A Big Disappointment

So, I made another soap last week and I am just getting around to posting about it now. Mostly because I was disappointed with it. It started out really well too! I was being very patient and had high hopes for this to be one of my better soaps and well, it was not to be.

So, I mixed my ingredients and instead of waiting to add my fragrance oil until after I had mixed the soap some, I decided to try and add it to the oils and hopefully give myself a little more time with working with the mix so I had one less thing to stir in and hopefully cut down on my chance of stirring too much in the early stages. Well, this was a mistake, it would seem, because as soon as I poured in the lye mixture to the oils, I got soap about the thickness of bread dough.

To say I was not impressed would be an understatement. I work the soap as much as I could and mixed in the colors as best as I was able. The green I was mixing came out mostly okay, but the white left little to be desired. Also, it was crumbling as this point and I shoved it into the mold and hoped for the best.

The top bubbled and it leaked a little oil that it then soaked back in, but it has a sort of crumbly texture to it. It does pass the zap test, so does not appear to be lye heavy, just the reaction from the fragrance oil did weird things to it. To top it off, when I cut it, I could not get things lined up right and my bars are all uneven. This batch was supposed to be used as a gift, but it is not going anywhere.

I am very frustrated. As a note, while I was writing this, I worked on another batch of soap and added the fragrance oil later. The fragrance oil was a different oil from the same company, but it did the same thing. I will unmold that one tomorrow and see if it came out any better then this one, but it is not looking good right now.

Back After a Long Hiatus

Yes, I am back making soap again!  It was a long, hot summer, followed by a move, that left me a bit discombobulated, but I am back and making soap again.  Over the summer, the old apartment was way too hot to contemplate making soap and the AC unit for the apartment was not worth turning on as it did little to nothing to alleviate the heat.  The new apartment actually has cross ventilation, so it should be cooler during the summer.

Anyways, I have an order for four soaps for Christmas, and also am trying to get Yule in order for friends for the season, so I am madly trying to make soaps.  I made one yesterday, which was my first soap in a long time, and all things considered, it came out fairly well.  I used a dupe of Axe Voodoo fragrance and made the white with yellow swirled.

As usual, it thickened faster than I would have liked and by the end, I was dealing with a pudding like consistency of soap, and I did not get quite the shade of yellow that I would have liked. Overall, I am pretty happy with it still, and I hope that the person receiving it will like it as well.