Fresh goats milk anyone????

*waves* Hey y'all! Hard to believe it is 11:41pm and I am not yet turned into a pumpkin! I am a bit excited though, guess why!?!?!?! Yup I made a batch of soap! As y'all know, I went and visited some goats Friday and purchased some of their milk. I had made big plans to do a couple of batches over the weekend, but unfortunately I was unable to make any as planned. I was having some serious soap making withdrawals to say the least.
So anyhow, even though I was unable to make any soap, I had been brainstorming a little bit and talking to my husband about wishing some of the colors would go further down. So he suggested separating and layering..do the base, color, color, base, color , color etc. ..so that is what I did! Picture's below!

I started doing the layering..first the base which was just the plain goats milk soap batter, then I swirled blue, and then orange. Unfortunately your unable to see the orange but it's there. It's just light, and I am hoping that it shows up well.

The next layer

More Blue and Orange

Almost Full!

Goats milk base

I had blue left, so I went on ahead and carefully poured the rest in very slowly...As you can see it's almost overflowing. lol Somehow I managed to keep it all in there..placed one gallon jug of water on each side to hold the bulging mold in place and left it as is. I didn't insulate it because it was goats milk so no need to. I didn't bother to texture the top either with this as you can see. Hopefully it will stay as is. :)

So sometime tomorrow I will un mold and cut this loaf and will post pictures then. :) Before I log off for the night, wanted to show y'all my new special friend.

*whispers* She sees yoooooou!

It's pumpkin time, goodnight y'all!
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Cure times!

   *waves* Hey y'all!! Hope everyone is doing great! It is cold, rainy and was snowy this morning here which is later than normal for us to have a spring snow. At any rate I haven't made any more soap since the last batch, altho I do have plans to remedy that tomorrow.
This past Friday I went and purchased fresh goats milk from the most wonderful goats I have ever met, so I will be using that tomorrow. I am looking forward to it! Hubby had a good idea last night about trying something new with coloring and swirling. So tomorrow we will be trying that to see how it goes. :)
            Onto other things...I was checking over the dates on some of my soaps, lo and behold some are done on cure time! Hard to believe! So I tested them to make sure cure time was up and I brought in a bar of each batch into the house for us to try. All were good soaps, some I cared for, some not so much, there were a few that were personal favorites of my children and some not so much, but it's all in personal preference here. So I decided that I wanted some outside opinions. So I created a group within my facebook and invited some people to be guinea pigs for me.I selected people that I knew would be unbiased and give me an honest opinion. I plan to mail out the soap samples later this week, so will keep everyone posted on how it goes.
    Well folks, not much else to report on so I am going to post to my guinea pig group about which soaps are ready so I can send out samples. Talk to y'all soon!
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Burgundy Shea Butter!!

*waves*Hey y'all! Hope everyone is doing good! As long as I stay soaping, I sure am too!
I am very tired tonight and it's late, but wanted to take a few minutes and post about the latest soap I made before tomorrow so I don't fall behind on this again. :)
So I have this thing for shea butter and cocoa butter because of how wonderful for your skin they are, and well the other day I tried something new with cocoa butter (Sisterly Love Soap). So I figured I would try the same with the Shea Butter. I tweaked the recipe , and plugged in the amount of Shea butter for the recipe into the lye calculator. Instead of melting all of the Shea Butter with the other oils, I reserved a little bit and added it right at trace like I did the cocoa butter for the Sisterly Love batch and I was very pleased with the results.
I seperated the batch and made the base part a Burgundy color and it came out a bit lighter than I expected. Incidentally when I added the fragrance oil, which smells just like living in the forest by the way ;), it turned turned the base yellow, so that may have been why the colorant was a light as it was. As time went on though, it went from yellow to white, which was fascinating to me. lol  Ok so lets get to the pictures shall we?

As you can see, there is no yellow tint from the fragrance oil, and here I have swirled both colors on the top.

