Avocado-Coconut Milk Soap

So, there I was perusing my copy of Soap Crafting, looking for inspiration, when a project called "Avocado Moisturizing Bars" caught my eye. I've wanted to try avocado in soap for a while and this recipe sounded intriguing.

I wanted a palm-free recipe, though, so I went in search of such on the interwebs. And I found this Sea Clay Avocado Facial Bar recipe on the Soap Queen blog, guest-written by Amanda from Lovin' Soap. Bingo. An avocado theme, lots of avocado oil, and no palm oil. I omitted the sea clay, but otherwise followed her recipe.

And then I remembered that I had bought some coconut milk a few months ago, vowing to use it in a batch of soap. This would be the perfect time to make good on that promise to myself.

Avocado plus coconut milk should equal mad luxury.

So, I ended up sort of combining Amanda's recipe with Anne-Marie's technique, adding my own touches along the way.

Anne-Marie's project in her Soap Crafting book is a gradient soap. I wasn't feeling up to a gradient, so I opted to do a single pour.

But! Wouldn't a droplet swirl be a pretty way to jazz things up? And what if the soap used for the droplets was colored with activated charcoal! The black and green would look stunning together, and the charcoal would up the spa-like factor.

So much luxury. I hope everyone can handle it.

And so, here's how the recipe I ended up with looks:

Of course, if you use this or any recipe you find on the web or in a book, please run it through a lye calculator to double-check it! Typos happen!

You may notice that I have listed the coconut milk and water separately. That's because I replaced two ounces of my coconut milk with water for my avocado puree. (More on that in a sec.) The full liquid amount recommended for the entire recipe is 12.160 ounces (345g).

For the scent, I chose Bramble Berry's Wasabi fragrance oil, which is also the FO Anne-Marie uses for her avocado soap project. I love the Wasabi FO! It smells to me like freshly-cut grass with notes of peppermint and ginger. I thought that the bright, green scent would go perfectly with the avocado theme. The Wasabi FO sticks like crazy, too, and it behaves well in cold process soap.

I also added some sodium lactate at 1.5%, which worked out to about 1 1/2 teaspoons per pound of oils, to help create harder bars.

So how do you get the avocado into the soap? After slicing and measuring out 2 ounces of avocado (that's one ounce per pound of oils), I subtracted 2 ounces of liquid from my coconut milk and replaced it with distilled water so I could make a slurry of pureed avocado, as Anne-Marie suggests in her recipe. I suppose I could have just used 2 ounces of coconut milk pulled from my total, but the coconut milk was frozen. (To keep my temps low and to prevent the lye from scorching the coconut milk, I measured the milk and then froze it ahead of time.)

To make the slurry, I added two ounces of water to the avocado and then pureed it with the stickblender until smooth.

Using fresh fruits and vegetables in soap can potentially affect its shelf-life, so it's important to fully puree fruits and veggies because larger pieces or chunks can go bad and get moldy. It's probably best to use bars containing food ingredients within a year or so for optimal freshness.

Once my oils and lye solution were cooled to around 90-95 degrees F, I added the avocado slurry to the oils and stickblended the mixture to get the avocado really well incorporated. Then I stirred in my fragrance oil and added the coconut milk-lye solution. Once the soap was at a light trace, I separated out about one cup and colored it with activated charcoal. I colored the rest of the soap batter with Green Chrome oxide.

Something I seem afflicted with lately is overmixing my soap batter. It seems that I get to a nice trace and then hit the soap one last time with the stickblender, just for good measure, I guess? I did that with my Honeysuckle Mantra Swirl soap and I did it again here. This time, I had a light trace - which was what I wanted - but then after I added the colorants, I stickblended briefly just to mix them in well. I should have just stuck with the whisk because my soap was a tiny bit thicker than I would have liked. The soap was still very manageable, but I wanted a lighter trace for swirling. I have to learn to stop myself when I get that urge to mix things one more time.

I poured the green soap into the mold and then drizzled the black soap onto the green from up high so it would penetrate into the loaf. Looking back at the video, though, I don't think I poured from high enough. That plus the slightly thick trace made for less dramatic droplet swirls. Oh, well, the soap is still pretty!

After pouring the soap, I stuck it in the freezer overnight to prevent gel phase because there is a risk that the avocado could turn brown if the soap gets too hot. I also used a thin plastic loaf mold - I didn't want anything insulated (like a wooden mold) that would retain heat.

Here's that video I mentioned showing how I made this soap:


I am very pleased with how the soap turned out! The ingredients are luxurious, and the Wasabi scent is amazing! Overall, I like the droplet swirls and the texturing on the tops. I've tested an end piece, and, boy howdy, is it nice.

Have you ever tried avocado in soap? Coconut milk? How did you like it?

