSa powder. Its supposed to be not sls but i dont know why i got it actually, i got it to add to watery moisturizers for thick body washes. also im super excited to smell this soap.  the soap was the lemon milk (vanilla) and a creamy magnolia (new perfume blend!)
I never liked vanilla but it turns out when i use it in blends i freakin love it.
lol the soap turned into a thick gel like paste the next morning. maybe try No Stearic Acid. guess whos making some soap cream experiments today?

Melt and Pour soap!

So I went to a lady who imports african black soap and shea butter directly from ghana. Bought some black soap and lye, a brick of melt and pour, stearic acid, and emulsifying wax, but the emulsifying wax might be a 50-50 cetylstearyl alcohol? damn i cant even spell it. so i will try to make a lotion at some point, but first here are the three different soaps i made, they are for give aways and experimenting.

first soap is african black soap with green clay and mica, dried rosemary chopped up, and rosemary and mint oil

second soap has stearic acid in it, its a red clay and lanolin soap with commercial rose oil and a green leaves fragrance, then its layered with (powdered) milk and cinammon and rhassoul clay. this might turn out gross, but the smell of the soap with the milk powder was so amazing, then i ruined it by adding cinnamon. also the one drop of commercial rose oil and one drop of green leaves fragrance (left over from INCENSE STICK MAKING ten years ago??) smells Amazing, but the clay makes it look like a terra cotta tile. would make a great kitchen soap (shaped like a brick or tile)

third soap is rhassoul clay, the floral wax, balsam, sandalwood, and jasmine. but it doesnt smell like the lotion i made. it smells like tutti fruitti, not sure why, maybe its the alcohol used to mix the clay in the soap. im hoping the weird smell will go away once all the alcohol evaporates. this mold is a paperclip plastic box as the mold and wanted the top to look like the creamy top but it looks like... mud. the bottom and sides are shiny flat. guess you can use any releasable container.

what i learned:
the melt and pour is varied, this one sucks cos its the suspending version of stephensons, which to my horror upon returning home to google the ingredients is all the sls and propolyene glycol,
found a woman online complaining about how rubbery her final product was, which i too find, except the stearic acid bar. it doesnt bend as much, in fact it barely gives.
next up, cutting the bars and testing them. there is a squirt of lotion in one of them...will it lather? its got parrafin...
and then giving some away for feedback.

all in all an enjoyable and crafty experiment. would make a great workshop.

im going to make lye water today for a coconut oil soap with the coconut oil on hand.
the sogomi workshop provided a list of lye and koh saponification values for a lot of oils, per gram. to be precise. the first example in the workbook is a kojic whitening cold process soap which of course im never going to make, but it is a coconut oil based soap and will just add up all the whitening ingredients and add it to the oil, or use botanical extracts-maybe african black soap shreds. the additives come to about 3 grams for a 100 gram bar of soap trial.
the best part about my sogomi workbook is that there is a tagalog translation beside each sentence. its bilingual. for example
#3 . Add the lye solution. BE CAREFUL! (Idagdag ang Lye Solution. MAG-INGAT!)

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four days later. the rose milk bar is amazing. i dont know how i made it. its all really loose notes and cant replicate the milk part. used a 97% alcohol and water and rhassoul clay and i cant make it the same because i did some weird unmeasured ratio.

so here is the lemon poppy seed soap!
the poppy seed side is with may chang oil and milk powder
and the beige side is rhassoul clay and milk powder and the lemon flavouring which is basically lemon essential oil.
its all bubbles on top :p didnt spray alcohol fast enough.

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