This was taken the next morning. I was really happy with how the outside looked.

I made the first cut. I liked it, however I think I am going to pour the second color from now on before trace and divide it maybe with a little extra of the second color.Some of it gets stuck where it does because the bottom quickly hardens. I wanted the top to be swirled with both colors, which it did but the burgundy was a bit lighter than I wanted it to be on top. The burgundy on the inside is duskier than I wanted as well. It is still pretty though.

No two slices appear to be the same, altho some of the difference can be slight.

It's all cut up and ready to cure!

This weekend I am going to try a couple of new things I think with the colors. I also went today and met some wonderful goats and was able to purchase fresh goats milk. I have the milk already freezing in the freezer and can't wait to use it!
Well everyone, it is time for me to turn into a pumpkin! I hope you all have a good rest of the evening!
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Soap Addictions!!

*waves* Good evening y'all! My name is Soapy, and I am *pause for dramatic effect* a Soapaholic!! I declare I wish I would have been doing this *ages* ago instead of waiting as long as I did. I may have been a bit lax on posting, but best believe I was working my patootie off in the shop making soap.
I have had some successes and some failures (as you saw in my last post), but this post is about the successes. :) Show and tell time!!! (Please allow the pictures some time to load)

If you remember the rainbow batch in my previous post that flopped totally, this is the do over but in layers. Now the layers aren't even but it's a work in progress for me.

Here's the rainbow batch cut up in bars, now mind you the cutter I used didn't do very well on the bottom of each bar, but that was pretty much the only thing wrong with the soap. This is an unscented batch by the way. A little sidenote, I had thought of getting contact sheets to put over top of my workbench here, but figured since I had a little mishap with the mica's *coughs*, and trying to clean it off the wood just smeared the crud out of it (wood that is unfinished wood I may add) that it was a bit too late to do the contact sheets thing. So my work bench has character! lol

Here we have the do over from the batch in the last post where the black didn't make it's way down through the bar at all. I am like the little engine that could. lol If something fails, I try again.

After cutting the first couple of bars. Scent is all the way through this loaf which is awesome. I didn't cover the top with saran wrap because I didn't want to ruin the top again, so I have air bubble on the top. I pretty much achieved what I wanted to with this one.

This next batch by far is my favorite batch, not just because of how it looks and smells, (which by the way is yummers) but because of the symbolism behind it. I made this batch in tribute of someone extremely important to me, and what our relationship means to me, my younger sister, Anna. You know how most people don't get along with their siblings? With her and I it is the exact opposite. This isn't to say that her and I agree on everything, because we don't. We have different beliefs, opinions, feelings on various topics, but we learned a long time ago how to effectively communicate and always maintain respect for each other throughout. Our relationship has the strength of mountains, and she is one of the people in my life who have been there for me through thick and thin.
This isn't my only reason for wanting to pay tribute to her though. I watch her in awe sometimes with all of the responsibilities she has and is able to balance, and how no matter what comes her way she continues to persevere through it all. Even though I jokingly refer to her as Superwoman sometimes, she is in fact one of my Heroes. Soo to wrap up the sappiness a bit (lol), her favorite color is purple, and mine is teal as shown below..so I have named this batch "Sisterly Love". Love you dearly Anna!

This was right after I poured and swirled. I then came up with a good way to cover and insulate it without messing up the top which worked wonderfully!!

After unmolding the loaf of soap. No soap ash and no air bubbles up top! Yayy!

After cutting all of the soap up.

See how I swirled the bottom, then did the top? Love it!

Here is the top of the slice of soap. This by far is my absolute favorite batch of soap to date!

Ok folks, it's time for me to turn into a pumpkin! Please check back for my next blog. I promise it won't take as long this time. :)
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Mistakes and Mishaps!

*waves* Hey y'all! So glad you could stop in! So much to update y'all on!
Ok, here are some pictures with captions on these "blunders"

This was my attempt on a rainbow swirl soap that went totally wrong. My mistake other than accidentally mixing it all together, was using extra virgin olive oil to blend the colorants with. I won't do that again. It was only a portion of the outer layer that came out sticky and gooey. Ick!