Candy Cane Impressionist Swirl Soap

I'm a big fan of anything minty. And at Christmastime, mint shows up everywhere. It's fitting for the season - it's tingly and invigorating, but it also warms you on a cold day. Mint is not just for the winter holidays, though. It's a perennial favorite anytime of year. A bar of peppermint soap on a hot summer day is perfectly refreshing. (Crafty one, that mint. Like a Thermos. How does it know when to be cool and when to be warm?)

And if you pair mint with chocolate, it's even better. But then, chocolate always makes things better.

And so every Christmas, I must have not only minty foodstuffs, but also minty soap. And that means candy cane soap.

Christmas + Mint = Candy Canes

Candy canes are The Christmas Candy. When I was a kid, I'd go to the mall to see Santa Claus and tell him what I wanted for Christmas. I wasn't sure that I believed in the whole Santa thing - how's one guy going to deliver all of those presents to all of those kids in one night? - but I figured that it couldn't hurt to hedge my bets. And after I gave Santa my list of demands, he'd give me a candy cane.

Also, when I was little, my grandma would hang candy canes on the Christmas tree and my cousin and I would eat them on Christmas Eve as we not-so-patiently waited until it was time to open presents. The adults would play spades while we consumed an obscene amount of pepperminty sugar and inspected our gifts over and over again. The spades game was over once a team scored 500,000 bazillion points and only then were we allowed to open presents.

I don't visit Santa Claus anymore (I guess he just refers to my Amazon wish list these days), and my cousin and I no longer gorge on candy canes on Christmas Eve. But we still need a candy cane theme for the holidays, and soap is the perfect medium.

For this project, I decided to give the Impressionist Swirl a try. This technique uses squeeze bottles to squirt the soap into the mold in alternating colors, creating a swirl that resembles the short brushstrokes of the Impressionist artists from the 19th century.

Candy Cane Impressionist Swirl Soap

It's important to choose a well-behaved recipe and fragrance oil when using this technique. You want a thin trace, and it is necessary for the soap to remain liquid throughout the process.

For the scent, I chose Nature's Garden's Peppermint fragrance oil, which soaped like a dream. I mixed the FO into my cooled oils and then added the lye solution. Once I reached a light trace, I divided the soap batter into three equal portions and colored one with titanium dioxide, another with Bramble Berry's brick red oxide, and another with BB's green chrome oxide. (I mixed each colorant with a bit of liquid glycerin to work out the clumps and help minimize streaking.)

I transferred the colored soaps into three separate squeeze bottles and then squirted the colors into the mold horizontally in a S-shaped pattern, alternating between the white, green, and red. I repeated that process until the soap was gone. (I turned the mold every so often to keep the sides even, as the Soap Queen tutorial above recommends.) Once the soap was all used up, I used a skewer to swirl just the very top layer.

Here's a video I made of the process:


These soaps turned out really cool! I really enjoyed this technique, and I will have to revisit it in the future. I love how each bar is unique, and how you don't know what you're getting until you cut into the soap loaf.

Are you a big mint fan? Which scents and flavors do you associate with the holidays?

Snow Day Soap

Goodness, where does the time go? Is October really almost over?

I meant to have a blog post up a bit sooner, but it's been a busy month. My family came to visit last week and we had a great time hanging out! And I've been making holiday soaps so that they will have plenty of time to cure before Christmas.

Since September, I've made four batches of holiday soaps. My Pumpkin Gingersnap soap was the first of the four.

And I am proud to present holiday soap batch number two - Snow Day!

To create the ribbons of blue and gold through the middle of the bars, I used the tilted tiger stripe technique. It is similar to the tiger stripe - which I used to make this Bacon soap - except that the mold is tilted instead of flat when the soap is poured.

I hadn't heard about the tilted tiger stripe until recently. Milla, a fellow soap blogger, posted a few weeks ago about practicing some soaping techniques, and her gorgeous tilted tiger stripe soap near the bottom of her post caught my eye. I did a little more research on the world wide interwebs and found this YouTube video by Soaping101, demonstrating how to do the tilted tiger stripe.

For the scent, I chose a combination of Bramble Berry's Fresh Snow and Nature's Garden's Winter Garden fragrance oils. I had a little less than an ounce-and-a-half of Fresh Snow, and I used about a third of an ounce of Winter Garden to make up the difference. With this method, it's important to choose fragrances that do not accelerate trace, and it is also necessary to use a slow-moving recipe. 

