Saturday, November 16, 2013

Making Soap Balls for Loaf Soap

Wow  I stumbled across an interesting thing or discovery recently.  I always try to do at least one trial run on a new fragrance that I am interested in using.  My never ending quest to find new and interesting fragrances. 
I ordered a one ounce size of this fragrance oil.  I made a one pound batch of soap.  I poured the soap into my little individual bar soap mold.  Everything went smoothly could not have asked for a better soap batch.
Love the scent will purchase more closer to spring time.

I placed the soap bars in my container lined with wax paper for the cure time.  I wanted to see if this particular fragrance would change the color in the soap.  About 2 1/2 weeks later no change was found.  I will say too for anyone who recognizes this individual soap bar mold, just know I never have luck with my bars coming out clean.  I always find that soap will stick and cause dents, dimples, whatever the word is.  So I don't care for this mold for this reason.  I did use some Sodium Lactate since I thought it would help with a harder bar.  The mold is okay to use if I am doing a trial run.  

Here is what I discovered.  I was half way through the cure time.  The soap actually was still somewhat pliable and not on it's way being rock hard.  So as I said earlier I was not happy with this soap in terms of not being in perfect condition coming out of the mold.  I decided to make some soap balls for a batch of soap I made that day.

Most people will make up their soap and after they unmold the batch will start making their soap balls.  Or at least I find or have read most do.  The soap is sticky and it is really a battle to get a nice soap ball.  Most of the time it will take another rolling session in your hands to get the little ripples or bumps out.  

Here is my suggestion:

* Make your colored soap balls in advance.  You know better than anyone the nature of your soap making. If you do quiet a bit of soap design with adding soap balls, take the time to do this in advance.  

*  The first photo is of the soap as it came out of the mold.  As you can see the edges at least for me do not come out clean.  If you are thinking of getting one of these molds you might ask around with other soap makers what they think of the mold.  Maybe this mold and I are not compatible?  You might have better luck?




 * I used a little Ginger grater since I only had a few bars to grate.  




*As you can see above I made a soap ball.  Please notice too that my hand is completely clean.  Normally I use gloves when making soap balls, but I really wanted to feel the difference with partially cured soap.  I really think this is the way to go.  Don't get in a hurry plan out your design and enjoy the process.


 * This is what I got from my soap bars all these soap balls.  The soap was a delight to work with.



* This is the soap that I made incorporating the soap balls.  Doesn't look like much here and not very interesting in my opinion.



* This is how my soap turned out below.  Perfect soap balls and was extremely easy to cut in my soap cutter.  Many people I have come across make their soap balls quickly after they unmold their soap.  They also will place their soap balls in a baggie to keep them from starting to get hard.  As we all know you cannot cut hard soap very well. I have come to realize that anything is possible if your willing to experiment and see what other options are out there.  




Conclusion as I stated before, plan out your needs.  Make colored soaps in advance.   Leave the soap in bar form while it is curing.   I would say anytime after one week, or for me much longer you can still accomplish your goal.  The process will be much easier for you and you won't have to handle the soap more than one time.  My soap in this photo is in it's curing stage so I have not  cleaned up the soap bars as of yet.  (Edges are not even and clean).


If you try this method please let me know if it worked for you.  As I said I stumbled across this by chance and I think it merits sharing with others.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post.  I hope it was helpful in anyway.

God Bless 
Debby












Recent random soap

I admire so many bloggers who can keep up with daily entries on their blogs.  Time runs away from me so quickly.  I guess I have not learned to be more focused.   All in due time.  What I have done was to make soap during my absence.  So I will share a few photo's of them.


My goal when making my Carrot & Goat Milk Soap was to be like everyone else.  I really really really wanted to make my soap in that single beautiful orange color.  Simple and clean .  I love that look and for me I tend to have a very hard time just making soap with one single color.  I looked at my options still holding firm this was going to be one color and my thoughts twisted and here is what became of my one single color soap:







My after thought?  I can live with it now.  It turned out displaying my orange but the white represents the Goat Milk in the soap.  Best of both worlds I suppose.  I love working with Goat Milk and this soap I left unscented.  My bar soap is a large bar in size and most people who use handmade soap will know to cut
the bars in half for easy use.  I always cut my bars in half and this way I can change out my bars or scents quiet often.


My next soap I made is called Chai Tea.  It has a light scent.  This was such a delight to make everything went so smoothly.  I do know where I mess up if you will.  I added some gold glitter to the top and it now looks like I sprinkled yellow on top.  You can see the edges are showing a yellow color.  I have used gold glitter so many times and never have had this effect.  I think soap makers can easily pick apart all that is disturbing to them.  But in reality maybe others do like the look?  I did add some real loose tea on top.  Which if your reading this and unfamiliar with additives on top of soap, all of the dazzling effect wash off the soap so it's just eye candy if you will.  




In making the Chai Tea soap bars I had decided to make some in the form of a cup of Chai Tea:
You can see the loose tea on top.  I used the small plastic 3 oz cup for my mold.  They popped out with no problem at all.  They did cure and I used new cups to put the soap into.  I had never used this process before but do recommend anyone if your curious yes try this method.  To use just cut in half.





I had a busy day with soap making and I had some Aquolina's Pink Sugar soap that I had shredded up.  I wanted to add some character to my next soap batch.  All of my Pink Sugar soap in the past was always so dark as it will do when the colors changes due to the fragrance oil.  Here I was able to keep the soap from getting that rich dark brown most of us come to know:








What I love about this soap is how the shreds make the whole soap pop.  I could not have even guessed it would turn out this way.  The brown areas which actually should have been so very dark brown, stayed more on the dark side of tan.  I did use that gold glitter again, and this last photo will show the yellow type color coming through.  It really isn't that sharp in color as captured on the photo.  It doesn't look bad  to see the soap in person, but maybe I am just taking this gold glitter too hard.  



Lastly I want to show my last soap of the day.  I am not happy with this one at all.  I had bought some new colorants and when I purchased it I had long forgot what the description had stated.  The colorant stated it would either stay this beautiful blue or could change to a purple.  So I got the purple.  That was my fault and I try not to mess up, but with color morphing you have no control.  I also had a pink color which again morphed into a peach color.  I have two colors in life I do not like whatsoever.  They are peach and mauve.
So when my soap took on the peach color I knew I would have this dislike for the soap but the scent that I used is so pretty and feminine that I am still to this day trying to like this soap.  I am going to remake the scent I used into another soap so I am not sure if anyone else will like the colors?  Take a look:





Enough said.
I will say that even though I am not happy with this outcome.  I do want to stress that the fragrance is 
AM A Z I N G!!!  Sometimes the ugly duck turns into a beautiful swan.

Well I hope you enjoyed this little post of what I have been up to lately.  I just got in a shipment of more supplies and happily so.  I ran out of some of my most important ingredients.  Now I have to figure out my new adventure.