Catching up for March

This will be our second installment of "catch up" blogs.  Our goal is to keep the blog as current as we can, granted we may slide occasionally, but our intentions are good.

Early March started out almost summer like here in NE Georgia.   Both of us wanted to make soap on the front porch, but obviously that didn't happen.  What did happen was us making some great, and some not so great soap.  

We will get to the soap making later, the most important news was that FINALLY,  finally, finally….we became official, we are Soap Lily, LLC!  Yes, we are incorporated, signed sealed and delivered.  And of course it's still us, but somehow we feel more official and business like.  Once the LLC was in place we jumped on getting insurance with Hand Made Artisan Insurance, it's relatively inexpensive and gives us great peace of mind.  You may ask why we need peace of mind….because the Soap Lily web site is up and running. Yes! Finally after working on the web site for over a year it's up and running!  One thing we were absolutely sure about was we would not make the web site active until we were incorporated and had the insurance, for obvious reasons.

One other bit of news is that we joined the Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetic Guild, we discovered after joining that the business can't join, only individuals can, so Alison is our official member, for now. They have a ton of information for soap makers and we are excited to have this great resource available to us.  In addition to all the LLC stuff, the web site, keeping up with our Etsy Shop, our Twitter feed, our Instagram account, Pinterest, our Facebook page and last but (we hope) not least our YouTube page!  You can see social media takes up A LOT, LOT, LOT of our time, oh and We forgot the blog, literally, we forgot to post on it, which is the reason for this catch up post!  I am tired just thinking of all the work we have to do to get all the various sites current and keep interest piqued….it's a whole other job.  All we want to do is make soap and yet we spend almost half our days "media-izing".  But enough complaining, we will now actually catch you up on the rest of our soaping in March.

One of the first batches we did was kind of a fiasco, the soap turned out, but just not exactly as we had planned.  First thing, way back last fall we did 4 test batches, you can see that blog post here.  One of the fragrances was called French Vanilla Oak, and it is really an outstanding FO. We swore we'd make it again, and this was the time.  We decided to christen our new 36 bar mold. Why not? It's a great smelling soap that we both love.

So the batch of batter is huge, we used an FO from +Rustic Escentuals called French Vanilla Oak, it smelled exactly like the batch we made last fall.  So we got busy and whipped up the oils and lye and then added the FO and oopsie, it riced.

We could not figure out why it riced, after all we'd made it last fall and it performed perfectly!  One thing we had done (which we thought may have been the problem) was to hold out about 3 cups of batter to keep it white, so we did not add the FO to that 3-4 cups, did this upset the ratio and cause the soap rice? or was it just the FO? Hmmmmm what to do!  We finished the batch, coloring part of the batter green, removing approx. 3-4 cups to keep it "white" and the remaining soap we knew would be brown due to the vanilla content in the FO.  Once we removed it the soap looks almost all brown, the unscented "white"didn't stay that white, probably because it blended with the scented (vanilla) batter.  At any rate, the soap is dark, and has ricing, but it smells wonderful.  We were still trying to figure out what happened.  (please go to next picture & you will find out!)

French Vanilla Oak oopsie

Since we now had 36 bars of semi attractive, but great smelling soap we were determined to figure out exactly what happened.  The culprit we thought had been the removal of the 3-4 cups of batter which upset the FO to soap ratio.  What to do? If you are us, you make another batch and don't remove the batter, which is exactly what we did. Much to our dismay this batch riced, not as much as the 36 bar batch, so we concluded that removing the 3-4 cups of batter did contribute to the immediate ricing. The amount of ricing on the second batch was minimal, but there was a bit of ricing.  We took a deep breath and went back to the test batch recipe sheet from last fall and of course the light bulb went on….we figured out what had happened right away.  The FO from the batch last fall was from Natures Garden, not Rustic Escentuals!  So now we know, even though an FO may smell EXACTLY the same, it may not perform the same way. 

