Oat Milk Soap

I adore any soap with oatmeal in it, so making oat milk to use in soap has been on my to-do list for a while! To mix my lye solution, I used half of the water called for. I added the other half of the liquid as oat milk at trace. Unfortunately, the fragrance that I used accelerated; I know it was the fragrance and not the oat milk because the small portion of the soap what I kept unfragranced (for swirling) behaved beautifully. The acceleration meant that I was only able to quickly layer the soap instead of swirling it, but thankfully I had quite a bit of leftover unfragranced soap, so I was able to use it to texturize the top somewhat. The soap ended up gelling all the way through without any insulation. The fragrance I used was a dupe of Lush's Karma.

Oat Milk Recipe for Soap

Cedar and Saffron cut

This is my first 'Celine' swirl, thank you Laura for introducing me to it! I need to practice a bit, but I love it already! A couple of side notes: I can't believe how hard these bars are already after 2 days, it must be from the sodium lactate. Also, it's kind of hard to see in the picture, but the copper mica stayed shimmery in the CP. I also sprayed the top with rubbing alcohol every half hour for the first 2 hours, and it made a big difference....no ash this time!

Cedar and Saffron

Hm, my husband seems to think I have soapisitis, and sadly I think he’s probably right!  Is there a cure for that?! I hope not! 

This soap is scented with Cedar and Saffron from Brambleberry, which is a really nice unisex fragrance, very natural and clean smelling. The swirls are colored with copper mica, cocoa powder, green oxide and super pearly white mica. The fragrance itself will discolour to a tan, so I left a good portion of the soap uncoloured. I used 1.5% sodium lactate this time, and it seems like a good amount to use - the soap came out of the mold easily and was ready to cut after 24 hours with no crumbles. I also used my new stickblender from BB (I’m on a Brambleberry role lately!), and it seems to have really reduced the white spots in my soaps. I also completely melted the palm oil, to incorporate the stearic acid evenly, and that seems to have helped reduce the white spots too. 

Iced Turkish Mocha Soap

I had this leftover cute little sample cup, which was begging to be recycled as a soap mold! Fragranced with Turkish Mocha from BB.

Cotton Candy Soap

I made this after I discovered that you can use Brambleberry’s Bubble Gum flavor oil in melt and pour soap. I had some on hand, so I had to try it....it works! 

Soap Flowers

I haven't made melt and pour soap for a while, so I thought I would try sculpting some flowers. For every square of MP soap (0.8 oz), I added 0.2 oz of liquid castile soap to help it stay a bit flexible. I poured the mixture onto the counter and let it set up, and then either used a cookie cutter or free hand to cut out the soap, and then rolled it and formed it into flowers. The flower pot was made by swirling warm soap up and around the sides of a deep silicone muffin pan, until it had built up enough layers around the side but was still hollow in the middle - the same technique you would use if you were making a chocolate bowl =) 

Swirled Hearts

I tried a new technique today, using the Swirled Hearts tutorial from Soap Queen. I chose to use Brambleberry's Cherry Blossom fragrance, which smells heavenly but was probably not a wise choice for this type of swirling because it accelerates in CP. Otherwise, the process was really easy and the effect is definitely worth it! I also tried some sodium lactate in this batch at a 3% usage rate (same as I use for HP); however, while the soap popped nicely out of the mold after only about 4 hours, it was very crumbly when I cut it. Next time I will drop the SL down to 2%, and then adjust it even further if necessary. I used pink and burgundy micas for the hearts. My CP soaps also like to gather ash on the top, so I sprayed the tops every 1/2 hour for the first 2 hours in an attempt to keep the ash away :)

Triple Chamomile-Infused Baby Soap

A chamomile-infused soap was one of the first soaps that I made, and it is still one of my favorite simple soaps to make! This soap is infused 3 ways with chamomile; using chamomile-infused olive oil, chamomile tea, and chamomile extract. For this recipe, I used 92% chamomile-infused olive oil and 8% castor oil for gentle bubbles. I used chamomile tea in place of water, and I added chamomile extract after the cook. To prepare my chamomile-infused oil, I poured 1 litre of olive oil + 50 grams of dried chamomile flowers into my crockpot and let it simmer on low for 2 hours (I infuse more olive oil than I will need, because some of the oil gets absorbed by the chamomile flowers). Then, I let the infusion cool and strain the olive oil really well through cheesecloth. I absolutely adore the process of infusing chamomile, the fragrance is so apple-y and calming; unfortunately the natural scent of chamomile does not last long in soap, so sometimes I add a small amount of chamomile fragrance to lightly scent it. Oh, and I recently treated myself to this new baby soap stamp from Brambleberry, how cute is it?!

White Chocolate Soap

I was curious to try melted white chocolate in soap, and today I got a chance to try it. I held back a little oil to melt with the chocolate in the microwave, and I added the melted white chocolate at trace. The soap behaved very well and maybe traced a little bit faster, but not much. The soap turned a bit darker after hot processing it, even with adding TD before the cook, so I'm not sure if that is from the fragrance oil I used (Buttery Maple Oats Honey) or from the white chocolate. I have tested a sliver of it already, and it lathers very nicely:

Swirled Hot Process Soap

I thought I would try a 6-color swirl today using the hot process method. It was a bit challenging to get the colors all mixed with the hot soap, and get them combined quick enough before the soap started to set up, but it all worked out in the end. I was going to layer the soap originally, and I had started to spoon all the colors into the mold but then changed my mind for some reason and dumped the half-full mold back into my soap pot, which actually really helped the colors swirl and combine more. I ended up adding all the rest of the colors into the pot and swirling them, and then poured the soap back into the mold. All the colorants are oxides and ultramarines, except for the red, which was a non-bleeding liquid colorant. I also added TD to my base soap, I think that helps to keep the colors a bit brighter in HP soap:

