Little Black Dress
Friday, November 14, 2014
This morning the soap making got off to a slow start due to a crock shopping expedition. We hit an indoor yard sale on the square in Clarkesville. Mostly it was office stuff like chairs, desks, filing cabinets etc., but Alison spied a medium sized crock pot - just what we had been looking for! We forked over $4 and headed to a local Estate Sale. We felt great about the crock pot we had just purchased** but we had seen a picture of a nice full sized crock pot in the preview pictures and were hopeful for a score.
**(Our medium sized crock pot did not work - even after we asked and were
told it did! Yes, we were upset. On Sat. morning Kathy went back to the
indoor yard sale and explained the problem, and the nice lady forked over
our $4 and apologized. We really would have rather had it work!)
We were a little early as we approached the home where the estate sale was held, and as we walked through the garage and past the checkout table we spied "our" crock pot, and it was a beaut. Unfortunately it was sitting in another persons "pile," so we were out of luck. Next time we will go even earlier! We had fun looking around and bought a few odds and ends we can use in the soap kitchen so the trip wasn't in vain.
Our friend Tabitha was going to be at the soap kitchen around 10:30, so we hurried home, plotting our CP soaping strategy as we went. Due to our clever planning we flew into the house jumped right in making a batch of CP soap. We put Tabitha to work, and in no time she was helping pour the lye crystals into the water, and yes she had on gloves and goggles. We wanted to show Tabitha that making a batch of CP soap is so much faster (on the front end) than HP soap.
One of the scents we've been itching to try is called Little Black Dress. We bought a small sample from www.rusticescentuals.com earlier in the summer and liked it so much we bought a larger size so we would have enough to make a batch in the log mold.
We took a picture with the liquid in the bottle; however, it was blurry,
but you get the idea, right?
We decided that with little black dress we would need black (dress) and hot pink (lipstick).
The Moonkissed Nights Mica (from Rustic Escentuals) already had built in sparkle, the Fired Up Fuchsia Colorant (from +Bramble Berry) had no sparkle so we added it with the Diamond Dust Mica (from +Natures Garden)
We decided to add TD to the batter as we want the uncolored part of the soap to be very light/white.
The sparkly colors, (L) Fired Up Fuchsia (with sparkle added) and Moonkissed Nights Mica (R)
We used the stick blender and brought the batter to a light trace. We were planning to do a hanger swirl and wanted the batter as liquid as possible.
To the batter we add a teaspoon and a half of TD that had been mixed into a tablespoon of olive oil.
Before we mixed the TD in.
The TD considerably lightens up the batter - just what we wanted.
Now the FO goes in - Little Black Dress. Thankfully Alison was close by to remind Kathy to put the scent in!
We divided the batter 3 ways, leaving some in the mixing pot.
We had about 2 - 2-1/2 cups in each measuring cup.
In goes the Moonkissed Nights Mica
And here goes the Fired Up Fuchsia (with sparkle).
We begin layering with white batter.
As we poured some of the pink batter in, we noticed that it was already getting stiff. Not good. We wanted liquid.
The black batter is still pourable, but it was getting stiff just like the pink did.
DRAT!
As you can see by the time we had two full layers in place the batter was quite stiff. We mixed lye/water and oils around 95 degrees, so temperature was not the problem.
We think the scent caused it. In soap terminology it's called "slight acceleration".
In our terminology it's called a pain in the neck, especially since we wanted to used the hanger swirl technique. Oh well, we did it anyway.
Here goes, hanger swirling away, the batter is SO stiff, we aren't sure it will turn out.
Once we finished swirling we added the remaining white batter...
Then finished it off with remaining pink and black, and finally giving it a nice swirl.
After the swirl we used a spoon to finish off the top.
What the batter looked like before we put it in the curing box.
*******************
Flash forward to Sunday afternoon
After 48 hours in the curing box the loaf of soap looked like this (above).
Kathy unmolded the soap on Sunday because it's supposed to rain all day Monday and our outdoor photo studio would be a bit wet.
And here is Little Black Dress.
Even with the stiffening batter it still turned out fine.
The smell is great, and we love how the swirl turned out.
Little Black Dress will be cured by December 25,
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