Sweet Sweet Honeysuckle

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Get ready!  Today's blog is a photo blog.  I put my son in charge of photography today, and let me tell you, he took the job seriously.  I think I deleted as many if not more photos than I actually included below.  Really.  I'm not exaggerating!

Kathy and I have received a request for some more Honeysuckle soap, and we are more than happy to fill that request.  Today, Kathy had a delivery to make and a few other Soap Lily stops to make in town, so since I had able and eager helpers at hand, my kiddos and I soaped while Kathy took care of other business necessities.

We made a hot process soap today using our faithful recipe of castor, olive, coconut, and sustainable palm oils.  Below you can see Emma's hand stirring the oils to help them melt as I measured them into the crock pot.

Our Honeysuckle FO is a scent that we get from +Natures Garden and it really does smell just like honeysuckle.

I decided to use toned down colors but still try to remain true to the spirit of the honeysuckle vine, so I chose a yellow and green color to swirl into the soap.  I decided NOT to use a titanium dioxide base throughout the whole soap, and instead left the base color to the natural color of the soap.

I used rice bran oil as the base for my colors.

The yellow that we have is just too bright for what I wanted today, so I chose to tone it down a bit with some copper.  I was hoping for a darker shade of yellow. 

                       

For the green shade of the honeysuckle vine, I used the green chrome oxide and added a touch of patina sheen to darken the shade a bit.

As you can see below, the yellow came out as a very dark orange, which was not what I had in mind, but I didn't panic or give in.

I took a deep breath, then added more yellow.  It wasn't yellow enough, so I added a bit more.

Finally I added a tiny bit of titanium dioxide to the yellow mixture.  This gave me the color I wanted.

With the oils melted, the fragrance oil measured, the colors mixed, and the lye/water mixture measured and mixed, it was finally time to make the soap.  So, I poured the lye/water into the oils and began to mix.

You can see the soap emulsify in this animated file thanks to google+!

I used the stick blender and mixed until the batter reached a medium to thick trace.  See the trails in the surface of the batter in the following two pictures:

After mixing, we put the lid on the crock pot and set the timer for 15 minutes.  We stirred every 15 minutes to be sure the batter was cooking evenly.  The photo below is actually after about 30 minutes of cooking.  In the picture, it may look like mashed potatoes, but in person it was still too watery.  Plus, I now know from experience (WOW!  Just a few months ago I would never have thought to call myself experienced...I still have a lot to learn I'm sure, but still...) that it had not possibly cooked long enough to think it was ready.

After about another 30 minutes the soap began to grow.  Conor, Emma, and I were standing around the crock pot just watching it.  Weird how things that would normally seem boring (who stands around watching a crock pot?  Really?!), can become really interesting.  This growing soap was definitely interesting.  We made sure to keep stirring it to keep it cooking evenly.

I have read and seen videos about soap "volcanoing," and I did not want to see the mess that I have seen in some pictures, so we kept a close eye on it.  We thought we would share a couple of the pictures with you.  

We stirred it down again, and then left it to cook for another 15 minutes.

We checked it again here and decided to use a ph test strip.  The soap was not ready.  So we put the lid on and set the timer again.

Finally after a couple of hours total cooking time, we thought that the soap had finally reached the mashed potato stage. We performed another ph test using the paper strips.  It seemed to indicate a good level finally (meaning that the lye was sufficiently cooked out of the mixture and we now have soap).

Actually, we have come to rely on the "zap test," and today was no different.  I touched my tongue to it and felt no zap.  Of course, Conor and Emma were fascinated by the idea of "tasting" soap, so they both wanted to try it, too.  Conor got a bit too much on his tongue and spent a minute spitting over the sink.  At the last minute, Emma backed up and decided that she might not be so eager after all.

Below, see the oil on the surface of the soap?  This is when we added the honeysuckle fragrance oil. We mixed until we were sure the fragrance was evenly distributed throughout the batter.

I took about 2 cups of the batter and mixed the prepared yellow colorants into it.  I only used about 2/3 of the yellow that I had created.