To do the tilted tiger stripe, prop up your mold so that it is tilted at an angle. (I tied two packs of playing cards together and used them as a block, which I slid under the edge of my mold.) Pour some of your base soap into the mold, and then alternate different colors of soap, pouring a line of each along the side of the mold that is tilted toward you. I chose a white base with blue and gold stripes. Once most of the blue and gold soap was used up, I poured the remaining white soap over the top, being careful not to break through the layers below. Then I used the remaining blue and gold soap to create a faux mantra swirl on the tops, pouring a thick line of each and then moving a skewer back and forth just below the surface of the soap.

Here is a video I made of the process:


The tilted tiger stripe is a fun technique, and it creates a stunning design in the soap! I pretty much followed Soaping101's video, but I may try some variations in the future. I think it would be neat to tilt the mold one way, do some stripes, and then tilt the mold the other way to make contrasting stripes.

While I was looking up the tilted tiger stripe, I found a similar technique called the Dandelion Zebra Swirl, which was created by Vinvela Ebony of Dandelion SeiFee. (You may have also seen the Dandelion Zebra Swirl on Amy's Great Cakes Soapworks blog - it was chosen as October's soap challenge technique.) Instead of tilting the mold, a flexible plastic divider is inserted into the base soap and then alternating colors are poured or spooned down the side of the divider, creating ribbons of color. I will have to give the Dandelion Zebra a try someday, too!

Have you tried any new techniques lately? Which are your favorites? And how are your holiday soaps coming along? (Say, that reminds me - have a safe and happy Halloween, everyone!)

Pumpkin Gingersnap Soap

It is officially autumn now! Which means that we survived summer. I wasn't sure if I was going to make it this year. But then, I think that every summer. And every year, summer comes and goes and I am still alive. So far, anyway.

When autumn rolls around, I start thinking about cooler weather and how maybe soon I will actually want to go outside again. And I think about the upcoming holidays, and how I need to make some soaps for gifts. But what kind of soaps? What scents? What colors? Which techniques have I been wanting to try out?

Last year, I made a Pumpkin soap and a Gingersnap soap. This year I thought, "Why not combine the two and make a Pumpkin Gingersnap soap?"

And I have been wanting to try the Celine Swirl for a while and decided to give it a go. The Celine Swirl is named for its inventor - the talented and inspiring Celine Blacow of i am handmade, a Dublin-based artisan bath and body product company.

To do the Celine Swirl, you basically layer two or more colors in the mold and then use a spoon to scoop the soap from the bottom to the top, twisting your wrist as you go.

To make my 3-pound batch, I brought the soap to trace and then portioned off about 12 ounces of soap. For the colors, I chose Cappuccino Mica and Gold Sparkle Mica, both mixed with a bit of liquid glycerin to work out any clumps.  I added the gold mica to the 12-ounce portion of soap, and the cappuccino mica to the remaining soap.

Because both the Sweet Pumpkin and the Gingersnap fragrance oils discolor soap brown, I left the12-ounce gold portion unscented. I added the fragrance oils only to the cappuccino-colored soap.

Once the soap was at a medium thick trace, I poured about half of the brown soap into the mold. Then I spooned most of the gold soap on top of it, being careful not to break through the layer below. I layered the rest of the brown soap over the gold and banged the mold on the counter a few times to release any air bubbles.

Then I grabbed a spoon, pushed it into the bottom of the mold, and scooped the soap up toward the surface, twisting my wrist as I scooped. I did this along both sides of the mold and once down the center. Be careful not to swirl too much!

I had reserved a bit of gold soap and drizzled it over the surface once I was done swirling. After the soap set up some, I used my spoon to push the soap around on top, giving it some texture.

Here is a video of the process:


The Celine Swirl turned out pretty cool! And it definitely smells like the holidays! Gingersnap and pumpkin scents are always a hit at Christmastime, and this soap combines both beautifully. Just need to make sure that no one tries to eat it!

What scents are you all using in your holiday soaps this year? What are some of your favorite autumn and winter fragrances?

Gumball Soap

So, a few months ago I picked up a bunch of one-ounce sampler fragrance oils from Nature's Garden. One of the scents I bought was their Bubble Luscious FO. Out of the bottle, it smells to me just like pink bubble gum, and the scent stays true in soap, too.

Sometimes you can smell a scent and know right away how you want to soap it. Other times, you have to think on the design for a bit. And sometimes you know what you want your soap to look like and you have to find a scent to go along with your plan.

With this fragrance, I saw colorful gumballs embedded in a white soap. A few years ago, I picked up this ice cube mold at a kitchen store and had yet to use it. This mold makes cylinders of ice for water bottles, but it's great for soap, too! I figured I would use it to make cylinders of melt-and-pour soap and embed them in my cold process soap. When cut, the soap tubes will look round, like gumballs!

Soap balls would have also worked great for this project, but I didn't have the energy to make a batch of CP soap and roll it into soap balls. I thought about using my silicone ball molds (Bramble Berry carries them in small, medium, and large sizes), but since I had only two of them I decided to use the ice cube mold instead.

