Friday October 17, 2014
Today was officially crazy day in the soap kitchen, it started early and went on all day long.
First we had a visitor, one of Kathy's oldest friends, Judy, was visiting and was in the soap kitchen to see exactly how our soap is made and to cheer us on. Her husband John was in and out, as was Kathy's husband. Around midday Alison dashed over to school to retrieve her daughter Emma and once they got back we had another helper in the kitchen. Oh, did I forget to mention the dogs? Yes, the three dogs were in, then out, then in, out, in......you get the picture - pandemonium!!
But somehow with the husbands, visitors, kids, and dogs we managed to get three batches of soap completed - a cold process batch called Country Bumpkin, a small batch using cocoa butter to test on Emma (who has many and varied allergies), and last but not least a batch of the popular Honey Almond Oatmeal.
We will start with the cold process batch. We've been making mostly HP soap in the last month or so, mainly because we've needed the soap quickly. We do love the creative aspect of CP soap, we just don't like waiting 6 weeks to use/sell it. The first batch today won't be ready until six weeks from now, a long wait.
For this CP soap, we are trying out a new fragrance called Country Bumpkin. We ordered it based on the reviews we read and were expecting something that would just knock us off our feet. When the bottle arrived a few days ago we were, well, unimpressed. The smell out of the bottle (OOB) was just not that great. We took a deep breath and put our faith in fellow soapers who really love the FO and put a few drops on a paper towel to see how we liked it out in the air.
What a difference that made!
Before long the fragrance filled the kitchen and we honestly LOVED what we were smelling. We agreed that we definitely wanted to make soap with this FO. +Natures Garden describes Country Bumpkin as "a wonderful complex blend of apples, candied yams, marshmallows, sweet cream butter, brown sugar, nutmeg, crushed cinnamon bark, and fresh cloves."
We started out by snipping a ball of silk into tiny pieces to incorporate into
the soap.
With a name like Country Bumpkin, we wanted some good
country colors. We chose micas from +Rustic Escentuals in some wonderful
colors: Toffeelicious, 24 Karat Gold, and Desert Sunbeam.
The FO does contain vanilla, so we know that will cause the soap to darken quite a bit as it
cures, so we added titanium dioxide from +Bramble Berry to the whole batch of soap to keep
the base color as light as possible and counteract the vanilla.
We mixed diamond sparkle mica into the oils to give
our CP soap a little extra luster and depth.
See the thermometer in the upper portion of the photo? We are
monitoring the temperatures of the oils and the lye/water/silk mixture
so we will know when they have reached a good temperature for mixing.
It doesn't matter how many times we mix this mica into oil, we still say
"ooooh, aaaah, oh!" because it is just so beautiful.
We poured the lye/water/silk into the oils,
and we mixed gently with the spatula to combine.
Then we used the stick blender and brought the batter to light trace.
Once it had reached trace we added the fragrance oil.
The FO was a very interesting part of our morning. We checked the safety information sheet for the FO and were immediately dubious about what we read. The maximum use for soap or skin products in very VERY low.
Yes, if you can see the chart above, it says .05%. Not 5%, not .5%, but .05%. That's, like, almost nothing! Seriously! Nothing! We just couldn't believe it was accurate, so we put in a call to the help line at Nature's Garden. After a very friendly conversation with a sweet and helpful woman there, we found that it was, in fact, accurate. You see, the FO contains some very strong spices like cinnamon which can be irritating to the skin if used in large amounts. Also, NG's FOs are concentrated, so a little goes a long way. We decided to follow their recommendation and put a very tiny amount of FO into the soap.
We accessed our math skills (with much thanks to our math teachers from longer ago than we care to acknowledge), and calculated the amount of fragrance to add to this batch of soap. We questioned whether it was going to make a difference. We actually figured that we would end up with unscented soap, but we could definitely smell it in the batter, and we could definitely smell it as it hardened. We can't wait to see how it does as the soap cures over the next six weeks. By the way - right now it smells just as good as we hoped it would!
We had our 3 micas mixed in safflower oil ready and waiting in
3 different red Solo cups.
We added a portion of the soap batter to each cup and mixed
thoroughly to color each portion of the batter with the mica.
Using the loaf mold, we poured in a layer of white soap batter.
Then we poured in a bit of each of the colored batters.
We added another layer of the white batter. This time Kathy poured the
batter by using a spatula to gently layer the soap. We didn't want the second layer of white to
break through the colored layers that we had just poured into the mold.
Next, another layer of each of the colors.
Then another layer of white.
When we had the white layer, we did a nice hanger swirl.
Then we topped off the soap with the remaining white,
Followed by the rest of the colored batter.
Using a wooden skewer, Kathy swirled the top of the soap.
She was careful not to go too deep. We didn't want to disturb the hanger swirl; we only wanted to swirl the top of the soap with the skewer.
See how gorgeous! We moved the soap into the curing room to gel and then
harden over the next 24 hours.
The soap did crack just a little bit as it went through the gel phase over the next 24 hours.
On Saturday, Kathy removed the soap from the mold and cut it into bars. WOW!
It is beautiful!!!
Alison has been busy with theater things and Homecoming dances and Academic Letter receptions this weekend, so she hasn't seen or smelled the soap in person yet, but Kathy says that it has a very nice faint scent. We can't wait to see what it does as it cures.
Close up of the swirl
County Bumpkin Hanger Swirl CP soap will be ready to use in 6 weeks.
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