A Well-Soaped Machine

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A Well-Soaped Machine 

(you know, instead of well-oiled?  Even though we use a lot of oil.  But, since we make soap?  We are a well-soaped machine.  Get it?  Too corny?  Oh well, that's Alison...)

Monday, November 17, 2014

Today was crummy, windy, rainy, and progressively colder and colder.  It would have been a great day to curl up with a book.  We had planned to work on cost calculations, labels, invoices, mailing labels, and order fulfillment. You know, generally kind of take it easy.  

Then as Kathy was looking for something in her email, she spied one from Glen Ella Springs titled, more soap!  After opening the email and reading Luci Kivett's message, all the "take it easy" plans went right out the window.   Basically, Glen Ella needs six different soaps - 3 we had and 3 we had to make, STAT!

Ocean Mist and Amazingly Grace were up today,  Luscious Lavender will be completed tomorrow.  I wish we had been videoing today. We were like a well oiled machine!  Starting at 11:30 we had two batches of HP soap in the molds by 2:45!  We didn't have much time to take pictures, so this blog will be short, well, relatively short considering what we accomplished.  

We started with the Amazingly Grace (Type) batch. This FO comes from +Natures Garden;

they describe the scent as follows:  " Italian bergamot and sparkling lemon are sweetened 

with freshly picked citron and neroli.  A white floral jasmine, orange blossom and rose 

are blended with sheer musk and cedarwood."

Now you know why it's so popular.

The colors we chose for this batch are both from www.rusticescentuals.com: Cornflower Celebration Mica and Enchanted Forest Mica.

We planned to sprinkle the micas onto the batter once we had it in the mold.

What we didn't show was the stick blending, then checking the soap batter every 15 minutes for 1-1/2 hours, the zap test, and our smiles when we realized the soap was done.

Here (above) we add in the FO to the cooked soap.

Once the FO was completely mixed in, we plopped all the batter into the mold, then we 

sprinkled about 1/2 tsp. each of the green and blue mica colors.

I guess you'd call this an "in the mold swirl." It worked fine as our batter was still very workable and didn't get too cold - the added value of a high flash point.  

The soap in the mold after we had tamped it down several times (hard, very hard).

Dividers went in and soap was put in curing area until tomorrow.

************

It's magically tomorrow and here is what the Amazingly Grace soap looks like after a 24 hour cure.

The outdoor photography studio is closed until it warms up a little.

If you look closely you can see the green and blue mica sparkle sprinkled throughout the soap.

****************

And now the second batch.

Actually both batches were put together almost simultaneously, but one had to be first, and Ocean Mist didn't make the cut.

Ocean Mist is one of our most popular soaps. We buy the FO from +Natures Garden 

who describes it as "a complex bouquet of carnations, lily of the valley, and hyacinth; 

underlined by oakmoss and white musk."  

Seriously, what's not to love with this FO!!

We decided to use TD in the batter to keep it light.  We then mixed a little Diamond Dust Mica from +Natures Garden  with 1982 Blue Mica from +Bramble Berry.

If you've been reading this blog, you know we like sparkle.

We add the Diamond Dust Mica to the 1982 Blue Mica

All together, "ohhhh ahhhh!" It looks so pretty 

and sparkly, too.

Here we add the mixed TD (1-1/2 tsp TD + 1 TBSP olive oil) into the rest of the oil mixture (coconut, palm, olive, and castor oils)

Once again we were blessed with a high flash point and were able to dump the FO into the soap right after it finished cooking - no cool down necessary (thank goodness).

We removed about 2-1/2 to 3 cups of batter and mixed in the 1982 Blue until it was thoroughly blended.

We then spooned it back into the crock and did a real "in the pot swirl" gently blending so we still had two distinct colors.

Into the mold it went as we stopped several times to tamp it down.

And here we show you the mold with the dividers in place. We will get 18 bars of soap out of each of these batches.

As we clean up HP soap we usually wind up with our bonus bars comprised of the scrapings off the bowl.  We can use it immediately, but we usually wait a week to let it cure just a little.

Both of these batches will be ready in a week, but in the meantime here is what the Ocean Mist looked like after 24 hours.

Great looking soap, and the two colors are very distinct, which is exactly what we wanted.