Soap Lily: A Viewer Comment Saves Us Time

#hotprocesssoap #fallcolors #OakforMen #OakforWomen

Monday, August 10, 2015

Wow! It's been almost a month since we have posted a new blog entry. We have tons of excuses, really we do....both of us had some fun vacation travels that kept us hopping. We had a great time at the Dillard Bluegrass and BBQ festival last weekend, then of course it was time to get ready for school again. Boy this summer has flown by! Before you know it, we will have to have our Christmas soaps curing!

It seems like we have a (great) problem. Each time we do a festival or show, we sell a good bit of soap - no complaints there, it just leaves us with very a meager supply of soap. Consequently we have to catch up soap making batches....i.e. 2 or 3 batches at a time and of course they are for the most part hot process.

Today was no exception, so we started off with a really nice fragrance we bought from Aztec International called Oak for Men. They describe it as "a red oak, cedar wood and musk blend." Actually it it far more interesting and complex than that. Check out the following list of scents that make this one smell terrific:

Top notes are: Bergamot, Lemon, Clary Sage, Aldehydes*, Juniper Berry
Mid notes are: Geranium, Lavender, Orange Blossom, Clove, Nutmeg, Pimento (Allspice), Oak
Dry notes are: Cedarwood, Patchouli, Sandalwood, Vetiver, Musk and Coffee
*The Fragrantica web site describes Aldenhydes as follows: Odor profile: A vast group of components of organic origin reproduced in the lab. In perfumery parlance by "aldehydes" we mostly refer to aliphatic/"fatty" aldehydes, those used in a reference string in Chanel No.5, Chanel No.22, Lanvin Arpege, Lauder White Linen and other classics. These aldehydes provide a soapy-waxy-lemony-floral effect to the formula and are used to classify a fragrance as "aldehydic".

So there you have it, this soap is going to be a very complex scent that is sure to please both men and women. Guess we will have to name it something non gender specific!

Here are a few pictures we snapped while we made the soap.

The "BBW Type" written below the name simply means the scent originated at Bath and Body Works.

The picture above is what the soap batter looked like after 45 minutes on hi; it is referred to as the Vaseline stage. We had been cooking right into the mashed potato stage because that is how we first learned to do HP. Hey, it worked for us, so we stuck with it. We happily discovered though, that our method was kind of overkill, although it never seemed to hurt the quality of our soap.

After we combined the oils with the lye/water, we stick blended it to a heavy trace then let it cook in the crock pot on high. We stirred it once at the 30 minute mark, then after 15 minutes more we checked the soap. It had been cooking for a total of 45 minutes on high.

You might ask, "45 minutes?? But you always cook the soap longer than that, like for 1-1/2 hours!" ...and you would be so right. But thanks to one of our Youtube viewers, Sue Sue, who commented that more than likely the soap was "done" after 45 minutes. We experimented today and tested the soap after 45 minutes.

Both Alison and I did the zap test (stuck the hot batter on our tongues to see if we got an electrical like zap); it tasted like soap, and it didn't zap us, but it was really HOT.

So we are going with a 45 minute (give or take a few minutes) cook!

We immediately started thinking about all the time we will save!

Boy, that was a lot of information!

We decided to do colors that would relay a fall leaf look, we used colorants from three companies.

From +Bramble Berry - Copper Sparkle Mica; from +Rustic Escentuals - 24 Karat Gold Mica and from Nurture Soap - Moss Green Mica

Here is what the colors looked like after we mixed them with a little Safflower oil.

The yummy fragrance goes in.

The smell is so nice; we both love it!

Once the scent was thoroughly mixed in we removed about a cup and a half of batter for each color, leaving the remaining batter natural.

Once the colors were all mixed we plopped them right back into the crock so we can do a gentle ITP (in the pot) swirl.

Photo above shows all colored batter in the crock ready to be gently folded together.

Very little mixing was needed. We tried very hard to keep the batter from blending too much because we were hoping for 4 distinct colors in the soap.

After Alison folded the colors together she piled it into the mold. It looks really blended in this picture, but we were hopeful that once it cured and we cut it, it would look a bit less blended.

Once all the soap was in the mold we inserted the dividers. In 24 hours we will have 18 bars of our latest soap. Maybe we will call it Autumn Leaves, or maybe not; we'll just have to see how it turns out.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015