A Soap Smorgasboard

February 12, 2009

Today we have a veritable smorgasboard of soaping adventures to contemplate and see what we can learn. First is the ongoing adventure into investigating the properties of the various oils we use in our soaping. As you can see in the image above, most of the 6 oz single oil bars I made for myself have made it into the bathroom for testing.

I'm also almost through making one pound batches for my testers. The last two are still sitting on the dining room table. I've had to redo them twice. They just did not want to harden. The trick is to use increased heat and put time into stiring the "oil slick" back into the soap for the first few hours after pour. They are ok now. One can be forgiven, it only has an INS of 61. The other has no excuses, but I intend to find out what it's problem is. Since I don't want to prejudice my testers for or against any oil, I won't reveal which ones are being uncooperative. I think my testers wander in here from time to time.

Here we have the begining of a convergance. Although the color testing is interesting and useful, I was gettting bored with it. I wanted to make pretty soaps like all the other soapers around me. so decided to combine mold testing with color testing. All for milk soaps, of course. But I think it is safe to assume that if a color or a mold plays nice with milk soap, it will also play nice with soaps made with water.

The color I used here is cyrpus mica, from TKB. I think I used way too much colorant. As you can see it's more grey than green. The molds are your standard hard plastic that are commonly used for M&P. They work well with lye. I coated them lightly with mineral oil. I also used an FO that greatly accelerates trace, so the soap had to be almost glopped into the molds, hence the lack of detail on the shamrocks. On the plus side the soap fell out just by my turning the molds upside down. I left them out of the molds for the normal two day waiting period to see what would happen. They kept their shape nicely. Hum....

This one worked a little better. The color is green oxide. I like that. I used 8 scoops of colorant for at 32 oz batch. The mold is by milkyway and is very intricate. For the most part the soap came out ok. Again I used mineral oil, but had to run hot water of the back of the mold when it came out of the freezer. A few small pieces of the design stuck and got left behind. I'm thinking a small pastry brush might work better than paper towel for greasing the molds. Still and all, I think they are pretty soaps.

Both of these soaps were made in Wilton cupcake molds. The colorant for the light colored bars is bolero mica from TKB. It is orange in the package so I don't think I used enough colorant. This one too is slated for a redo. The chocolate bars don't have any colorant, but are made with chocolate milk and a rich chocolate FO.

The molds came in blue, green, purple, red and pink. the red and pink are hearts with the Wilton label that I bought at WallyWorld. Absolutely no color came off on the soaps, which rather surprised me. Anyway I plan to keep using them to see things will change.

Lessons learned are: 1. you can make molded milk soap. More experimentation is indicated, but not only is it doable, it's not all that hard. 2. Not all silicone is created equal. I know some people have had bad outcomes. So over time I will be testing various brands to see what works and what doesn't. So stay tuned. For every experiment I complete, I think of two or three more things I want to test. Appariently the "Mad Scientist" role is a life long calling.  
 
 

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