Monday August 11, 2014
Today we used another of our new products, a product that wasn't mentioned in yesterday's post....pink clay. This clay isn't the ceramic type clay; it's the type of clay that people use for, well, soap, cosmetics, and other bath products. We've had our eyes on several clay colors, green, blue, gold etc., but pink is the first one we actually purchased.
We had such great luck with our two new molds we're doing another split batch today using new fragrances.
described as "a smoky tobacco leaf having notes of herbaceous tobacco leaf followed by a touch of sweet honey and finishing with smoky, leathery cedar wood, fresh cherry wood, and vanilla bean - masculine, refreshing and soothing."
Dragon's Blood from +Natures Garden
described as "a mysterious, sweet earthy aroma with notes of amber, patchouli, rose and cedarwood blend with nuances of jasmine and citrus to bring out subtle spice undertones. Base notes of vanilla and powder complete this scent."
Before we go any further, we want to apologize for the lighting in our photographs. We are making soap in a functioning kitchen with several windows and good lighting. When it is gloomy, overcast, or raining our lighting is drastically affected. Today was one of those days, and mother nature just wasn't much help as it was seriously overcast most of the day.
In addition to the new scents, we are using the pink clay for the first time; it's going to be the color for the Dragon's Blood soap.
For the Pipe Smoke soap we are using +Rustic Escentuals products, Moonkissed Nights Mica (black with sparkle) and Aborigine Amber (brown with sparkle). Hopefully when the soap is finished these colors will represent the smoke and tobacco. We're nothing if not authentic!
The Aborigine Amber mixed with a teaspoon of safflower oil.
(Don't you think it has a nice tobacco color?)
The moonkissed nights mica. (Nice, smoky color, isn't it?)
Today we remembered to add the silk to the lye. It may look like a lot, but actually this is the size of an overgrown cotton ball. (That is a mini whisk in the photo, not a full size one.)
The Dragon's Blood has a good bit of vanilla and may turn the soap a light brown. We are adding titanium dioxide to the DB batter to keep it as light as possible.
.We pause now for a little candle making by Alison.
My daughter, Emma makes lip balms for herself, for friends, for her teachers, and when I'm lucky, for me. She has a couple of fragrance oils that she ordered for her lip balms, and they smell like a yummy dessert. The fragrances are both creamy; one is cream cheese, and the other is an orange creamsicle cybilla fragrance.
Out of the blue Sunday night, she got the idea that those fragrances together would make a great candle, so she asked me to make one for her while she was suffering and working hard all day studying and simplifying radicals. How could I say "no" to that?
While Kathy was dissolving the silk in the lye/water, I got out our candle supplies and began working on Emma's candle. Actually, I ended up making two for her.
I used the wax-melting pourable pitcher and measured out 16 oz of wax. I had determined that I wanted to make a candle about that size beforehand. Our candle wax is a soy wax that we ordered from +Bulk Apothecary prior to the Mountain Laurel Festival. We are pleased with the way it melts, and it mixes well with the colors and scents we have tried.
Pictured above are Emma's two fragrances of choice. I wrote the flash points on the bottle in red so I would not forget to pay attention to the temperature of the wax. I wouldn't have a very happy camper on my hands if I burned off all of the creamsicle fragrance from her candle! Notice that both of these came from +Bramble Berry . The Web site has a great tool for calculating the fragrance amounts for oils that come from her site. (Fragrance Calculator) I used the tool for both of these oils to determine how much to use for 16 oz. of candle wax.
The photo above shows the wax in the pouring pitcher. It is sitting in a pot of slowly heating/simmering water until the wax melts.
While the wax was melting, I prepared the jars by placing the wicks in them. Okay, in all honesty, I had only planned on one big candle, but I found these two cute jars and decided to make two candles instead of one. The jar on the left was already prepped with the wick from a prior candle-making day, so I only had to prep one jar.
Above shows the candles just after I had poured the wax. Notice how the very bottom of the jar has a slightly different appearance? That is where the wax is beginning to cool and harden.
