Sugar and Spice and everything nice

January 29, 2009

What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails, and puppy-dogs'tails,
that's what little boys are made of
What are little girls made of?
sugar and spice and everything nice
That's what little girls are made of
What are bars of soap made of?
Oil and lye and colors pleasing to the eye
That's what bars of soap are made of

Ok, so that doesn't rhyme perfectly, a poet I'm not. Still and all, aren't our soaps our babies in a way, just as delightful as children growing into adults?

I only got one color tested this time, violet oxide. As you can see from the bars there is a big difference between a large and small amount of colorant. I used 4 and 8 scoops respectively. Both times the result qualifies as lavender, a light shade of violet. I suspect it is going to take 12 scoops of colorant to get violet. But since I love lavender, I'm not going to go there, at least not right now.

A new twist has been added. I'm increasing the size of the batch and dabbling in using indivual bar molds, something I have never done with lye soaps before. I'm quite pleased with the results. Not only is this milk soap, I've been using more water than I probably should to slow down trace. All those hard oils and goofy FOS I use contribute to that. As you can see two bars came out just fine, the other one had to be coerced. Actually I made 4, but only photographed 3. The interesting thing is that the soap only stuck on the sides. The top where all the intricate design is came out just fine. Next step will be to use more mineral oil (complete instructions in Anne Watson's book on Milksoap making) and less water. That should do it.

I'm also working on a very crazy idea, eggnog soap. Yes that's right, eggnog soap. My husband came up with idea. To him the holidays aren't complete unless he has his eggnog. So i've made three batches with two different brands of commercial eggnog. The first batch was a nice yellow that morphed into chocolate brown. That was to be expected. I had no eggnog scent, so I used vanilla and we all know what vanilla does to soap.

The second batch was made with a different brand and eggnog FO. As you can see it was such a fast tracer that I had to glop it into the mold. The color, a fiery orange has since morphed into a dark chocolate.

The third batch has no FO or colorant in it. It's still cooling its heels in the fridge. At the moment it is a light orange. The idea here is to see what color I can expect from the eggnog itself. But I have no idea why this batch isn't a fiery orange unless it's becaue the eggnog was in the freezer a lot long and might be colder. Eggnog doesn't seem to freeze hard and solid like other milks.

The next step is to develope a homemade recipe for eggnog. I may have to resign myself to a brown or tan soap, since eggnog FO most likly is going to have vanilla in it. But at least I will be able to control the amount of sugar. If I suceed in getting a good eggnog soap, made with real eggnog I will post in the fall just before the start of the holiday season. Until then, the recipe is a closely guarded secret. I will however, keep you posted on my progress.

So stay tuned, soapers. Where a Mad Scientist is concerned anything can and probably will happen.  
 
 

Return to soap Journal index Blog  
 
 
 
 

Graphics for this site provided by Gerlinda.com