Melt-and-pour embeds

I confess that I am lazy when it comes to making CP embeds. Oftentimes I don't feel like making a batch just for embeds, requiring two days of soaping to complete one project. And other times I just fail to plan ahead. I tell myself that one day I should just make an extra pound of soap when I'm already soaping, separate it out, color and scent it, and make some embeds for a future project and also gee whiz was that so hard? Trouble is that I never remember to do that, or I don't have enough time, or I don't know what kind of embeds I want for what kind of project, blah, blah, blah. So CP embeds just never seem to happen for me. At least, not so far.

But melt-and-pour soap offers flexibility, and embeds can be made quickly and easily with it. So, M&P was my go-to for embeds once I planned this gumball soap out in my head.

For my embeds, I chose clear M&P base and Fizzy Lemonade, Tangerine Wow, and Electric Bubble Gum neon colorants from Bramble Berry. (Tip: These pigments are best mixed with glycerin to work out the clumps before adding them to the soap. Don't disperse them in rubbing alcohol - it doesn't work.)

I chopped up the M&P, covered my container with plastic wrap to prevent the moisture from evaporating, and nuked it in the microwave for 30-second bursts until melted. Then I added my colorant and poured the soap into the ice cube mold. Because I had only one ounce of the fragrance oil, I didn't scent my M&P embeds. But I totally would have if I had had more FO. (Another tip: There is one cylinder in the center of the mold that does not have an open bottom. It's got this crisscross design instead, making it impossible to get the soap out. Avoid that particular cylinder. I had to soak my mold in water for, like, an entire day before the soap disintegrated enough for me to remove it. I don't know why it's like that or what it contributes to the mold - stability, maybe? - but there must be a reason for it. Just wanted to give you a heads-up.)

Ideally, I would have made my embeds the day before and allowed the soap to cool overnight. Of course, I didn't do that, so I was pressed for time. After pouring the M&P, I put the mold in the freezer for about 30 minutes or so to make the soap harden faster.

After I put the M&P in the freezer, I made my CP soap. I opted for a one-pound batch using a palm-free recipe from The Nova Studio Blog. I used the first recipe listed, which uses 40% vegetable shortening, 30% olive oil, 28% coconut oil, and 2% castor oil. If you give this recipe a go, make sure you read the vegetable shortening label carefully! Some shortening contains palm oil, which would totally defeat the purpose if you're trying to go palm-free. Look for a soybean/cottonseed blend. (SoapCalc has "Crisco, old" on their list of oils, and I used that to run the recipe using soybean/cottonseed shortening through their lye calculator.)

I added the FO to the cooled base oils, along with some titanium dioxide dispersed in glycerin to whiten the soap.

By the time my CP soap was ready, the M&P was due to come out of the freezer. Once the soap was hard, I partially pushed it out with my thumb and gripped it with a paper towel to pull it the rest of the way out. I also used said paper towel to dab away the condensation on the surface of the soap.

When the CP and M&P soaps were both ready to go, I poured enough CP soap into my loaf mold to create a base to nestle a few cylinders of M&P end-to-end. I covered the embeds with more CP, and then laid some more embeds. I did three layers of embeds total, and topped the loaf off with the end pieces I had trimmed from the M&P cylinders.

Here is a video of the process:


I placed the soap in the freezer overnight to avoid gel phase because I feared that the M&P soap might melt if it gelled. I also soaped cool - around 95 degrees F.

The fragrance oil and the recipe behaved beautifully. The trace was nice and slow, and the scent is strong. And I'm happy to report that this FO does not discolor. Sweet scents often contain vanilla, which can cause the soap to discolor brown. But this FO has a 0% vanillin content, and it stayed nice and white!

And I love Bramble Berry's neon colorants! The colors are so bold and bright, and they really pop against the white.

The soap held up fairly well in the shower. I worried that skipping gel phase might cause the embeds to not adhere as well. Once the soap got worn down and became thinner and more pliable, a couple of embeds came loose near the end of the bar's life. No biggie for me, though.

Have you combined melt-and-pour with cold process soap before? How did you like it?

Mediterranean Garden Spa Shaving Soap

Time to make more shaving soap for the hubby! I found David Fisher's shaving soap recipe on About.com and thought that it sounded nice.

The recipe calls for coconut and palm oils for a stable, creamy lather. Olive oil, sweet almond oil, and cocoa butter condition the skin and provide lots of luxury. Castor oil, which I usually use at around 3%-5% of the total oils, is bumped up to 10% for an extra boost of lather. And bentonite clay (about 1 Tablespoon per pound of oils) gives the soap some extra slip for shaving with the added benefit of being oh-so-good for skin.