See the gooey at the top right?

Better lighting. Looks like a brick that has been sawed in half doesn't it? lol

 So I did another attempt at unscented rainbow soap and it had no gooey stuffs but unfortunately the cutter that I have been using is too dull and isn't cutting properly. Altho I need a better one, am having to save up for the manual one that can cut multiple bars at once. See below.

See the bottom? I am hoping that I will be able to clean it up a bit. The bars are still usable after cure time, just not as aesthetically pleasing on the bottom.

Ok so while this next soap turned out ok, the black didn't reach far enough down, and the only part of that soap that is scented is the top. It was unfortunately at to thick of a trace for it to go further down, even with me swirling with a skewer.

Y'all see the top of this loaf, how flat it is? Well I went to insulate it and cover the top of it with saran wrap to prevent ash and wouldn't you know, this was the only loaf I have ever had the saran wrap actually lay on the top of the wet soap. So I pull it off and try to fix the swirls, the attempted to cover it again with the wrap. Once again it does the same thing. At this point I say forget it, wrap the towel around it to insulate it and hope for the best. Of course when I took off the saran wrap I was disappointed to have a flat top. lol Soap is still usable after cure time but unfortunately it is lightly scented. Not one to be defeated I did try this again, but did things a bit differently, which I will show you in another post.

Ok y'all, remember awhile back when I did the Blueberry batch of soap, and I said that I knew I would likely have to rebatch the designed part because it didn't turn out the way that I wanted it to? Well I haven't rebatched it yet, but remember when I took the solid color of it and made little bars with it? Well unfortunately the scent discolored it, and this is what we have:

In the center of the soap you can see a small trace of the pretty color that I had, and outside its this tan gray murky looking stuff. The soap is usable of course, but we've decided to call it Ugly Soap. My son likes the idea of that and can't wait to use his Ugly soap. lol

Well there you have it, Soapy's Mistakes and Mishaps! I am fairly certain that I will have other ones to share with y'all as time goes on. ;-)
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

*waves* I'm still around

Hey y'all! It's going to be a short post tonight, it has been a crazy week! I just wanted to put up some pictures of a batch that I did. I plan for a longer post tomorrow though about a somewhat halfway failed batch that I did over this past week, and about my flopped lye milk. It has been quite the learning experience for me to say the least. lol

This is a goats milk batch that I did, that was scented as well. I tried a new type of textured top with this one. You can probably tell that when I was doing the texture of the top that the top part covered the loaf, but then it went down in sorta an upside down triangle. I thought that I would have enough to do a full second  top layer of texture, but my mistake was making the bottom layer too thick. You live and learn though. It still came out pretty good.

 

After cutting up the loaf. I waited for 24 hours before un molding, I normally do it after the first twelve. I had a bit of difficulty cutting this loaf actually. The top has hardened as well. I did the colorant differently. I separated the batch and added the colorant to the the bottom part without mixing it completely right before pouring it in, and it swirled itself.

View from the top of one of the cut bars.

The view from the side. I loved the swirls. :)

 Ok folks, it's time for me to turn into a pumpkin and call it a night. Have a good one, and check back soon for the next blog! Goodnight!
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Irish Times!

*waves* Yup, two posts in one day to make up for lost time! lol
I had been considering attempting a two color swirl even though my one color on the Blueberry sorta flopped the other day. I know, most would have tried to do the one color swirl again, but what can I say...I love adventure! lol
I really wanted to use the irish springlike scent that I had, and my oldest son suggested black and green swirlies so I decided why not? :) Yayyy for pictures!

Fast forwarding to where I have seperated my batch of soap into three parts. I poured the white into the mold, and started mixing my green. :)

Mixing the black. Lighting is a bit poor, my apologies.

Alternating black (which came out to be a more dark grey. probably could have used more pigment) and green.

