#fragrancequest #hotprocesssoap #signaturescents
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Okay. So, Kathy and I have a problem. We may require professional help to relieve our fragrance oil sample issues.
We have recently been on a quest to find the perfect fragrance for a customer with a specific request. Really specific.
None of our usual sources had it by name, so we embarked on the fun of research. There's no sarcasm implied or intended at all. It really is fun to us; if only we had a bank account to match our wish list. We located as much information as we could find about the layers of the desired fragrance, and then we began to look for FOs that contained elements as close to the target as possible.
We must have 8 or 10 new fragrances to sample now, and we aren't at all ashamed to admit it. They are all WONDERFUL - well, there might be one dud in the bunch, but we can't wait to see how they all perform in CP or HP soap.
After we had all of these new fragrances in hand, we came across a new vendor, Candlewic, that had EXACTLY what we were looking for. Their website describes the fragrance as follows:
"Top Note: Bergamot, lemon, orange flower; Mid Notes: Lily of the valley, jasmine; Bottom Notes: Sandalwood, patchouli, amber, vanilla bean, oakmoss, musk." We will call it Soft Sunset.
At the same time, we located the fragrance at yet another vendor so we ordered small amounts from both places. (Yes, this is in addition to the pile of FOs that we had already received.) Both new FOs had the same fragrance name, and both had very similar descriptions. The only difference was that the Web site for the first one indicated that it was candle safe but not skin safe (BUMMER!) and the second one indicated that it was safe for both.
Fast forward a couple of days. We waited not-so-patiently for the two new FOs to arrive, and when they did we ripped into them like good little girls on Christmas morning.
Wow! Seriously. Never judge a book by its cover. The 2 FOs were nothing alike. The first one was exactly what we were looking for, but the second one was absolutely not. I (Alison) still feel a choking tickle in the back of my throat when I just think of smelling that second bottle!
Interestingly, we were expecting the bottle from +Candlewic Company to be only for use in making candles (not exactly what we wanted, but better than nothing); however, when it arrived, the bottle indicated that it was skin safe. Huh? Which is it? We didn't want to assume it was safe and cause someone's skin to be irritated, so we embarked on quest #2 (or is it #3 by now?).
After a couple of calls to +Candlewic Company , who were very kind and helpful, they emailed a copy of the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) to us. However, it didn't indicate a safe usage rate of the oil for skin products. This time we called FO's manufacturer as indicated on the MSDS. They were super nice and actually put us through to the lab to be sure we got the correct information. Guess what! The FO is skin safe, and at a rate that is higher than we normally use anyway.
Woo Hoo! Good to go for a test batch of soap.
Oils ready in our test batch mini crock pot.
The lab technician warned us that our FO does contain vanilla, so we knew to expect it to discolor. We wanted to lessen the discoloration as much as possible, so we added titanium dioxide to whiten the soap.
We mixed with the stick blender
until we reached thick trace.
Then we scraped every drop possible off the blender.
Ingredients are simply too expensive to waste!
After 30 minutes, the soap looked like this (above).
After that initial 1/2 hour, we stirred it every 15 minutes until it had cooked for an hour and a half.
At that point it looked like mashed potatoes, soap was sticking to the sides of the crock, it smelled like soap, the Ph test strips indicated correct Ph levels, AND the zap test left us with happy, un-zapped tongues. It was ready.
We added the FO and stirred completely to incorporate the oil evenly.
Then we pressed the soap into one of our small 1 lb. test batch molds.
We let it cool and harden for 24 hours before we removed it and cut it into 4 nice sized bars.
Kathy took the soap samples to our customer and she LOVED them. It was exactly what she was looking for.
The added fun was that when Kathy visited our customer, she also took the bottles of all the other samples we had ordered in our quest. Our customer was as excited about the FOs as we were, and they had a great time sampling the variety of fragrances.
Take a look at the sample bars below:
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