(Tip: Mix the bentonite clay with a little bit of liquid glycerin before adding it to the soap to prevent clumping.)

Here's the recipe I used:

~ Coconut oil - 30% ~

~ Palm oil - 30% ~

~Castor oil - 10% ~

~ Sweet almond oil - 15% ~

~ Olive oil - 10% ~

~ Cocoa butter - 5% ~

I did tweak David's recipe a bit. His calls for sunflower oil, but I didn't have any so I substituted sweet almond oil in its place. (And I ran the new recipe through a lye calculator, of course!)

The first thing I noticed about this recipe is that 65% of the oils are hard oils. Olive oil accounts for only 10% of the total oils. Most of my soap recipes are fairly heavy on olive oil with it being about 40%-50% of the total oils. The last shaving soap I made was 45% olive oil. Also, 72% of the oils were soft oils in the last recipe, and palm was a mere 8% of the total oils. This new shaving soap recipe is kinda the opposite of the previous one, so I was very curious to try it.

Once I had settled on a recipe, it was off to the fragrance cabinet to find a clean, masculine scent. I had a one-ounce bottle of Mediterranean Garden Spa fragrance oil, which was perfect since I was using one pound of oils for my recipe.The scent smells very green, herbaceous, and outdoorsy to me. The colors blue and green came to mind, and I decided to do an in-the-pot swirl.

Soon after adding the fragrance oil, bentonite clay, and lye solution to the oils and stickblending for a bit, the soap batter thickened to a pudding-like consistency. I'm not sure what caused this, considering that many factors can contribute to trace acceleration. The batter was workable, though, so I continued on with my plan to swirl. I managed to get the soap colored and then swirled the colors together, but it just didn't pour fluidly, which is what you really need for a successful ITP swirl. I knew that the soap batter didn't have the right consistency for an ITP swirl, but I pig-headedly carried on. Perhaps I would have had better luck with an in-the-shaving-bowl swirl.

Here's a video of me making this soap:


The soap still turned out lovely manly, and I kinda like the textured look in the bowls. And as the soap gets used, the swirls start to reveal themselves more.

It has been a few months since I made this shaving soap, and my hubby has been using it for a while now. He says that it's his favorite shaving soap so far, and he really likes the recipe. Sounds like it's a keeper! I may go in search of a palm-free shaving soap recipe, too, and see how he likes that.

The soap seems to be lasting him a good while, too - I think we're working on month three now - and the soap stays nice and hard and dry in between uses, not gummy at all.

I'll bet this would make an awesome body bar, too! I usually use regular soap to shave with in the shower, but I should make a bigger batch of this and make bars out of it. Then I could enjoy this shaving soap recipe, too!

Do you like shaving soaps? Got a favorite recipe?

Orange Basil Swirled Hearts Soap

This project included a few firsts for me: a new technique, a new recipe genre, and a new butter.

I decided to try out the Swirled Heart technique. This method has been on my must-do list for a while, and I finally got around to it. (My must-do list is about as long as my arm and it just keeps growing. It is going to take a while to get through it, methinks.) I remember seeing Anne-Marie and Kristy demonstrate the Swirled Heart technique quite a while back, but you know how it goes. You see a new thing and think, "Oh, cool, I'm totally gonna get right on that!" Maybe you even print out the tutorial and file it away in your soaping folder. And then you get distracted with other projects and maybe forget about it for a while. And then one day you're going through your bookmarks or your folder and think, "Whatever happened to ...?" And then you commit to the project and wonder why you didn't do it sooner. The Swirled Heart technique is a fun method, and I definitely plan to utilize it again. (It would be especially great for Valentine's Day!)

Something else that was new for me was not using palm oil. With the exception of my Castile soap and salt bars, my recipes have usually included it. I'm nearly out of palm oil now, so I decided to seek out some palm-free recipes to see if I could do without it. I went poking around the interwebs and found a few that I liked the looks of. The Nova Studio shared three palm-free recipes on their blog. One of the recipes calls for mango butter, which appealed to me because I recently bought some mango butter and was looking for a reason to use it. I've never used mango butter before, but I've heard so many wonderful things about it. Mango butter reportedly has natural emollient and moisturizing properties. Sounds like it should make a pretty luxurious soap!

 Here is the recipe I used, from the Nova Studio's blog post:

~ Olive Oil - 41% ~

~ Coconut Oil - 25% ~

~ Mango Butter - 25% ~

~ Avocado Oil - 6% ~

~ Shea Butter - 3% ~

I was a little bit worried that such a high percentage of mango butter might accelerate trace, but this recipe had a nice, slow trace for me. (A slow trace is important for this type of project, so choose a well-behaved recipe and fragrance oil.) I soaped at around 104 degrees F and had plenty of time to work with the batter. The soap is about a week and a half old now. I tested a bar and the lather is wonderfully soft and fluffy. The soap performs well already, but after about five more weeks of curing time it should be even more amazing!

