Good enough to eat

I have always loved vanilla (is there anyone that doesn't?) so really wanted to try making a vanilla soap. The only issue is that vanilla turns soap brown, but I am happy to have brown soap if it means I can have the beautiful scent of vanilla in my bathroom. To practice some other techniques I thought I would make it a vanilla and almond swirled soap

I used the same basic recipe as the last few soaps but swapped the sweet almond oil for plum kernal oil which has an amazing almondy smell. I also used unrefined cocoa butter instead of the regular refined stuff I use which has a beautiful sweet chocolatey smell. When the spa was ready to mould I split it in half - one half had the vanilla essential oil and the other had ground almonds mixed into it for a light exfoliating texture.

I've just cut it and it smells amazing. To be honest the almond is stronger than the vanilla at the moment but it'll be interesting to see how the smell develops.

You can see the difference in the colours in the cut slices and it'll be interesting to see how they develop.

Morning Zing

If I'm going to have a sell soap as a business I'm going to have to develop a range. I have decided on a basic soap recipe that I like - now to think about fragrance and appearance.

After playing around with essential oils I came up with a blend of grapefruit, lemon and peppermint. I'm not the biggest fan of minty smells but with the citrus it made a fragrance that was very invigorating and refreshing. And so Morning Zing was born.

I also had plans to have colour swirled through the soap. I am thinking that I want to try and make soap that has as little impact on the environment as possible by using natural colourants and essential oils as opposed to synthetically produced colours and fragrances. I had some powdered beetroot that was a beautiful purpley-red colour. When I added it to some soap this is what I got:

Ewww :(

So decided to have another go with spirulina and this is what I got:

After how much the spirulina faded last time I made it fairly strong. Will see how it looks in a month's time...

Hot Process Disaster :(

Up until now I have been using the cold process (CP) method to make soap (see in the post about my first soap to see how I normally make it). However, there is another way which many soapers seem to use which has the big advantage of being able to be used the next day. This is called Hot Process (or HP). Basically you start off the same as with CP but when you get to the stage when you would put it in the mould you put the pan back on the hob and gently heat it for about 30mins. During this time the saponification reaction that normally happens when it is wrapped in towels takes place, and most of the water evaporates (which would normally happen during the month of curing).

So, all this sounded a great idea. The only real downfall is that it is a lot thicker when it goes into the mould so top will be a bit more uneven but I can live with this. Got to the stage when it goes back on the heat. All looking good. Have my huge pan on the smallest ring as low as it would go but got a bit worried that it was getting too hot and that it was going to stick. Kept going. Really wasn't sure about how it was looking:

Scrambled eggs floating in oil. Ergh :S

Kept going basically constantly stirring as it kept slightly sticking. Then decided to give it a really good stir and it started to look much more consistent:

Slightly better... Maybe...

Then who knows that happened - was stirring it and it suddenly went from the picture above to this which was quickly pummelled into the mould:

This was supposed to be another batch of the module 4 soap. What you can see on the top is the layer with the red clay and there was a layer underneath with the strawberry seeds. The result was dry, crumbly yellow stuff with black specks with a layer of mottled pink, dry, crumbly stuff on top, neither stuck to the other. Left it to sit in the mould but it just all crumbled to bits when I got it out.

Probably could have used it (did try a little bit and it was soap and didn't burn the skin off my hands) but so depressed by it that it was one for the bin. Going to have to have a bit of a think and some advice from people that know if I'm going to try this again.... :S

Soap Course Module 4

This time I got to play with some other things that can be added to soap.

The soap base is made of olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, cocoa butter and sweet almond oil. I think that this is my favourite soap recipe to date. Not too hard, lathers easily making a fair number of big bubbles as well as a lovely creamy lather which leaves your hands lovely and soft but also clean.

I used a combination of five essential oils to fragrance this soap - rose, benzoin, palmarosa, mandarin and lavender. I love the sweet, floral smell and am impressed how this has remained over a couple of months.

The finished soap. Need to make sure I get the consistencies right when I'm doing layers next time so the bottom one doesn't splurge up the side of the top one :) 

The dark specks in the white part of the soap are strawberry seeds which were added as an exfoliator. I will definitely be using these again as I really like how they exfoliated beautifully without being too rough. I've done some reading about using fresh fruit in soaps so maybe a strawberry soap will be on the horizon....

The other part of the soap is contains French red clay. This is commonly found in face masks due to its reported deep cleansing and detoxifying properties. Whether it does this or not, I love the super smooth texture it gives the soap. I have already bought more to play with as well as the pink and green versions so watch this space :) 

Soap Course Module 3

Now it is time to play with some colour :)

This soap contains olive oil, palm oil, coconut oil, beeswax and the wonderfully moisturising sweet almond oil and shea butter. This soap is also superfatted. That means that more oil is added than can react with the lye leaving you with a soap that is extra-moisturising. For the colour I used spirulina which is a natural colourant with a blue-green colour.  When it came out of the mould it was a nice mid green colour. I should've probably stored it in a darker place when it was curing as it was a very light green at the end of the 4 weeks. Another month on.... Well you can see here :( Live and learn.