Above are the candles in use at home. Emma really appreciated that I made them. I think that the fragrance is not quite strong enough. The chart on Bramble Berry's site gives options for light, medium, and strong scent. I went with the medium, but next time will go with the stronger option.
Happy girl and nice-smelling house. AHHHH! All is right with the world.
Now back to the split batch of soap....
Here I am adding the lye/silk/water into the combination of olive, palm,
coconut and castor oils.
I begin mixing using the stick blender. You can see the mixture is becoming emulsified by the change in the color of the oils to off white.
When the batter is mixed evenly and we reach a light trace, I pour half of the batter into a different bucket. Now I am ready to work my magic with the first 1/2 of the batter.
The Dragon's Blood fragrance is added and turns the batter a light brown color.
The titanium dioxide is added to the batter and helps to lighten it up.
I add about a cup of batter to the pink clay & water; it lightens up to a nice rose color.
I add a nice thick layer of white batter to the bottom of the mold. The batter is quite thick, probably because we mixed the lye/silk/water and oils together when they were around 105 degrees. I layer the clay batter on top of the base layer.
If you look closely (lower right corner), you can see this is the second layer of pink clay added.
Another layer of white then all the leftover clay color is spooned onto the top. At this point the lightbulb came on, I'd forgotten to swirl the batter!!! ooops!
Very carefully I inserted the hanger swirl tool into the batter and swirled, keeping it well below the top layer so it wouldn't disturb the (eventual) swirl on the top.
I am hoping that this will work. Optimally I should have swirled before I added the last of the colored batter on the top.
You can see the "line" where I pulled the hanger tool out of the batter. All we can do now is cross our fingers until we can remove it from the mold tomorrow.
This is the fun part, swirling the top layer. You never know how the design will look, but no matter what we do when we swirl, it usually looks pretty neat.
Now it's time to work on the Pipe Smoke batch. Since Alison was making candles this batter had been sitting about 10 minutes and gotten rather stiff.
I stirred the batter vigorously to loosen it up.
Adding just over an ounce of Pipe Smoke fragrance oil helps loosen up the batter.
I add about 3/4 cup of batter to both the brown and black colors, mixing each well.
First the aborigine amber.
Then the moonkissed night mica, it looks kind of like smoky, right?
The batter had gotten really thick, almost to thick to pour, so I grabbed a spatula and spooned the batter into the mold making a nice white layer in the bottom.
I began spooning in the black/gray batter.
Then added the brown batter.
I add another layer of white...
then repeat the spooning with the black/gray and brown batter.
We always try to remember to tamp the batter down especially between layers when we add it to the mold. Air bubbles are present from the mixing of the batter, and we don't want air bubbles!
If you look very closely at the end of my finger is an air bubble just before we popped it. We really tamped this batch so we hope to find no air pockets or bubbles.
In the above photo, the batter has already been hanger swirled as you can see on the lower left corner and left side. After I hanger swirled, I scraped every last bit from the bottom of the bucket and plopped it on top. It was really thick. Maybe it was the power of suggestion because of the fragrance oils Alison was using in her candle wax, but this was starting
to look like cream cheese frosting!
to look like cream cheese frosting!
To finish up I added the remaining brown and black batter to the top - no particular order, just plopped it in. Next is swirling, so much fun!
We hope this short video is as fun for you to watch as it was for us to do!
Tuesday afternoon, just back from our fun day (see next blog entry - "Road Trip"), and we unmolded and cut the soap.
Unfortunately, no matter how hard we tamped down the batter we have air bubbles! The big hole in the top is one that had popped, so are the several others visible in this picture (frown).
The two soaps after curing overnight, we are getting ready to unmold them.
This is the Dragon's Blood, it smells great, we are happy that we added the TD to keep the lighter batter "white."
Happily there are very few air bubbles in this batch.
This is Pipe Smoke, it smells just like both my grandfathers did when they smoked their pipes!
There are quite a few air bubbles in this batch, even though we tamped it down several times. The batter may have been so thick that they just wouldn't go away. No matter! We think they add to the soap's character!
Pipe Smoke and Dragon's Blood will be cured by September 23.
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