Orange Basil Swirled Hearts soap

For the fragrance, I chose a 10x Orange and Sweet Basil essential oil blend. (The 10x Orange is nice because it is more concentrated than regular orange EO and therefore sticks better in CP soap.) Choosing a scent is sometimes difficult when I'm gazing into a drawer full of a bajillion fragrance and essential oils. I was trying to decide on both a fragrance and color scheme. I remembered that I had some orange mica from Bramble Berry. I really love the carrot-orange color of this mica, but it appears that Bramble Berry no longer carries it, which gives me a sad. Once I settled on the orange mica, I started thinking about the scent. Orange essential oil is an obvious choice. It turns the soap a light orange, though, and I wanted to do a white layer for my hearts. So, what would go well with orange and not discolor? Basil essential oil. Which means green. Funny how sometimes the fragrance dictates the colors, and other times the colors dictate the fragrance.

Dotting the surface

The bottom layer is an orange and green in-the-pot swirl. I thought about just doing straight-up orange for the bottom layer, but decided that a swirl would be more interesting. After the swirly layer had set up a bit, I drizzled some white soap on top to check it. Then I spooned the white layer on to prevent break-through into the previous layer. The Swirled Heart technique requires plastic squeeze bottles, which I found at my local craft store in the baking/candymaking aisle. I snipped the tips of the squeeze bottles so the soap would come out easier and give me good dime-sized dollops. To make the swirled hearts, I filled one squeeze bottle with about 2-3 ounces of orange soap, and filled another bottle with green soap. I dotted the surface with alternating rows of green and orange, and then dragged a toothpick through the dots to make hearts. 

(Tip: To clean out the bottles, I filled them with warm water right after I was done soaping, gave each one a good shake, and then squeezed the soapy water out. I had to fill and shake the bottles a few times to get all of the soap and residue out.)

The orange soap is scented with the Orange 10x essential oil, and the white is scented with the basil essential oil. For simplicity's sake, I left the small amount of green soap unscented.

Here's a video of the process:

I'm super happy with how this soap turned out! Orange and basil is a fantastic scent combo, and the hearts are so cute. The recipe and the essential oils behaved exceptionally well. 

I'll be trying some more palm-free recipes in the future, but I think that this one is definitely a keeper!

What do you think of the Swirled Heart technique? Have you tried it yourself?

Soap Seize: Keep Calm and Panic On

You know how it goes. Some days you're making soap and everything is just clicking along perfectly. Every part of the process goes according exactly to plan and your soap even turns out just the way you wanted it to.

And other days you find that you have slipped into the Ninth Circle of Soaping Hell. Having your soap seize is the quickest way to get there.

So what is seizing? Seizing is a result of trace acceleration, meaning that the soap batter rapidly thickens, moving from trace to beyond very quickly. (Trace occurs when the soap batter is fully emulsified and will not separate.) Sometimes acceleration causes the batter to get thick like pudding or mashed potatoes, making it impossible to pour. Other times trace accelerates so rapidly that the soap "seizes" in the pot and becomes a hard mass. This is also known as soap-on-a-stick.

Yikes, amirite?

So, what causes trace acceleration and seizing? Many factors can play a role:

Fragrance and Essential Oils
Certain fragrance oils can cause acceleration and seizing, particularly floral or spice scents. Some essential oils - spice ones like clove or cinnamon - may sometimes cause issues. I'm not a chemistry whiz, but from what I understand, the components and compounds in some fragrance oils can speed trace along. (Something about eugenol.) Sometimes it helps to add your fragrance oil to the base oils instead of adding it at trace. And if you know that the fragrance or essential oil will act up, try using a whisk instead of a stickblender. Also, fragrances containing alcohol can cause acceleration and seizing. I've never tried it myself, but I hear that using perfume or cologne to scent soap is a great way to get soap-on-a-stick due to the alcohol content.

Alcohol
Which leads to another factor: Alcohol. Using a scent that contains alcohol is not a good idea. Using alcoholic beverages in soap can also cause seizing. But, wait, what about beer soap, or wine soap? How do soapmakers successfully replace the water in a soap recipe with beer or wine? The trick is to boil off the alcohol. When I use beer in soap, I bring it to a boil and let it simmer for about 10 minutes. Then I pop it in the fridge overnight to let it get nice and cold. I've made several beer batches and not had any problems when I boil it first. (Some of the beer does evaporate, so I either simmer more than I need or simply use distilled water to make up the difference.) I haven't made wine soap yet, but from what I've read I would expect that it could be treated like beer.

