As busy as Kathy's Hummingbirds (8-15-14)

Friday August 15, 2014

So first off, we will share a quick video of the crazy hummingbirds swarming around Kathy's front porch.  We love to do paperwork on the porch and watch as the ever changing tiny bird drama constantly unfolds.

We were almost as busy as those hummingbirds today. We whipped up a batch of CP soap in the morning, then whipped up another batch of the HP "special order" soap which will be featured in a video coming soon.

For this morning though, we reverted to tried and true still photography, deciding to make a batch of of Sage and Citrus CP (cold process) soap.  The word Sage in the title is a bonus for Kathy as she has a cute granddaughter with the same name.

The scent is a sample size we bought from +Natures Garden who describes it as a  "wonderful aroma of top notes of mandarin, tangerine, ruby red grapefruit and lemon rinds, with base notes of fresh sage leaves." 

Today we did remember to add the silk. We've started pre-cutting it into tiny bits because we have found that it helps speed up the dissolution process.

We decided to hanger swirl two mica colorants, Enchanted Forest and 24 Karat Gold from Rustic Escentuals.  We did not add TD to this batch.

This is what the colorants look like after they have been dissolved
in a teaspoon of safflower oil.

In the meantime we have mixed our lye/silk/water to our oils, today we spiced up our Old Faithful recipe with the addition of shea butter to the usual mix of coconut, palm, olive and castor oils.

We mixed the liquids into the oils, and once we reached a light trace, we removed about 3/4 cup of the batter for each color.

This is the 24 Karat Gold.

And here is Enchanted Forest.

If you compare the picture of the colors mixed in oil vs. what happens when mixed in the batter, you can see the vibrancy is diluted quite a bit.

We poured a layer of plain batter into the mold then added a layer of the 24 Karat Gold.

On top of the gold we added the green. You

 can see the batter is beginning to thicken up a little.

We repeated another layer of white, gold, and green.

Pictured above is the surface of the soap just after the hanger swirling, 

it's somewhat sloppy, partly because we wipe down the tool and 

plop the excess batter right on top.  At this point we are 

essentially done except for the top layer.

We scraped every single drop of batter and plopped it on the top, we try to place the colors evenly, but in the end it really won't matter.

The photo above shows why it doesn't matter. Once it's swirled, 

the design changes and alters the complete look of the soap. 

Now we hope it looks a little more sophisticated!

After letting the soap cure overnight and most of the next day, Kathy cut the loaf into bars on Sunday afternoon.

It seems no matter how hard we try to tamp the batter, we still 

sometimes get air bubbles. Alas, this batch has a few.  They

 don't affect the soap, they just affect our artistic sensibilities.

Citrus and Sage soap will be cured on September 26th.