One of our favorites, Ocean Mist....short and sweet!

#OceanMist #HotProcessSoap #crockpotsoap

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Alison was doubly occupied today with a Doctor's appointment and a sick daughter so I was on my own.  The choice of which soap to make was easy; after doing inventory last week we knew we needed more Ocean Mist so that's what I made.

If you've followed this blog for very long you've probably seen us make Ocean Mist before because it is absolutely one of our most popular soaps. We like to document each batch of soap in the blog so that with any given soap a person can see exactly how we made it.

So without further yapping, here are the pictures and a brief description of the action.

Ocean Mist comes from +Natures Garden; they describe it as follows:  A complex bouquet              of carnations, lily of the valley, and hyacinth; underlined by oakmoss and white musk.                      

We love it!

What has become our signature colors for this soap are 1982 Blue Mica and TD from +Bramble Berry,

 I decided to add a little Icicle Mica (from +Rustic Escentuals) to the 1982 Blue.

Here is what they looked like when I mixed the colors with Safflower oil.

I added the TD to the entire batch of soap.

I didn't use the microwave to melt the oils today.  Instead, I put the crock pot on high and after 30 - 45 minutes I had melted oils.   Then I added my mixed lye/water/silk.

Yes, I added silk to this batch.

After cooking for 30 minutes the soap looked like this (above), but it still had a little over an hour to cook until it was done.

.

And the above photo shows how the soap looked when it was done.  No, that is not a picture of mashed potatoes.

I tested the soap with a PH strip and it was good,  then I did a zap test for extra insurance.

The soap was done.

In goes the Ocean Mist FO.

I removed about 4 -5 cups of batter from the crock and mixed it with the blue colorant.  Since HP soap begins to harden as soon as it's away from heat, I put the measuring cup with the 1982 Blue into a bowl of VERY hot water.  The plan was to keep the soap warm and pliable while I mixed the blue, then add it back to the white batter for an "in the pot" swirl.

Batter goes into measuring cup with 1982 and I begin to mix.

Blue is all mixed and it is still warm and pliable, yay!

Dumped the blue batter back into the remaining white batter in the crock and swirled just enough to mix them "somewhat."

Once I had the colors swirled, I dumped all mixed batter into a prepared mold, then I slammed it on the counter top several times to remove air bubbles.

Finally, I inserted our handy dandy dividers and put the soap into the curing room for 24 hours.

How easy was that?

(Gee, I think I sound like Ina Garten!? The Barefoot Contessa from Food Network)

Now, you get to see the HP bonus bar. See all the leftover soap residue in the crock pot?

If you scrape and scrape and scrape, you wind up with a bonus ball of soap. Nice!

Flash forward to Thursday afternoon.

Perfect bar of Ocean Mist!

The sun was really bright (for a change!) and the soap looks a bit washed out, 

but it is definitely not. 

The soap is a nice contrast of blue and white.

It will be ready to go on Thursday, Feb. 12.

Re-stocking some favorites

#hotprocesssoap #cannabisflower #orangeandrosemary #goatsmilk

 Thursday, January 29, 2015

We are getting low on several of our popular soaps, and we don't like to let that happen.  So to avoid something we don't like, we're restocking! Today we made Peace Out, Man! and Orange Rosemary Goats Milk soaps.  You should smell the soap kitchen when we have these fragrances out!

We decided to put silk into both batches today.  We usually put it into the Peace Out soap, but haven't put it into the Orange Rosemary before.  Ah well.  We were cutting it up anyway, so we used it for both.  The silk gives the soap extra slip and shine and it feels really nice on the skin.

Kathy worked on the Goats Milk soap while I worked on the other.

She got all of her hard oils into the crock pot and let them melt while she mixed the lye/water/silk, got the colors ready, and prepared the other additives for this soap.

Enchanted Forest Mica makes up the green streak in this soap.  We use the icicle mica in the whole batch to give the soap nice luster and shine.  You'll see it a few photos down.

We use honey in our Goats Milk soap.  I might say that this is my honey, but the name isn't spelled correctly for me.  It is local honey, though, from the county right next to us.

Kathy measured the essential oils she will be using for this soap.  