Got my handy dandy bamboo skewer to swirl the colors around!

The end result of the swirling. Doesn't it look cool? :)

After unmolding it. I was slightly disappointed that the color didn't go further down, but was happy that it still turned out looking so cool. :)

Cutting the loaf. The white spot btw was from when I used the bamboo skewer to swirl it, the white had set quicker than I anticipated and I pull some up into the color batch. I think it looks neat tho.

Here's the top view of a cut bar. I love the texture of it.

Side view of the bar. One of the coolest bars ever!

This was actually a recipe that I came up with on my own I am proud to say. I didn't use goats milk either in this batch. I just wanted to do the regular white so that I could play with the colors a bit. Yayy for not having color mistakes this time. lol
Ok, so there's the catch up folks, it's time for me to turn into a pumpkin for the evening. Y'all rest well!
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Playing catch up with Goats Milk

*waves* Hey y'all! It's been quite a weekend for us here. My work bench came in so I spent most of yesterday organizing the shop. By the time I was done I was ready for bed.
Ok so I did an unscented goats milk soap batch using frozen goats milk cubes. It turned out to be quite interesting. :) It's show and tell time!!

Frozen goats milk cubes, yum!

Added lye and stir stir stir



Adding the lye milk to my oils and butters



Blending it to where its close to trace

Pouring it into a pyrex for easier pouring into the small molds



Have hit trace, and getting ready to pour



I really love this mold :)

Unmolded and stacked to cure!

The interesting thing about this is the fact that the temps when I mixed them were at very low temps. I was worried that they were not going to be hot enough, but they quickly set. No superheating either!! They also lightened a great deal after drying. These bars came out so creamy, and better than the first goats milk batch that I did. :) Very pleased! I am looking forward to using this after cure time is done. :)
Onto the next batch!
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Hey y'all!

*waves* This is going to be a short blog tonight, just to give everyone a brief update.
I am pleased as can be to tell y'all that I made not one batch of soap, but two today!! I did one batch of goats milk unscented and fragrance free this morning, and a color swirlied batch of soap this evening. I know for sure that the goats milk turned out well from what I could see when I checked on it again this evening. The color swirled soap I am happy to say I came up with the recipe for, so here's to hoping it turns out good, and looks as pretty on the inside as it does on the outside . :)
   Tommorow I will post the pictures and stuffs from the batches, I am just too wiped to do it tonight.
Oh also before I forget, I decided to take up gardening as well *grins* , so I am going to create a seperate blog for that as well for those who are interested in that sort of thing.
Well folks, I am off to bed, look for my posts tomorrow!
Suds & Bubbles,
The Snoring Soapy ;)

Floppy Batch :(

*waves good morning to everyone* Hey y'all, short post this morning about the cut soap from yesterday's batch. I wish I had good news about how it turned out, but I don't really care for these bars. I am a bit bummed about it to be honest with you. I unmolded it and there was soap ash (I didn't use plastic wrap to prevent it due to the top, which was a mistake), and the sides have an almost translucent gelled look to them. There really wasn't enough of the colored soap batter in there, but you live and learn.

The top color design is cute, but thats the extent of it. There didn't seem to be enough scent in it either unfortunately because I only scented the colored part and there wasnt't enough of that in the loaf. The soap is usable after shaving it and shaping it up a bit. Altho I may just rebatch it, just haven't decided yet.

I have a feeling that other than the soap ash issue, this was due to the lye and oils not being hot enough and hitting a false trace. So lesson learned, and I will keep trying until I get this worked out. :) As for the two little sample bars...

Sorry the lighting is off a bit in this picture. There's a slight fading of color which makes it look interesting, but other than that its a nice smooth bar. I like the color personally. The scent is fairly good as well.

Ok folks, errands to run and soaps to make. Later today I am doing a goats milk test run based on suggestions and advice from some other soapmakers about my first batch of soap. So stay tuned!
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy