Soap Lily: Floral Explosion in the Soap Kitchen, No One was Harmed!

#fragrancesandmemories #pinkcarnation #coldprocesssoap #floralandcirtus

Friday, February 20, 2015

Today we had an explosion of fragrances, an explosion of color, and explosion of memory. Don't worry! Nothing literal or painful, just a day of heightened senses. Do you ever have a day like that? It was probably one of our fragrance oils acting as today's intensifier.

Many of our suppliers send us free samples with each order we place (think bait). Most of the time we are focused on other things or other scents and we forget about the samples. However, when we received not one but two small samples of Carnation FO from +Bramble Berry, I (Kathy) didn't forget.

I have loved the smell of carnations and their cousin dianthus for as long as I can remember, didn't know why just loved the smell. A few years ago I found the web site http://www.fragrantica.com/ and looked up a perfume my mom always used called Bellodgia. After reading the "perfume pyramid" for Bellodgia I realized the connection between this perfume to some of the floral scents I have always loved.

"Bellodgia was launched in 1927. The nose behind this fragrance is Ernest Daltroff. Top notes are carnation and rose; middle notes are jasmine, lily of the valley and violet; base notes are musk, clove, vanilla and sandalwood."

It is interesting to me that a perfume my mom wore years and years ago could shape my love for certain smells to this day.

(Note from Alison: It really is interesting to see how fragrances evoke memories. Reading what Kathy just wrote, I can completely see why she is so drawn to the fragrances that I frequently see her favoring. )

But enough of the perfume history lesson and on to the soap making.

As I mentioned, we had two small (.5 oz each) vials of Carnation, not enough to make much of anything, so we started mixing and testing to come up with enough liquid (3.30 oz) to scent a batch of soap. After countless combinations the one we both liked was Carnation, Sweet Patchouli, Yuzu, and Jasmine. With fingers crossed we proceeded.

A brief description of each scent:

Carnation from +Bramble Berry - "The top note is sweet with strong floral notes. Then the middle notes follow through with clove and fresh cut stem. The fragrance finishes with a base note of pepper.

Sweet Patchouli from +Natures Garden - "an earthy blend of Patchouli and Green Grass intertwined with Fresh Lavender and hints of licorice with crisp notes of menthol softened by amber."

Yuzu from +Natures Garden - "top notes of mandarin, tangerine, lemon satsuma, and ruby red grapefruit, middle notes of bergamot and base notes of oakmoss."

Jasmine from +Natures Garden - "the exotic blend of freshly cut jasmine flowers with a base note of rose petals."

For some reason the idea of "pink carnations" popped into my brain. With faint memories of the Pat Boone song, I chose the color combination of pink, pink, and white.

+Rustic Escentuals provided the Icicle, Frosty Rose Petal and Blushed Pink Micas. The TD came from +Bramble Berry.

Since the two pink micas contained shimmer I decided to add the icicle mica to the TD so all colors would sparkle equally.

Colors are mixed with a bit of Safflower oil.

After adding the lye/water/silk to the oils (Coconut, Olive, Palm and Castor), I mixed to a light, light trace and then added the FO's.

After dividing the batter ways, I mixed TD+Icicle Mica (white) into one,

Blushed Pink into another,

and then Frosty Rose Petal into the third.

When the colors were mixed I was ready to pour!

OOPSIE!!!!

I had a plan for concentric pours of batter, starting in a corner, but I had to scrap the plan after trying the first pour....which plopped rather than poured! The batter was too thick to pour ---- on to plan B!

Plan B - dump all the batter into the mold, no design, just get it into the mold.

It wasn't that the batter was accelerating terribly, it was just too thick to do much with. You can see by the picture above that we were way past thin trace and almost to thick trace at this point.

All batter is in mold, now what?

Swirl of course....we gently swirled so that the colors were mixed....a little.

To finish, I pulled the skewer diagonally back and forth across the top of the batter

then repeated back and forth in the opposite direction.

It was not exactly what we had envisioned, but it will work just fine.

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Saturday afternoon I unmolded the soap.

This is a view we normally don't show, the bottom of the mold. You can clearly see where I plopped some of the colors and where the spatula pulled through the different colors.