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Tuesday, August 6, 2013

New Book!


I just received my copy of Soap Crafting.  I am thoroughly enjoying it so far and already have some great ideas!

First up: spray isopropyl alcohol on soap to avoid white ash forming.

Also going to try some of the natural clay to color soap.  Got some good ideas on herbs that will color soap as well.

Only about a quarter of the way through it but I wouldn't hesitate recommending it.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Whipped Soap

 I have been wanting to make whipped soap(aka floap because it floats) for a while now.  Saturday, I decided to give it a go.

The recipe I found called for palm oil, coconut oil, olive oil and lye.  The important thing about making floap, I read, was to have a high percentage of "hard oils", oils that are solid at room temperature.  Armed with that knowledge, naturally, I began to change the recipe.

I substituted some of the palm oil with shea butter as I'm a huge fan of shea butter and not so much of palm oil.

I whipped the unheated hard oils up so they looked like whipped cream.  I then added the olive oil and whipped it in.  Next, I added room temperature lye to the mix and whipped it in as well.
 Since I was trying a new recipe, I decided I'd also try using mica to color it. I've never added colorants to my soap before and was anxious to see how it would work.

I divided the soap in half and added lavender mica to one half.  Looked pretty good.
I added the uncolored soap to the mold and put a few ground lavender flowers in it.  I have found lavender flowers turn brown when added to soap so putting them in the middle of soap still gives a nice scent and exfoliation without the unattractive brown flowers in full view.

I then added the colored soap on top of the lavender flowers.  Definitely a difference in color at this stage.

Unfortunately, when the soap was ready to remove from the mold, it was entirely white.  A very nice, perfect white, but white none the less.  There was no trace of the lavender color, bummer.











Since I really wanted a lavender color (this was lavender soap, after all) I decided to paint on the mica with a small brush.  Much to my surprise, it worked.

Next time I try this I think I'll try to paint a lavender flower on the soap instead of just painting all over, but overall, I'm not too unhappy with the soap..err..floap.








If you want it, here's the recipe I used:

Palm Oil      300g
Shea Butter 100 g
Coconut Oil 200g
Olive Oil       50g
Caustic Soda 95g

Water          244g