I used about a cup of batter and about 1/2 of the green colorants I had created to mix into the green portion of the soap.

Finally both colors were mixed and ready, so I added them back into the pot and gently swirled the three different colors together.

Then it was time to "plop" the soap into the mold.  I did sling it in there pretty hard to try to get all of the air bubbles out of the soap. 

After I plopped all of the soap into the mold, I banged it on the counter a few times, and then banged it on the floor a bit harder.  If you've ever baked a cake and banged the cake pans on the counter to release the air bubbles, then you can picture what I was doing - except with a little more force.

Finally, Conor inserted the dividers and we set the soap aside to let it cool and harden.  We will see what it looks like on Wednesday.  You can see in the photo below the batter had darkened as it goes through the gel stage.

Wednesday morning and we are ready to unmold the soap.  See below how it looks after hardening and cooling for about 24 hours in the mold?  The natural "white" has become more prominent and the colors have settled into a very pleasing blend.

We present...Honeysuckle!

The honeysuckle soap will be ready to use in a few days.

I didn't think it smelled bad, but I was out-voted!

Another flash-back post from Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Like Kathy has already said, we have just been so busy that we haven't been taking the time to stop and share every day.  I do want to write about a soap that my son and I made.  Well, he mostly made it.  I got him started, and then left him with it while Kathy and I worked on the beautiful mica hanger swirls that we made.

As much as I love the creativity and artistry of the beautifully colored and scented soaps that Kathy and I make, I also feel a strong pull to make some naturally colored and scented (or unscented) soaps that have skin soothing and healing properties.  That is a personal thing for me as I have dealt with acne off and on since I was 13, and now have a daughter who must deal with eczema daily.

If you ever shop in Clarkesville, you may have noticed Roots 'N Remedies on the square.  It is a very nice shop, and the owner Krupa and top sales associate Victoria are both extremely helpful and knowledgeable about the herbs and natural products they carry in the store.  (By the way, if you are looking to pick up a few bars of Soap Lily soaps, you can look in Roots 'N Remedies!)  +Roots N Remedies as they carry 12 different scents.

While in the store Krupa spent a great deal of time talking to me about different herbs and products and about the benefits of turmeric specifically.  As a child in India, if she had a scrape or cut, she said that her dad would just rub straight turmeric directly onto the wound because of its antiseptic and healing properties.  Hmmmmm...I thought.

See where I'm going with this?

I decided to make a soap with turmeric to see if it might help with some skin blemishes and irritations.  I have also been wanting to use teas, so Conor and I decided to just go for it with this soap and try the tea as well as the turmeric.  We started out by using distilled water to brew a nice batch of chamomile tea. Then we set it aside to let it cool.

We used a recipe with four basic oils.  For the lye/water mixture, we used the chamomile tea rather than plain distilled water.  Chamomile is such a soothing drink, we imagined it being soothing for the skin if we used it in our soap. That's why the water doesn't look clear in the picture below.  Don't worry!  The water isn't polluted.

Notice the crock pot?  We didn't want to wait around to use the soap, so we decided to do this batch as a hot process soap.

For even more skin soothing-ness, we added colloidal oatmeal to our batter.

Conor measured out the star of today's show and added it to the soap batter,

stirred it all together, then put the lid on the crock pot to let it cook.

We made it a point to stir it every 15 minutes and make sure that it was evenly mixed.  After about an hour, it was getting closer to the "mashed potato" stage that we look for, but with the color of this batch of soap it was harder to tell.

At this point Kathy began to voice her opinion about the smell of this soap.  Conor quickly joined the chorus.  Personally, I thought it smelled like walking into Earth Fare, but they were very descriptive about what they thought it smelled like.  

It was a weird moment for me.  My husband refers to me as the human bloodhound because if it stinks, I smell it.  Yet here I was, rather enjoying the natural scent of this herbal soap, and everyone else was telling me how terrible it smelled.

I couldn't win, so Kathy and Conor decided to add some fragrance to the soap.  They finally decided on Litsea Cubeba which gave the soap a very clean herbal lemon scent.  I will admit that the final soap does smell very good, and when I gave a bar of it to my dad, the first thing he said was, "Mmmm.  This really smells good."