We use Orange Valencia 5X and Rosemary Spanish.

Both EOs are from +The Lebermuth Company , and we developed the blend ourselves in a ratio that we like.

Now you can see what we do with the Icicle Mica.  We mix it directly into the oils. Once the hard oils had all melted, Kathy added the remaining liquid oils, then stirred in the icicle mica.

It is so pretty to see the pearly swirls in the oil mixture. 

Kathy added the lye/water/silk mixture to the crock pot and mixed with the stick blender until the batter had reached a thick trace.  You can see in the photo above how thick it was.

The crock pots definitely do not cook at the same rate.  Kathy's (on the left) was done in our normal time, but Alison's (on the right) took forever! 

The Goats Milk soap started looking like mashed potatoes and it was sticking to the sides of the pot.  Ph test strips as well as the zap test indicated to us that the soap was done, so we turned off the heat and moved on to the finishing steps of this soap.

Kathy added the honey/distilled water mixture stirring until it was completely and evenly incorporated into the soap,

Then she chopped up the frozen goats milk 

and added it to the soap.

She kept stirring until all of the milk pieces were melted and completely mixed into the soap.

We knew that the orange EO would change the color of the soap, so Kathy took about a cup of batter out before adding the EOs.  To this cup of batter we added the Enchanted Forest Mica from +Rustic Escentuals.  We wanted a real green color, not an orange/green blended color.

To the rest of the batter still in the crock pot, Kathy added the measured EOs and stirred until they were completely mixed throughout the soap.

She then put the green colored soap back into the crock pot and gently swirled the green blobs throughout the orange until she created an nice, even in-the-pot swirl.

Finally she put all of the soap into the log mold and evened out the top.  The mold will go into the curing room to harden and cool for 24 hours.

Now to the Peace Out, Man! batch.

This soap is made from our "old faithful" recipe of palm, coconut, olive, and castor oils, so we are very used to how this recipe cooks and looks.  Things are not always perfectly the same in the soaping world, though.  The crock pot just didn't cook like it usually does.  It took WAY longer than usual for this batch to cook.  We're afraid that our yard sale crock pot may be a little blinky, but we don't want to say that out loud.  We want it to keep working for us.

While the soap was cooking, I got the other pieces of the recipe measured, mixed, and ready to go.  For this soap, we color the batter white with titanium dioxide, then color 1/2 of it pink before swirling the two halves back together.  We achieve our shade of pink by combining Ultramarine Pink and Fired Up Fuchsia, both from +Bramble Berry, with Icicle Mica from +Rustic Escentuals, in a small amount of safflower oil.

The fragrance blend that lends this soap its name is a combination of Sweet Patchouli and Cannabis Flower both from +Natures Garden  that Kathy and I combined in a ratio that we both like.  This fragrance is a real hit, and even I like it (and I'm not a patchouli fan).  Kathy says this soap feels and smells great in the shower, and she loves how the scent lingers on the skin.

This soap really had to cook for a long time today.  It cooked for so long that I had to put on my MomTaxi hat and leave.  Kathy had to finish the batch of soap, and her dear husband kindly took the pictures for her.

Once the soap was finally done, she added titanium dioxide to the whole batch to lighten and whiten it.

Next, it was time to mix in the wonderful fragrance oil blend.

She removed 1/2 of the batch and mixed in the pink colorant that I had prepared earlier.

When the pink was evenly mixed, she dumped it back into the crock pot and gently swirled the pink and white parts together.

Above you can see the soap after Kathy had spread it in the mold and put the dividers in.  It went into the curing room until the next day.

Friday, January 30, 2015

The soap was cool and it was hard enough to remove from the molds.  The 18-bar mold with dividers makes it easy because the soap is already cut into bars.  We simply remove them and they are ready to be placed on the curing shelves for a week.

The loaf molds require just a bit more effort because we have to slice the soap into bars, but the bars are very pretty and have a great size and shape.

These colors and fragrances bring an energizing pop to a chilly, overcast winter afternoon.

Peace Out, Man! and Orange Rosemary Goats Milk can be used right now, but we always give our hot process soaps a week to cure and harden.  We think it makes a better bar.

They will be ready to go Thursday, Feb. 5.