New Soapies

I did something crazy the other day. I made four batches of soap. I've been making soap for at least eight years, but lately I haven't made any. Why? A combo of reasons, including the fact that the last few batches I've made have failed in some way, so I was leary of wasting the money on raw ingredients for more batches that might not turn out. I actually started out with all new ingredients on Friday and did a few other things to hopefully break my losing streak.

Everything went well and since I started out with fresh ingredients I don't anticipate any problems cropping up during the curing process.

Of course, since I was completely out of soap (in fact, recently I swapped with a friend of mine, Mandy, because I was out of soap for personal use!) I had to make one of my favorites, Oats n Honey. I typically make two versions of this, one unscented, that only has the natural fragrance of the oats and the honey, and another version that contains a synthetic Milk, Oats, and Honey fragrance. This time I mixed it up and instead of either of those options I very lightly scented it with a Snickerdoodle Buttercream sample that Brambleberry sent in my last order. I typically use 1/2 to 1 ounce of fragrance PPO (per pound of oils) in a recipe, but I only used 1 ounce of fragrance in this batch that contained 96 ounces of oil. However, It. Smells. Awesome!

I also made a batch of my Shea Luxury soap.This was a bar I developed several years ago when I introduced a "Spa" line of soap that included larger bars with fancier ingredients. I no longer make most of those soaps, but this one had to stick around! I use 65% unrefined Shea Butter in the recipe, and no fragrance. The finished soap is an awesome creamy color with soft bubbles. It's also a very hard bar because of the proportions of Shea.

 

I don't currently have pictures of my last two batches, but one is Tomato Leaf, which smells like a tomato plant growing in the sun, and Red Sedona, which is a  fruity, bright fragrance. Both of these have fun swirls, Chromium Green pigment in the Tomato Leaf and very light neon pink and neon yellow in the Red Sedona. 

I cut the soaps over the weekend after they sat in their molds for a day or two. My nephews "helped" and had a lot of fun. They also requested a share in the profits. Ummm, no!

These soaps will be for sale in my Etsy shop in about 3 weeks. I also plan to make Dragon's Blood, Black Raspberry Vanilla, and another batch or two next friday.