I had high hopes for the texture of the soap of this one. I love shea butter as a moisturiser and it definitely makes my skin nice and soft but it possibly isn't bubbly enough for me (it has a very creamy lather). 

What I do really love about this soap is the smell. It is a blend of jasmine, mandarin and benzoin (a beautiful smelling tree resin). I was really pleased with how well the fragrance has stuck. Even after a couple months of poor storage you can still get the lovely jasmine especially when you use it. 

Note to self - store properly and package it up after curing!!!!

Soap Course Module 2

This second soap is made of olive oil, palm oil, coconut oil, beeswax and avocado oil. The second module went through fragrancing soaps and I made a blend of lemon, mandarin, lavender and rosemary essential oils.

This is a very hard bar, probably due to the beeswax, and means that it is much longer-lasting than the previous soap. It was moisturising but possibly not as much as I expected when reading about avocado oil and comparing it to my first soap. The essential oils smelt gorgeous while they were curing but have really faded now it is a couple of months old. Maybe it could've done with a base note in the blend (maybe some neroli?) or maybe I should've packaged it up a bit faster. Oh well, learnt for next time.

Soap Course Module 1

My first soap was made of olive oil (for its moisturising properties), coconut oil (for lots of big bubbles) and palm oil (for a hard, cleansing bar) and simply fragranced with lavender essential oils. Here are some pictures showing how it was made:

Solid oils melting on the hob

After the lye (sodium hydroxide and water) has been added it looks like custard. It is then put into the mould ...

... and then wrapped in towels to keep it nice and warm overnight. The lye  is reacting with the oils and butters  creating fatty acids and glycerol.

By the next day, most of the lye has reacted and the soap is cool again.  It is now solid (similar  to cheddar  cheese)  and can be cut into bars.

After curing for 4 weeks the last of the lye will have reacted and  a large amount of the water will have evaporated. 

I was really surprised how good this soap is. We normally use a well-known brand of antibacterial liquid soap in our house and I suffer from really badly dry cracked hands due to the number of times I wash them looking after my little boy. Even with just these three basic oils my hands felt soft and moisturised after I washing and I was amazed with the bubbles. I am hooked :)

How I got here...

I have loved making and creating things for as long as I can remember. This took a resurgence when I became pregnant with my little boy who was born in January 2010 and since then I've been a bit of a craft whore :)
Here are a few pics of the things I made:

I've dabbled with papercrafts for years (in other words I have a large collection of pretty papers, stamps and embellishments (could be described as a bit of  magpie :) ) but never really had the confidence to actually use them. I did in the end make the wedding stationary and table decorations for my brother's wedding blessing (UK party after getting married officially in the US).

Then there was the knitting (doesn't everyone have a go at this when they're expecting  baby :) ). Made a couple of bits for my little man. Enjoyed it and much cheaper than the papercraft but I am very slow so it took ages to get anywhere!

My would be sister-in-law asked if I would go to a cupcake making class with her at Love Cupcake (https://www.facebook.com/LoveCupcakeEssex). It was brilliant. I would highly recommend Gemma's classes. I have made many batches of cakes since then (another expensive craft with lots of possible tools to buy :) ) and love making the decorations but again to do all the little bits and bobs take ages and have spent too many nights working until the early hours finishing them off to take it up seriously. Hats off to those that do this for business!

 Really can't remember how this one got started.... Bought the Cath Kidston Sew! book (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sew-Cath-Kidston/dp/1844007561/ref=pd_cp_b_0) and really enjoyed making the kit it comes with making the bag shown on the front cover. I hadn't used a sewing machine since I was 13/14 at school but the instructions were fairly easy to follow and I was impressed with the results. I then made another for a Christmas present but combined the design of another bag from the book (lined it and had magnetic fastening). There are plenty of other things that I would like to make out of this book. Only problem I've found with sewing is the lack of shops selling a good selection of fabric and I've had to rely on Internet shops. They are very good but you don't have a real idea of the feel of the fabric and matching fabrics very hard.

And then on came Kirsty Allsopp with her brilliant craft TV show and I saw her making cold process soap. With my science background this really took my interest. After a bit of research I found a wonderful company called Plush Folly (http://www.plushfolly.com/) and just after midnight on New Years Eve/Day I signed up to to their accredited home course for cold process soap. Here we go ......... :)

Hello?

Errrr.... hello...... anyone there?