Temperature
Soaping temperatures can also play a role. The warmer your lye solution and oils are, the faster your soap batter will accelerate. Conversely, cooler temperatures can help slow trace. I usually soap at about 100-110 degrees F. But if I am using a finicky fragrance oil or certain ingredients that contain sugars that may cause the soap to overheat (like milk, beer, honey, etc.), I'll soap cooler, maybe around 80-90 degrees F.

Recipe Formulation
Sometimes the recipe itself can cause acceleration. Recipes containing a high percentage of soft oils (like olive and avocado) tend to trace more slowly than recipes calling for a higher percentage of hard oils. For instance, Castile soap, which is made exclusively with olive oil, is notorious for taking a long time to trace. Using lots of hard oils - like coconut or palm, for example - may cause the soap to trace faster. I have heard that using too much of certain ingredients - like castor oil, jojoba oil, or beeswax - may contribute to seizes, but I cannot attest to this myself. I've never used jojoba oil or beeswax, but I have made two batches of shaving soap using 10%-20% castor oil without problems.

Another thing to consider when formulating your recipe is the amount of liquid used. You may hear soapmakers talk about a "water discount," which means that they use less water than the recipe calls for. If you use "full water," that means that your lye concentration is about 27% (meaning that 27% of your lye solution is sodium hydroxide and 73% of it is water), with water being 38% of the total oil weight. (I prefer to think in terms of lye concentration instead of percentage of oil weight because it's less confusing for me. Thinking in terms of water discounts is confusing for me, too. If someone says that they use a 20% water discount, I may not really know how much water that translates into if I don't know the water amount that the recipe started off with. And then there's the math. And sometimes I wonder if someone means that they used water as 20% of the oil weight instead, which confuses me even more. It's much easier for me to just think in terms of lye concentration because it seems more solid and easier for me to understand.) The less water you use, the stronger your lye solution will be. Soapmakers often use full water to minimize acceleration. Full water is a good idea if you are doing swirls or something that requires a light trace. Discounting water is a good idea if you want to speed along a slow-tracing recipe, like Castile. Recipes calling for lots of soft oils typically handle steeper water discounts better than those with lots of hard oils. And definitely use full water if you are using a problematic fragrance or essential oil.

Paranormal Activity
And sometimes the soap gremlins are just bored and mischievous. Try bribing them with cookies and beer. Don't know if that works on them, but it would work on me if I were a soap gremlin. (Make it good beer, though. Something classy. Any kind of cookie is fine.)

***

Wanna see an epic seize? I was filming when one of my batches went from normal to - BAM! - soap-on-a-stick within moments. Not 100% certain what happened here, so I don't want to attribute the seize to any one thing. It could have been one or more of the aforementioned factors. Enjoy:




Pretty cool (and terrifying), huh?

So now you know some of the causes of seizing, what a seize looks like, and how to avoid it. But sometimes bad things happen to good soapers. What can you do if your soap does seize?

If you are confident that your soap batter was blended well before it seized, you might be able to mash it up and glop it into your mold like I did in the video above. Or you can wait for the soap to gel in the bowl so that it is softer and more pliable. Once the soap has gelled  from one side of the bowl to the other (insulate if necessary and peek at it after about 20 minutes), scoop it into your mold. Be extremely careful if you do this! The soap will be very hot and caustic. Wear your safety gear (goggles, gloves, long sleeves and pants, etc.)!

If the soap is too hard to mash up, or if you don't think you got everything mixed before it turned into cement, you still have a couple of options.

Grab your crock pot or stainless steel pot and get the soap into it. Heat the soap and stir it until it has the consistency of oatmeal or applesauce. All of your lye and oils are in the soap, assuming that your measurements are correct, but they're just aren't mixed enough. Heating the soap will liquefy it (although it most likely won't become smooth and pourable), allowing you to finish mixing. Monitor the heat, though, and be careful not to scorch the soap. You may want to use a double boiler if you are using the stovetop. Once the soap reaches the right consistency, glop it into your mold and let it sit for 24-48 hours before cutting. This is also known as the "hot process" method. Although hot process soap is technically ready to use as soon as it is unmolded - since the soap has been cooked down to a pH of about 9 - it is best to let it cure for at least a week or two. It's even better to let it cure for the full 4-6 weeks to allow the water to evaporate for harder, longer-lasting bars. Check out Soap Queen's Hot Process Hero and Crock Pot Camo tutorials for more info on hot process soapmaking.

Or you can wait until the next day to rebatch the soap. Chop or grate the soap (if it's solid enough), put it into a stainless steel pot or crock pot, and add a little bit of distilled water, starting with a couple of Tablespoons and adding more as necessary to get the right consistency. Then proceed as described above.