The recipe made a small batch, so we used our silicone mold, and below you can see how the soap looked when we pressed it into the mold to cool and harden.

We later cut it into bars, and then Conor used his iPod to take pictures of his final product.  We have actually been using this soap ourselves, and we really love it.  It does seem to have soothing, healing properties.  Sometimes we have to be our own guinea pigs, but perhaps we will make this soap again soon for others to enjoy.

Kudzu, who knew it would be so popular!

Monday - June 30, 2014

To recap, on Saturday we set up our Soap Lily tent at the quaint (original) log cabin that houses The Homestead House in Clarkesville, GA.  http://www.homesteadhouseprimitives.com/

Every summer Leigh Johnson and her capable staff host a yard sale where several vendors combine with antique dealers selling their wares.  Luckily the weather held and the rain didn't arrive until fifteen minutes after we packed up (seriously, we narrowly escaped being in the middle of a huge bubble bath).  

We set up next to good friend and talented basket maker extraordinaire, Randy Sells.  Not only does Randy make beautiful baskets, but she has also diversified into creating hand made cards with another friend, Mary Segur, in the Slanted Design Studio.  Their cards are lovely, original works of art that take sending a gift card to a different universe.  They look like works that you would frame and hang on your wall.  Honestly.

If you are interested they can be contacted at 2slanteddesigns@gmail.com.

But, back to soap...The "yard sale" was fun. We sold soap, made new friends, connected with old ones, and beat the rain. It was a win win for all.

On Monday morning it was raining - not a soft summer shower but a grey, overcast and pouring rain. You might wonder why I am telling you this.  The photos we took are a bit dark, and we had every light on we could find.  Apologies in advance for the photography - the sun simply wasn't cooperating.

We got an early start making our second batch of Kudzu hot process (HP) soap.  We've sold most of the first batch and the balance is promised, so it was time to make more.  

Alison was elbow deep in the computer part of soap making, figuring our costs, ordering supplies, choosing scents, checking email, Etsy and fun stuff like that, so I made the soap.  

Once again, since it is a repeat recipe it went pretty smoothly.

The colors we used are from +Bramble Berry - Chrome green and TD (titanium dioxide), and the Kudzu scent is from +Natures Garden.

We used the "old faithful" recipe which includes coconut, sustainable palm, castor and olive oils mixed with lye/water.  Once I mixed the ingredients together and emulsified the ingredients, I put the lid on the crock pot and let it cook for about 15 minutes.

Since you have seen the hot process stages several times I am skipping to the end. 

The soap is done. We both tried the "zap" test several times - no zap, so I added the Kudzu fragrance oil.

If only you could smell this picture!

We thoroughly mixed in the scent.  

Next I mixed in the titanium dioxide to lighten the soap.  

After I had the TD was completely mixed, I removed about one-third of the batter to a separate measuring cup. 

To that small portion of the batter, I added the green colorant.

Once the green was completely mixed, I added it back into the white batter and folded it in, leaving plenty of separate white and green areas for contrast.

I added the mixed batter into the 18 bar mold, slinging it in rather hard to (hopefully) get rid of air bubbles.  (Alison's editorial note:  I wish I had recorded video of Kathy slinging the batter into the mold.  She was like an angry artist flinging paint from her paintbrush onto her canvas.  It was fun to watch her work!)

You can see the two colors swirled in the mold. This makes such a pretty soap!

Almost filled, we tamped the soap several times as we filled the mold, trying hard for no air 

bubbles.

We inserted the dividers and set the soap aside to cure overnight.  Once we began cleaning up, as Alison was washing out the crock, she noticed the lather on her hands.  Amazing to think that less than 2 hours earlier our soap was just oils, lye and water, now we could wash our hands with the end result.

This is what the soap looked like on Tuesday morning, we let it sit overnight then unmolded it.   We are happy to report there are very few air bubbles and soap is nice and hard.

Early morning photo shoot, the sun was barely up so lighting isn't great.

Kudzu soap. 
We will let it sit a week, then it's yours for the asking!