soapmaking
Showing posts with label soapmaking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soapmaking. Show all posts

Soap Experiments

I am not so good at posting lately. I've been working on things slowly, particularly soap. I made two batches recently. The first was a coconut and olive oil soap with lemongrass essential oil and ground mint. It smells really good. I sent most of it to my mom, since she said she likes that scent. The color is natural from the mint, a dark grey-green.


I know, looks disgusting, right?



The second batch I decided to try something new. Almond oil was on sale, so I tried some of that, along with coconut and olive oil. I also had just gotten some mica pigment so I thought I'd throw that in, and try to swirl it while I was at it. Well, the swirling didn't quite work out but I like the colour. I didn't add a scent since it was an experimental soap and I didn't have any other scents to experiment with.










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Soooaaaaap

I made soap again a few weeks ago; this time I tried to dye it again and it sort of behaved, though is more of a yellow brown than what I was going for, which was green. Note to self: green and blue food colouring dyes do not work with lye. The scent is there though, which is a green tea and cucumber essential oil I found at Michael's. I don't think I really like it much, but it's better than the scent of the regular soap, which I'm now sick of.
It's also not done reacting yet. Last night I tested the pH and it's still a wee bit basic. Though I may have had too much soap in the water. I'll have to try it again on the weekend, when it's officially done curing. Next soap flavours I'm going to try: chocolate; vanilla; lemongrass and sage; many of other things.
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A lesson in colours?

So to continue my soap adventures... today I unmolded the soap and cut it into bars. I was quite surprised to see that the soap had turned purple. Yes, apparently blue + yellow = purple. Who knew! It's unscented though, so unfortunately the smelly stuff I put in did not work. But the colours worked, just not how they were supposed to.



Now, to let the bars cure for about a month. Then comes testing, if I'm not too afraid of what the lye has done to the dye.
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Soap-making Adventures

I decided to make some soap today. A while ago, I bought some dye and scent to use so I thought now I'd experiment with it. I took a few pictures of what I did:


Weighed out the ingredients. Coconut oil is solid at room temperature. In the background is the measured portion of olive oil.



Ready to combine the two solutions. Oil on left, lye solution on right. They need to be roughly the same temperature when combined. (Lauren will recognize the cup in the background)


In the mold, aka a bread pan. Ta daa.... or not.

The end product looks yucky so far because the dyes and the lye did not go together. So it's kind of a brown mess. And I'm not sure the scent took either. I put quite a bit in, but it didn't really smell that much. So, this is perhaps a failure. I will have a better idea of what happened when I take it out of the mold in a couple of days and cut it.

I like making soap. Soon, I am going to try making detergent for clothes, and conditioning rinses for my hair. Not just because I love making useful things and saving money, but because I want to know what kind of chemicals I'm using for such things. I don't want all these other chemicals that aren't necessarily good for me being all over my skin on a daily basis.

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Christmas Crafts and Baking

Since I learned how to make my grandma's Christmas cookies, my family has demanded that I make them every year. They're not hard to make but the recipe sure makes a lot of them. Fortunately, I have a lot of people to feed! I'm heading to my fiancee's family's place for Christmas this year, so I thought I'd bring cookies. So I also made shortbread, Mexican wedding cake (cookies), and regular sugar cookies. Today I also made ginger snaps. I think I'll probably gain 10 pounds over Christmas, which is not good but cookies are delicious and I gain weight every time I make them. However, I hope to give away most of them (already sent a bunch off to the rest of my family).
Also, some pictures of our tree, just for fun. We put it up mid-November, and there were even presents under it by then!
Lastly, I've gotten into soap making recently. I like to be as self-sufficient as possible, so this was a good thing to learn. It also makes great gifts for Christmas. Most of what I made is now gone, either because I used it or gave it away. The first batch I made was just oil and lye, and it made a nice plain soap. The second, I got a little more creative and added teatree oil and cloves. Both of these things are somewhat antibacterial/fungal, and are supposedly good for all sorts of things. I think they're good for a little extra cleansing, such as for acne, and the cloves provide a nice scrubby texture. For my next batch I'm trying cucumber melon.
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