Mixin' It Up

The silicon mould arrived and it's been used pretty much non stop for the past week or so. I recommend this type of mould to any soaper. There's no lining involved and the soap just slips out in one piece :-D

Here is my first batch made using the new mould. A simple avocado and shea:

Ingredients~

• Olive oil
• Coconut oil
• Avocado oil
• Shea butter
• Castor oil
• Water
• Lye

I didn't scent this one but it still smells of something, the avocado maybe. It still smells nice and natural.

 Next up was the Newcastle Brown Ale soap:

Ingredients:

• Olive oil
• Coconut oil
• Avocado oil
• Castor oil
• Shea butter
• Newcastle Brown Ale - flat
• Orris root powder
• Palmarosa E/O

Strange reddish brown bits of colour are scattered throughout which made me think that something went terribly wrong. Oh yeah and I added 5x the original amount of castor oil I had planned to put in. Dead soap I thought. A day later, after cutting I tested a piece and didn't get irritated, nope just an immense lather. This soap is a sure winner, probably my best so far *cheesy grin*

So then I figured I'd try and conjure up some more of the most talked about soaps I'd seen recently. These were coffee and salt bars (to the left)

Salt Bar 

This one set very quickly and was cut in just 3 hours. I just couldn't wait. Next time I'll use 50% salt instead of about %90. This soap is great if you're impatient and want to make, cut and try in a day. It's also smooth on your skin and not rough in the slightest.

Ingredients~

• Coconut oil
• Castor oil
• Grape seed oil
• Water
• Lye
• Sea salt (fine)
• Orris root powder
• Lavender E/O

Coffee Bar 

The award for most additives I've ever used in a batch goes to this soap. After cutting and testing a piece (my usual ritual), I couldn't smell much coffee. What I could smell was mostly the sweet orange E/O shining through. Maybe next time adding coffee to the lye solution may help carry the coffee scent a bit. I'm pleased with  the overall outcome of this soaping episode, the happy accidents and lessons learned. Soap will keep your slippers nice and warm when landing on top of them, be grateful you are wearing them etc.

Ingredients~

• Coconut oil
• Olive oil
• Grape seed oil
• Shea butter
• Castor oil
• Water
• Lye
• Ginger E/O
• Sweet Orange E/O
• Finely ground oatmeal
• Cocoa powder
• Finely ground coffee
• Confectioners sugar
• Orris root powder

Citrus 'C'

Citrusy indeed! By following an online recipe and doing a little bit of subtracting/substituting, I was able to achieve the following results:

Eight 4oz bars of soap slipped easily out of my new plastic un-photogenic mould. The darker areas are (I think) where it hasn't dried as much but if the other bars I've made are anything to go by then the colour will soon even out. No colourings were used and I don't intend to use them at-least not for a long time anyway.  I haven't quite yet decided whether I should stick with the new mould. While it makes cutting so simple and bars of equal measure, I like how the other mould creates unique bars with character. What would you prefer?

~Ingredients~ (in no order)

• Avocado oil
• Castor oil
• Olive oil
• Coconut oil
• Shea butter
• Lye
• Flat Corona
• Orris root powder
• Lemongrass E/O
• Sweet orange E/O
• Palmarosa E/O

New Mould, New Soap

A friend sent me some wine and of course I didn't notice the bottles at first. My first thoughts were, "Oooh look a soap mould!". So here you can see my latest batch in a mould that used to be a wine presentation case. Gone are the narrow Converse shoe boxes I used for the previous batch. The mould is perfect for many reasons since the dimensions mean easy cutting and there's even a wooden lid to aid insulation. Next time I will no doubt be lining the other side to accommodate another batch. 

After my ever increasing awareness stepped up a notch, I felt like I needed to get rid of the rest of the palm oil and did so in this highly conditioning bar of soap. I read of people using beet-root juice as a natural colorant so I gave it a shot expecting 3 tbsp to make pretty raspberry swirls.  I did get a slight swirly effect by using 2 pots and thinking I was clever but *sigh* what you see here folks, is no raspberry swirly oh no...

Here is the rosemary and swirls of a different colour, not quite green but certainly not pink. It looks interesting enough and smells very natural, well of course it is vegan after all.

My ingredients for this earthly batch were:

• Palm oil
• Olive oil
• Coconut oil
• Sunflower oil
• Castor oil
• Grapeseed oil
• Rain water (melted snow)
• Lye
• Beetroot Juice (obviously not enough)
• Rosemary

And now to order some more oil excluding palm...