New Soaps in Shop!

New soaps listed!

Pear and Orris - Green and sweet pear scented soap with Orris and added Turmeric
artistic swirly long size bar

Pear and Orris with Turmeric

Strawberry Cream Soap - A mild and natural vanilla and light fruit scent reminiscent of strawberries
darling strawberry imbed soap

Strawberry Vanilla Cream Soap

Ethereal Happy Soap - A spicy bright green Lemon Verbena scent
cool translucent new process

Ethereal Happy Soap - Lemon Verbena

Lava Rock Soap - a unique and interesting soap shaped like lava rocks! With activated charcoal, African black soap, and added glycerin. Unscented.

Lava Rock Soap - Activated charcoal and African Black soap

I Love You Soap - red rose swirl handmade soap

For Valentines day!
https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/665987874/i-love-you-soap-red-rose-clay-swirl

I made this one a wrapper but no pic of it

originally published on Jan 19

Tiny Soaps - Miniature Soap

they're killing me. so cute. omg. tiny little box.
all my soaps can be mini soap! guess it's the sample size
this is my fave design so far.
thought it so nice i took a break from designing another box
as if it was the only design needed to be made
its not a little camel
its casseopeia sitting topless on a chair facing a smith chart
oh nope
thats my other label.
this ones just her chillin melting into the background.
actually it does look like a two humped camel with a crescent moon .... if you squint your eyes you can see the camel as the chair and fabric

Fully Gelled Soap

Ah look, we have achieved full gel.

But I can see why sometimes I wont want to. The colour and texture...

I like the creamy opaqueness of the cold process soaps too.
but the texture of this quality soap is very nice!

Here are the pics!
this is me mixing it up in my room

 finally! a gorgeous fancy top part

 i insulated it for gel phase and screeched when i came back and had a peek!

 i wasnt sure if the sides would gel too

 so i put a light on it

 and it heated up

 and fully gelled!

 heres the set up in my room

 the temperature was at 155 degrees f (68 degrees centigrade)

 i thought it would go completely clear

 but it only went translucent. maybe because there were some bubbles :(

 i put it in the fridge for a bit (wrapped) but took it out and let it cool off on its own

 and it was ready this morning!

 so i cut it up and its drying on the rack now

 fully gelled soap!

this soap has sunflower oil, coconut oil, castor oil, hemp seed oil, and shea butter
it is scented with peru balsam and benzoin, for a creamy and vanilla like scent, mild and pleasant and sweet
i have used distilled water and rosemary oleoresin extract to avoid orange spots in the future (rancidity)
when i took the cosmetics training course in manila, the chemist advised us to use preservative in the lye water (which i didnt do because i used distilled water and an antioxidant in the oils but might in the future)

Adding Stearic Acid to Sunflower soap

so this is the soap from earlier, its not the same recipe as the potentially dreaded orange spots soap thats actually got dreaded lye pockets. its got .7% stearic acid because i read it in this forum post
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/stearic-acid.43182/

but i formulated a different recipe using the soap calc using up to 10% stearic acid and got this

Hardness	29 - 54	27
Cleansing	12 - 22	5
Conditioning	44 - 69	71
Bubbly	14 - 46	11
Creamy	16 - 48	27
Iodine	41 - 70	104
INS	136 - 165	96

might try that recipe tomorrow for the next soap trial.

hey ive given away almost all the soaps ive made :(
have a piece of each one since the start though.

because i havent bought a tub for disinfecting, and all the specific things for soaping only, and im in a kitchen that i cleaned so i know what it looked like before, im just kind of turned off, its not clean enough, or new enough, this house is pretty old and hadnt been cleaned since i moved in.

anyway here is the pic of the .7% stearic acid sunflower soap.

it firmed up right away, used the submersion mixer.

this is what the soap calc gave me for this soap:

Soap Bar Quality	Range	Your Recipe
Hardness	29 - 54	12
Cleansing	12 - 22	0
Conditioning	44 - 69	86
Bubbly	14 - 46	0
Creamy	16 - 48	12
Iodine	41 - 70	132
INS	136 - 165	64

the recipe is
64.55 grams sunflower oil
.45 grams stearic acid
8.79 grams lye
21.97 grams water

its not adding the stearic acid into trace, its saponifying using the sap value. this is how i formulated the recipe for tomorrow, by saponifying the stearic acid with the soft oils.

have a go at this recipe, tweak it however you like! its a conditioning bar according to the soapcalc, but if you replace about 10 grams of coconut oil it will be more cleansing. its also got a lot of time to add essential oil, so you can reduce the oil by .5 grams and add that at trace, maybe a nice creamy scent like benzoin in .5 carrier at trace,  one drop is probably all you need!
--
midnight,
it popped right out of the mold!
i love using the mixer.  such a bright white colour too. will i ever learn how to gel? the first soaps gelled... what happened



--
i cut it today (the next day)
it is hard! doesnt press into with firm pressure
it was slow to bubble (3-5 seconds) and the bubbles are creamy and smallish, not big bubbles like coconut oil
the one drop of benzoin didnt scent it at all (booooo) maybe after it sits for a while the scent will come through because i added cedar and .... i forgot, its in my notes

so great!!!

 hey
it doesnt smell like anything because i didnt scent this soap LOL

;-)

--,--'--,--8--<@

ok so the soap is totally fine cleansing wise. i have been over washing my hands. woops. so now after using the sample in hot water and really rubbing my fingers into it, it has done sometime
pa dah!
totally unexpected and cool!
i think its the glycerine and its forming peaks, and the soap melts but dosent dissolve and is this clear gel for a bit and its, i dont know what it is! it washes off and its just what the stearic acid does, i guess. if *you* know whats going on here post a comment!

so i wanted to add castor oil because i read somewhere (i lost the link :( that it increases the solubility of the soap but i need to look that up again

its so trippy!
also the bar is very hard!
and it did this great thing where it wiped the grease off my finger (bike grease, from my bicycle) only thing is, its a bit drying right at my fingertips because i was using it for too long and really using my fingertips to mush into it, but it didnt mush and stayed its shape (compared to the milk and honey soap- that one needs to cure forever its so soft)
but my grubby hands are totally clean now even under my fingernails.
pretty sweet.

did i make a candle?