One Day, Two Extremes

We really couldn't decide on a name for this post.  It could easily be any of the following:

Houston, we have a problem
Learning how to read directions - the hard way
Soaping flops 101
Reading reviews is more important than you know
Re-batching soap, not our favorite pastime
The colors are pretty but....

Today we made good soap, and then we made not so good soap, but in doing both we learned a great deal.

After waiting patiently for over a week for the shipment with colorants and much needed palm oil to arrive from the west coast, we discovered that even if FedEx said it had been left outside the garage at A's house, the package was not there.  After quick surveillance around neighboring homes turned up nothing, a call to FedEx was placed ("your package was delivered at 1:38 PM) - panic was setting in.  Thankfully the soap gods were watching out for us (at least at this point they were) and a neighbor showed up, package in hand with the news "this must be yours".  Thankfully all was well and we were off to make soap.

Since this order had expanded our supply colors and scents we decided to get creative, at least with the colors.  A decided to do a soap called Neon Swirl, she found it in the Soap Crafting book by Anne-Marie Faiola.  This recipe makes 8 bars of soap using the following ingredients:
3.0 oz lye
7.2 oz distilled water
5.5 oz palm oil
5.0 oz coconut oil
1.1 oz shea butter
1.5 oz sweet almond oil
8.8 oz olive oil.

A was going for a "tropical beach" theme choosing some of our new colors from Bramble Berry - yellow (Fizzy lemonade), orange (Tangerine Wow and white  (titanium dioxide), all bright warm weather colors.  In keeping with the "tropical beach" theme, A chose a yummy scent from Natures Garden called Palm Island which is out of this world.

The blending of the lye water and oils went really well, and once a light trace was reached we divided the soap into 3 separate containers and added the various colors to each.  Earlier we had created cardboard dividers for the silicone mold  so when poured, each color would have it's own section.

Once all the sections were filled we pulled out the cardboard (note, next time we will use  non porous pieces of plastic to divide the colors - lesson learned).

We dribbled the remaining soap on the top then did a minimal swirl on the top layer to mix up the colors and make the soap visually more interesting.

Once the swirling was done, we cleaned up the rim around the mold, gave the soap a spritz with alcohol, covered it with cardboard and wrapped it in a double layer of towel.  We placed the insulated mold on top of the dryer (which was on) to help keep it warm as it turned into soap.  Our confidence was good, the first batch went really well, smelled good and looked, well, kind of professional.

Now on to the second batch (or as K calls it - cat vomit).  Maybe you can tell, this batch didn't go as planned.

K found a colorful 4 pound recipe on the Soap Queen web site www.soapqueen.com (Anne-Marie Faiola) that would fill one of our larger loaf molds.  The Dandelion Zebra Swirl would incorporate a new technique for us to try.  Partially fill (2/3) of the mold with soap then place a piece of thin plastic diagonally across the mold and into the soap, then you pour one color at a time, across the length of the plastic so it makes colorful layers.  Once all the colors are poured the plastic is removed you top it off with a solid color.

 I changed the colors, but this is what we were hoping for (following 4 pictures are from the soapqueen Web site).

One step mentioned in the recipe was extremely important -  "The key to this technique is having a recipe that moves slowly and stays at a thin trace to get a beautiful layered swirl in the middle."  As we would soon find out the problems we were about to have with fragrance causing swift acceleration were the kiss of death.  We were doomed! we just didn't know it yet.

Initially all went well, I wanted to use some of the new colors we had gotten from Bramble Berry,  a 

white base (titanium dioxide), then layer blue (1982 blue mica), violet (ultramarine violet oxide), green (green chrome oxide) and gold (light gold mica) colors, it was going to be beautiful, (notice I am using past tense).

Since my "theme" was spring so I selected a fragrance from Natures Garden called Butterfly Meadows.  The description was heavenly (www.naturesgardencandles.com), but I did not pay attention to the information regarding the fragrance testing for this scent or reviews by other soap makers,  HUGE mistake!  Fragrance testing very plainly said the following: 

Soap (Cold Process Results)

Moderate acceleration, sets up fast, discolors to a pale yellow, suggest for hp.

 

Some of the reviews stated that the acceleration was almost immediate, within a few seconds, and only very experienced soap makers should use it as it sets up so fast.   Wish I'd paid attention to this information, oh how I wish....but anyway on with the soap making.

The ingredients for this soap were extensive:

.9 oz argan oil
9 oz canola oil
3.6 oz castor oil
13.5 oz coconut oil
9 oz palm oil
9 oz sunflower seed oil
6.3 oz lye
14.8 oz distilled water
2.8 oz of fragrance

We mixed all the oils added the lye solution, all was good, at light trace we poured 1/2  cup of soap into 4 small bowls, and mixed up our colors.

The mold was ready, the colors were ready, now we added the fragrance.  By the time I poured a bit of fragrance into all colors and some into the balance of the soap it had seized.  I went to mix the fragrance into the soap and it was hard, it happened that fast, within 3 - 5 seconds.  We tried to soften it in the microwave, didn't work,  we tried adding a bit of sunflower oil to each one and it helped just a bit.  What was supposed to be thin trace was now, basically lumpy mashed potato-ish looking soap! not good, not good at all.

We mixed and blended, added the sunflower oil, mixed some more and pretty much knew this was bad.  A checked on the Natures Garden web site and really read the information about the Butterfly Meadows scent, at that point we realized this scent super accelerated, no thin trace for us, no second batch of cool looking designer soap, just.....cat vomit that smells nice!

We quickly went to plan B, which was plop the lumpy soap into the mold, mix up the colors, try to swirl (HA) and then try for a decorative top (again, HA).  We pushed and prodded trying for something resembling style (HA), finally realizing that nothing else could be done we spritzed it with alcohol, put the lid on it and wrapped it up to incubate.

We were done.
Post-mortem we discovered how important it is to read everything about ingredients, EVERYTHING!

So today we made A's soap, the Neon Swirl, and it looks and smells great.  We attempted K's soap, the Dandelion Zebra Swirl, it smells great, but looks....like cat vomit.


UPDATE:  Sunday, March 30, 2013

Today we un-molded and cut the two batches of soap.  The neon swirl turned out really pretty, and the cat vomit is very interesting.  It has texture like a hot process soap, so it doesn't look at all like what we wanted, but it sure does smell great.