Hot Process Roses Soap Cut

Sometimes keeping it simple is the best strategy! This is a hot processed coconut milk soap with some rose bath petals embedded in the top. The soap is sprinkled with crystal iridescent glitter (love that stuff!), and I used some titanium dioxide to keep the soap a lighter color. Next time I may try to incorporate some white chocolate into the soap batter:

In The Mold - Hot Process Roses Soap

Banana Milk Soap - Hot Processed

Last night I made banana milk; I stickblended equal parts banana and milk, and froze the banana milk (into cubes) in preparation for my banana soap tonight. For my lye solution I used equal parts frozen banana milk and frozen water, and I was careful to add the lye very slowly so that it didn’t overheat the banana milk (thank you soaping101 and newt + fig!). I hot processed this soap, and couldn’t believe how divine it smelled when I pulled it out of the oven…like banana bread! This would make a great unscented soap; however, I know how the lye monster likes to eat natural fragrances, so I ended up adding some Honey Pear and Praline fragrance oil….I cannot tell you how good this smells! The discoloration of the soap is natural from the bananas:

A fail and a save…

Sigh….I had such great expectations for this soap! It was supposed to be a layered hot process milk, oatmeal and honey soap. It smelled soooo good as I was pouring it, but as soon as I cut into it I could see there was a problem:

It looks just like bacon :(

Lol!

Hmmmm, what to do with a soap that smells like toasty oats and honey and looks like bacon!? After mulling it over for a couple of days, I decided to chunk it up and add it into some melt and pour base: 

Much better :)

It’s so important to document the failures as much as the successes. Sometimes the best lessons are learned by our mistakes!

Carrot & Buttermilk HP soap

This is a hot processed version of a CP version I made a couple of weeks ago. Made with pureed carrots and buttermilk:

Hot Process Soap - Oatmeal, Coconut Milk and Honey

Love, love, love making hot process soap! This soap contains oatmeal, coconut milk and honey, all added after the cook...with honey soap drizzled on top :)

Here is a video demonstrating how I make my basic hot process soap:

Using Sodium Lactate in Hot Process Soap

I finally got my hands on some sodium lactate! I've been wanting to try it in my HP soap forever, since everyone says it makes such a difference in their hot process soaps.

I added the sodium lactate (at a rate of 3% of my oil weight) to my lye water and didn't notice a difference at all through the beginning stages; the soap didn't trace any faster and the cook took the same amount of time. However, when I added the extra cream to my soap at the end of the cook, the soap frothed up, almost as if I had added baking soda to it, and became really fluid and I was actually able to pour the soap right from my bowl into the mold. I am sold, and will definitely be adding sodium lactate to my HP soaps from now on. Next time, I'll be brave and attempt layers or maybe a swirl!

I found the sodium lactate also made a big difference when it came to removing my soap from the mold. Usually I have to put the mold in the freezer for a bit before I attempt to remove the soap, but this time it just popped right out. I'm curious to see if the sodium lactate makes the HP bars harder and last longer.

Can't wait to try sodium lactate in CP!

I have updated this blog post to add a video showing how I make my hot process soap, enjoy! :)

Japanese Grapefruit

This is a soap I made a couple of days ago, it's cold process topped with MP grapefruit embeds and scented with Yuzu fragrance oil:

Experimenting with colors

Today I did something I should have done a long time ago...I experimented with the colorants I had on hand to see what they would do in cold process soap. It sounds simple enough, but when you add in the wild-card factor of the discoloration of a fragrance oil, it's a very good idea to know what the true colors of your colorants are in CP. I used oxides, ultramarines and a couple of liquid colors I had on hand. As a side note, all of these soaps were made with CPOP (cold process oven process) and went through the gel stage.

First, the ultramarines and oxides:

These colors were fairly predictable. I mixed the powders with distilled water. I also wanted to do samples of these colors mixed with titanium dioxide, but I didn't have enough containers.

Next up, some liquid colors I had on hand:

I believe these are meant more for melt and pour soap, but I wanted to see how they would react in cold process. The red stayed pretty much red during the cold process. The green colorant changed to a shade of light olive green when first mixed with the raw soap, then as it went through gel it turned almost as red as the red color and then finally settled on a nice salmon color once it cooled.


I also did a sample of pink mica and purple mica mixed with distilled water. I didn't take a picture of them, however the pink mica stayed pink, but the purple mica instantly turned pink in the raw soap as well. After going through gelling they were almost identical in color and very similar to the red oxide, perhaps just a shade lighter and more dusty.




So, what did I do with the leftover colored soap?

I made more soap, of course! Fireworks soap in honor of the fireworks we saw yesterday for Canada Day :)



The soap was at a really thick trace by the time I got it into the mold; I had to spoon in the colors and swirl with a chopstick to get any blending done. I think it turned out really pretty, but I don't think it's something I could replicate very easily!

Lemon Meringue Soap

Happy Canada Day =)

I made another hot process soap today. I decided to hot process this one, as I was using lemon essential oil in my blend and apparently lemon essential oil doesn't stick very well in cold process soap. I added heavy cream and sweet almond oil at the end stages. It is scented with a blend of yuzu fragrance oil and lemon, litsea and peppermint essential oils....it smells so good, tart and sweet!