First things first
We owe much to the Veterans in our lives, most of them no longer with us. Alison and I both had grand fathers and great grand fathers (and great, great etc) who fought bravely in past wars. Alison's father and Kathy's husband are both Vets from the Viet Nam skirmish (don't think it was officially declared a war). Sometimes Memorial Day is just another day off, without thought to the reason behind the celebration, but to us it's a day to remember the brave men and women who are responsible for our being able to live in a free country.
On Saturday we officially kicked off the long holiday weekend by attending the Main Street Farmers Market in Clayton, GA. Located right in front of Butlers 2 gallery, it was a prime location. The weather cooperated and there were lots of people strolling around Clayton. While our soap sales weren't through the roof, we did sell soap, and that is what we wanted to do. We met many lovely people and will probably try the market again, but probably not on a holiday weekend.
We decided to skip work on Monday, so on Tuesday we played catch up, worked on our Etsy account (we promise it will be up soon), caught up on cost calculations, and generally did a good bit of office work. Sorry to report that there just aren't any interesting or entertaining photos to share.
Since we put a teaser photo of the baby powder soap on Fridays post we will give you the full blown creative log here. We made a 18 bar batch of Hot Processed (HP) soap, the object was to create a soap perfect for kids and babies. The scent we used, what else but "Baby Powder" fragrance oil (FO) from Natures Garden. We decided to mix pale pink, pale blue and white together and swirl it so there would be no gender bias! The description of this fragrance says "reminiscent of Johnson and Johnson's Baby powder" they weren't kidding, the fragrance is divine and totally smells exactly like J&J's baby powder.
Since this was a hot processed soap batch we started by adding all the oils (palm, coconut, olive and castor) into the crock pot. The lye/water mixture had been combined and allowed to cool a little, then it was added to the crock pot.
The mixture began to emulsify immediately and reached light to medium trace fairly quickly. We covered the crock pot and allowed the soap to "cook". After about 15 minutes we stirred and noticed that the soap was beginning to harden, after only 15 minutes we knew it wasn't ready, but both of us were amazed at how quickly the process works.
After another 15 to 20 minutes we stirred again and noticed that the soap was beginning to gel, we kept checking and stirring and checking until we reached what is scientifically called "mashed potato" stage, (you have to see it in person, it totally looks like mashed potatoes.)
After about 2 hours we did the zap test and declared the soap finished. We added the titanium dioxide (TD) to the whole batch and the scent, mixed them well then removed about 4 cups of batter. We divided the batter in two and colored one with pink and the other with blue, mixing both completely.
At the beginning of the day we had lined the mold with freezer paper so we were ready to "plop" the soap into the mold. We randomly mixed the colors so that the result looked rather like an abstract painting for babies, rather than future soap.
Not so pretty at this stage, but boy it smelled great.
Once all the batter was added and tamped down we added the plexiglass dividers and put the soap up to cure for a day or two.
Since this is HP soap it is effectively ready to use when finished, to err on the side of caution we let it age one week before we use or sell it.
This picture is what the soap looked like after it was cut.
I wish you could smell it, honestly it screams baby scent, plus it looks very pretty and is not biased (gender) at all.
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