One Lily went to Atlanta, the other had help!

Luscious Lavender Hot Process Soap
#lavender #soapmakingclass #morefunthanAtlantatraffic #hotprocesssoap

Tuesday November 18, 2014

Alison spent most of the day in Atlanta for a trip to the Dermatologist's office with her daughter - no fun for either of them.....Atlanta traffic being what it is. However, when I started getting texts and pictures from Hobby Lobby I knew the real fun had started, and I stopped feeling sorry for them

(Alison's daughter took this picture while they were

sitting in traffic.  

But meanwhile back in the soap kitchen, our friend Tabitha came over and gave me a hand. Alison and I are trying to simplify the mystery of soap making for Tabitha.  We remember only too well the many confusing terms and how complicated all the procedures seemed to us when we made our first batches of soap, so if we can make it easier for Tabitha then it's a good thing.  Someday we'd like to do soap making classes, but that's not for today. Luscious Lavender HP soap is what's happening today.

Sometimes experience is the best teacher, so today I delegated much of the soap making to Tabitha. She mixed the lye into the water and measured the oils (palm, coconut, castor and olive). She is a very fast learner and pretty much made this batch of soap, I just nudged her along a little.

We used TD diluted in a tablespoon of the olive oil to help brighten the base batter.

The scent today is an Essential Oil (EO) we purchased from +Lebermuth Co; it is 100% pure oil distilled from lavender.

In a tablespoon of olive oil we mixed a half teaspoon of  Ultramarine Violet 

(from +Bramble Berry) and to lighten it and give it a little sass we added a 1/2 tsp of Diamond Dust Mica (from +Natures Garden).

Isn't it pretty?

We added the mixed TD right into the oils,

then we added the lye/water and stick blended until we had thick trace.

We put the lid on the crock pot and let it cook for 1-1/2 hours.

For the first 45 minutes we left it alone, no stirring, just an occasional peek.

Then we stirred every 15 minutes until it was done. Both Tabitha and I did a zap test and had no problems; it tasted just like soap.

The flash point was 68.9 C which translates to 156 degrees F. Yes, we had to wait about an hour to get the soap batter cooled down enough, but then we added the EO.

We separated about 3 cups of batter in a measuring cup then added the Ultramarine Violet Oxide.

We stirred and stirred until it was completely mixed.

Tabitha plopped all the white batter into the mold first, then I slung the purple batter in.

We did an "in the mold" swirl, we had to work quickly as the batter was cooling fast, but managed to mix the two colors fairly evenly.

We slammed the mold several times (really hard) to get rid of any air bubbles (at least we hope so).

Then we inserted the dividers and put up the soap to cure for 24 hours.

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The finished Luscious Lavender HP soap.

Smell is out of this world

Sorry the photography studio is still too cold to use; we are hopeful that it will warm up later in the week.