Woo, moving forward!

In an attempt to escape the dreary, long process of lining molds with freezer paper (ahem…despite the fact that I have only ever lined a mold once before) I tried to coat my pretty break apart mold with silicone kitchen sealant. Note: Don’t do this. Seriously. It’s a bad idea. It may work perfectly well for either: a) Non-homemade break apart molds, b) plain box molds that don’t break apart or c) all your leaky kitchen applications, but it did NOT work for my perfectly plumb little mold. The result was disasterous, as expected. I could not fit the mold back together, for the sealant had slipped into the cracks and crevices and formed some pretty formidable clumps. I ended up having to scrape it all out (after it had set) with a palette knife and heaving a huge sigh and telling myself, “Never again.”

So back to the freezer paper method, which works well enough for my purposes. I am going to make a second batch this weekend. I have recieved my supplies from Texas Natural Supply–a strange assortment of stuff if there ever was one. I am now the proud owner of:

-8oz Citric Acid (for bath bombs, I just wanted to try my hand at one or two and this stuff is impossible to find locally)

-8oz Shea butter, refined (I realize that the refined has none of the healing properties of the unrefined but I am not looking for healing properties, I just want a moisturizer)

-8oz Cocoa Butter, deoderized and completely melted thanks to the weather (I love chocolate but I just wanted something plain to put in a lotion bar…)

-8oz Beeswax Pastilles, white (lotion bar)

-4oz Kaolin Clay (soap)

-2oz Green Tea Powder (for green colorant and … I don’t know, green tea goodness)

-1oz Poppyseeds (On a whim, I decided that they would make great exfoliants. Now I have to find a use for them in the near future.)

-1oz Ultramarine Lavender (lavender colorant)

And there you have it. I currently own lavender, patchouli, ylang ylang and eucalyptus essential oils so I suppose I will sniff those and decide which I will use for my next endevour. I was thinking a lavender/ylang mix, with purple swirls and some shea butter for moisterizing goodness.

First Batch!

I didn’t take many pictures because I didn’t think about it during the actual making process. Oh, well. I think everything turned out okay, and I will explain all the little details after I go over getting the last of my supplies.

First, my soap mold was completed yesterday. It’s very functional and small. It holds about 2lbs of soap, but that’s all I need. I never knew that lining a mold could be so freaking difficult! My dear boyfriend helped me through the process, and we finally figured out that if you tape the wax paper down to the individual pieces (it breaks apart so you have 5 pieces) it works better to get it back together. Teamwork, hi ho!

We had to find lye, too. Home Depot either didn’t have any or was out, and when we asked the man he just suggested we look over by the pool stuff (??). So we went over to Lowe’s, because you know, where there’s a Home Depot, there’s a Lowe’s, and they had some. Great! It was a bit expensive, like $8 for a 2lb jar, but that’s okay, I’d given up on minimizing cost for my first batch because I was so eager to do it.

When at home, we lined the mold first. That took the longest amount of time, I think, because we couldn’t quite figure out how to go about doing it. Then we went outside to mix the lye. Here we did a very bad thing: No goggles or gloves! I couldn’t find any of either in the house or the tool shop, so we went without. This is a bad thing to do. Lye is very dangerous. Ahh. I also accidentally sat downwind while he mixed–and got a mouthful of lye fumes. Yeoch! That burned.

Leaving the lye mixture to cool (in the 90 degree heat), we trooped back inside and melted the oils. I was very careful here. I had sniffed the lard before (by the way, it’s a 55% Lard/30% Extra Virgin Olive Oil/15% Coconut mixture) and I didn’t much like the way it smelled, so I melted the oils veeerrryyy slowly to make sure I wouldn’t get the “piggy” smell I’ve read so much about. I don’t want bacon soap! I weighed & put my oils all in a pyrex cup, nuked it for about 15 seconds at a time, and stirred a lot. No bacon smell. Success!

By the time the oils (slightly greenish in color, due to the olive oil) were melted I figured the lye mixture was cool enough. We brought it inside and poured the oils into the bucket with it. I hand stirred for a long time but got nowhere…I’m not sure how long this stuff is supposed to take to trace, but I wasn’t going to wait an hour while my hand fell off. So I let the boyfriend take out the stick blender and we started mixing that way. Whew! Loud little electronic device. It immediately lightened up the mixture–it went from a weird green to a light yellow, kind of like custard. It wasn’t trace, though. At least I don’t think so. When I dripped a few drops over the surface, they sank right in like regular liquid. So on we stirred, in 20 second bursts with the stick blender.