French Vanilla Oak second batch

After the ricing incident we pushed on to something we hoped would work - Star Wars soap molds (very detailed) using HP soap.  We decided to make a 1/2 batch of our old stand by and use part for Star Wars, and the balance we would color and scent with something more spring like.  In this case we used Tulips and Lilac FO from +Rustic Escentuals. It is a fantastic floral scent and we both love it.  We used a little Oh La La Pink mica (again from Rustic Escentuals) and divided the batter in half, so the soap turned out as a quasi in the pot swirl with the pink and white.  We used our silicone rose molds which resulted in 6 bars of soap weighing about 3-1/2 ounces each.  

We simultaneously scented the remaining batter with a great FO from Aztec International called Prince Charming, it leans towards a masculine scent, with a hint of goodness that ladies like too.  The color scheme for the Star Wars is pretty monochromatic, grey, black and white.  And we discovered that to use these molds and get really sharp details, it needs to be CP soap.  This HP batch will be ok as it still Star Wars, but not quite as detailed.

Tulip and Lilac Rose & HP Star Wars

Next we tried our hands using a comb tool, we used wooden skewers and created our own comb (that ultimately went into the trash). We were trying to be economical but it didn't work.  While making the soap we created a YouTube video you can watch on this link, and it shows more about the comb tool.  The comb we made kind of worked, but it had to be held exactly level (and when Kathy used it she wasn't level).  The soap is lovely, and it does smell nice. We used a FO from +Rustic Escentuals called Volcano.  It performs perfectly and it smells fantastic.  The colors we used were from Rustic as well, Caribbean Kiss, Lemon Shebert, Frosty Rose Petal, Oh La La (pink) and Icicle micas.  We were going for spring colors and we love how they turned out.

Energy Swirl

using "former" comb tool

We've kind of been on a Essential Oil kick recently, we have been experimenting with different blends and so far we like everything we've come up with.  This mixture was mostly citrus EO's - Pink Grapefruit and Lemon with a bit of Spearmint, all from +New Directions Aromatics.  It is a beautiful blend, the smell is both fresh and invigorating, and it may be our new favorite blend.  To give the soap some color we added a little Vibrance Yellow mica from +Nurture Soap Supplies  to a fourth of the batter, then a combination of Blushed Pink and Frosty Rose Petal micas from +Rustic Escentuals.  We were trying to hit the Lemon and the pink grapefruit colors found in the EO blend.

Citrus Mint Bliss

We went back to using the "comb tool", but this time it was a new improved version that Alison's son made.  He made it free hand, and wasn't happy with the uneven angles of the holes, but it still made a beautiful swirl. (Now we actually have the 3rd generation comb tool that he just made and the 3rd one is pretty much perfect - he used a drill press to get the holes straight. But we didn't use it until April...) 

 This Lemon Verbena may be the best smelling soap we make; it honestly makes Kathy's whole house smell terrific.  We used a batter that was slow moving then we poured layer after layer of color.  We used Spring green and Green Vibrance over a pale yellow base that consisting of combined Vibrance Yellow and Winter White micas, all colors are from +Nurture Soap Supplies.  

Lemon Verbena

The next batch of soap is a repeat of one of our best selling soaps - Amazingly Grace. We buy the FO from +Natures Garden and it consistently sells well for us.  This was an easy day of HP soaping, we used our traditional Amazingly Grace colors Robin Egg Blue and Moss Green.  We pulled about 1-1/2 cups of batter out for each color then swirled them back into the base batter into which we had added a bit of winter white to brighten it up.  The end result is both pleasing to the eyes and nose.

Amazingly Grace

The last soap we made was Egyptian Musk, it was another of the soaps we did a test batch of back in the fall and LOVED.  We decided to do it using HP so we would have it for the first couple of shows we are doing this year.  Using our old standby soap recipe, we created a mica swirl using Toffeelicious and 24 Karat Gold which are both from +Rustic Escentuals, then we also added Sea Green mica from +Nurture Soap Supplies.  The in the pot swirl using just the mica colorants gives this soap a nice look and hopefully both men and women will love it as much as we do.

Egyptian Musk

So that pretty much brings you up to date with what Soap Lily, LLC (had to use it!) has been doing the past few weeks.  We are happy if you take the time to keep up with us and hope that in all the blogging, videoing, pinning, tweeting etc etc. you will learn a gem or two about soap making.  And even if you don't learn a thing, we hope you enjoy following our adventures.