One thing I noticed about the stick blender is that it doesn’t seem to do anything when the head is below the surface. I don’t really know why this is. It whirred noisily, it buzzed, it groaned, but the liquid didn’t seem to be moving! When we brought it to the surface, it churned bubbles into our soap, which is bad…so we put it back under. Huh. I guess it mixed though, because eventually (about 10 minutes later, of these short bursts, we probably could’ve just mixed it straight through for 5 minutes) we got trace. Or something like trace. I poured in the EO (Eucalyptus) and mixed it well. Then we poured it into the mold, covered it with blankets & let it sit.

I peeked every couple hours, of course, until I was too tired and had to go to sleep. It didn’t seem to be gelling or getting hot. Bah! It was hardened up the next morning, and it passed my personal lye test, so I don’t think it’s lye heavy.

Now I Just have to let it cure, and we’ll see what goes down. :) I’ve already used a bit to scrub my hands, and it feels nice.

Pictures are under the cut.

Post-School Update: Supplies & Etc

SO!

Finally got around to getting some of my “basic” supplies. Picture time!

1. A scale. Of course! It measures up to about 10 pounds, I think, and it does it in 1/8 of a pound increments. Kind of weird, if you ask me, but it was convenient and cheap ($30 at Bed, Bath and Beyond) and best of all? I didn’t pay shipping on it! It zeros out, yay, so I can just stick a Pyrex glass on the thing and voila, insta-oil-or-lye measurer. The 1/8 of an ounce thing is going to be a little strange; it means I have to round to .125, .250, .375, etc. Not too bad. Not quite 1/10, but close enough, better (MUCH better) than rounding to the nearest ounce.

2. A stick blender! Yaay! Cheap-o $10 one from WalMart. I didn’t expect it to be so HUGE! I have tiny hands, so I think in order to control this sucker I will need to use both of them. The handle is really thick. Woo. So this means I can reach fairly fast trace! Yay.

3. Essential oils! Very essential. They were $6 at Hobby Lobby which is fairly expensive because they’re only 1/2 a fluid ounce. I don’t know how this compares to real 1-weight-ounce bottles, or 2 ounce bottles, but I know I can order them offline for cheaper because that’s how the internet works. The stuff next to them is rice, not salt, but I did get some sea salt for about $7 for 6 (7?) pounds at Hobby Lobby. Good price. It wasn’t the highest quality, but it was good enough!

4. Oils! I have extra virgin olive oil in the pantry, so no worries there (I know extra virgin isn’t the best to use, pomace is better because it’s cheaper, but this is my first batch so I’m not too worried about buying in bulk/overall cost/etc). Pictured here is lard & Luana Coconut Oil. The coconut oil is fairly substantial. It’s about 3 pounds, I think (31 fluid ounces, and coconut oil weighs a lot). It feels way heavier than the lard, at least, which is definitely 16 ounces. It was about $4. Good price. About $1.50 per pound or so, better than shipping it even at bulk prices. I will be using this. I hope it’s good enough quality.

So I have most of what I need (not pictured here–I got a spatula, cheapo, for hand stirring and scraping, and I also have a meat thermometer sitting somewhere in the utensil drawers). I just have to convince my dear woodworking father to help me make a break apart mold and a cutter with piano wire. He’s already agreed to do it, it’s just a matter of timing. (He’s in and out of town the next couple of weeks!)

And I am well on my way to becoming a soaper!

Cheers!

Prices, Prices, Prices!

Well, crap!

With prices on the rise–the American dollar just isn’t worth what it used to be, and that’s more true now than it was a couple years ago!–it’s going to be hard to find “cheap” oils. A batch of soap may literally double in production cost. That’s okay for me, I guess, considering I have no plans on selling the soap and therefore there’d be no reason for me to hike up my prices. But it’s bad for other soapers in the countr. At some point, they won’t be able to compete with big-name companies like Dial or Dove or Lever, simply because they can’t produce in the mass quantities that these companies can for the low prices. And most of consumer America, especially now in this time of financial crisis, aren’t willing to spend $6 or $8 on a bar of soap just because it’s “handmade”, “natural”, or even better for your skin.

Argh! I’m going to have to buy out all the cheap soapies now, because I want to try other people’s creations alongside my own (when I get around to making them–I swear it will be soon, because my last final is in the morning and I will be home again in a few days). I want to see what the hype is really about. If I spend years soaping, will my soap ever be…worth it?

Okay, I got sidetracked. My main issue with the lowering dollar + rising prices? Oils! They are jumping up in price daily. What was once less than a dollar a pound is now two, three dollars a pound. It’s fine for me because I don’t buy for huge batches and I don’t care so much because I’m not selling. But it’s also very hard on the wallet. I may have to pass up on the luxury oils–which, sadly enough, will be oils that weren’t luxuries two years ago. Sigh. Once again, I’m just going to have to stress to myself that it doesn’t affect me. Damn you ethanol!!

Time to run off and study some more for my exam in the morning! Tata!