A seized batch is definitely a bummer, but it doesn't mean that the soap has to be a total loss. Seizing risks can be minimized, and the soap can usually be saved even if those precautions fail.

Soapmakers, have you had a batch seize on you? What has been your biggest soap fail so far?

Updated to clarify info about water discounts and recipe formulations.

Castile Soap Revisited

Almost a year and a half ago, I made my first batch of Castile soap. Traditionally, Castile is made with only one oil - olive. Just olive oil, lye, and water. This simple recipe creates a creamy, luxurious bar of soap.

Castile soap benefits from a long cure. Typical soaps are ready to go after about 4-6 weeks, although I think they get better, too, with age. As you can see from this post about my Castile's progress over weeks and months, I wasn't quite sure what to think of it at first. The soap had to sit for quite a while before I started liking it. I wasn't particularly impressed at weeks 6 and 12 - the lather was minimal and slimy. I started to notice a change in the lather around week 18, though. By then, the lather seemed less slippery and a bit more bubbly. After six months, it was even better. And now that the batch is over a year old, it is fantastic. Castile may never have big, fluffy bubbles, but the lather does become creamy and dense over time. (I like to use a  mesh shower poof to help kick up a nice lather.)

Swirling mica/oil drizzled on top.

Because Castile requires a very long cure time and I have only a few bars left from the last batch, I figured that I better make more now so it can sit for a while.

I made this batch with a classic olive oil, lye, distilled water, and essential oils of lavender and peppermint. (I have a difficult time leaving things unscented.) And because the soap recipe is so simple, I decided to jazz things up by attempting a technique that I have been wanting to try for a while now - mica oil swirled tops. To make mica oil swirls, mica is mixed with a small amount of oil, drizzled over the soap, and then swirled. The oil saponifies along with the rest of the soap, leaving the shimmery mica swirls behind.

 Here is a video I made of the process:


I had some challenges with this batch. As you can see in the video, the soap turned out really soft. Even after sitting for a week, it was like prying room-temperature butter away from the mold. I tore the side of one bar trying to slide the side away, and bits of the soap stuck to the bottom. When I made my first batch of Castile, I used a log mold. The soap was soft when I went to cut it, but I don't remember it being as soft as this new batch was.

Could be a couple of things. First, I probably need to do a much steeper water discount with Castile batches. I usually use full water in my regular recipes, with the water being 38% of the oil weight (which gives me a lye concentration of about 27%). For the Castile, I bumped the water down to 33% of the water weight - which, honestly, isn't much - and I think I need to bump it down even more. My first batch did okay at these ratios, although it was a bit soft initially. I don't know why this batch seemed so much more softer. Maybe it didn't gel in the slab mold? I'm not sure that my first batch of Castile gelled, though. I didn't see either batch gel. (I usually peek after insulating and often catch my soap gelling. It's so cool-looking!) Methinks the water is the problem, though. I've been doing some reading and it seems that a lye concentration that's closer to 40%-50% would be better. Regardless, it should still cure into nice, hard bars, especially since I'm going to let it sit for 6-12 months!

I also wonder if the additional oil for my mica swirls had anything to do with it. Probably not, since I used so little oil to mix the micas. I doubt it was enough to dramatically alter the soap.

Overall, I am happy with how this batch turned out, although I wish that my swirls were prettier. I still need some practice with that. But I do like how the oil/mica mixture worked out, leaving the shimmery mica behind on top. It's such a fun and easy way to dress up bars! The mica swirls can give lots of fun color to a bar, or give some personality to a batch that discolors dark brown due to the fragrance oil.


I'm glad that I have another batch of Castile waiting for me! It will still take some time to get through my last batch. And I've got other soaps besides the Castile to use, too! It's always so fun to go into my soap room and pick out a new bar!

Bacon Soap

Yep, bacon soap!

I don't usually eat bacon. I tend to stay away from red meat and pork. Occasionally, I'll eat poultry or seafood. But I remember bacon. And it was good, especially when crisp. Soggy, fatty bacon is disappointing. And gross. But then, life is full of disappointing, gross things. But I digress.

So, anyway, this former bacon-eater was cruising around the Nature's Garden website one day and noticed that they had a bacon fragrance oil. Now, I probably shouldn't be buying fragrance oils because I already have so many that I still need to use. But I couldn't pass up bacon FO. And if I bought 10 one-ounce bottles, I could get 50 cents off each one.

You know where this is headed. I bought a bunch of fragrance oils. But I limited myself to ten and told myself that I had done a very good thing.

Out-of-the-bottle, the bacon FO smells just like frying bacon - smoky and meaty. It kinda reminds me of beef jerky. The scent holds up fantastically in soap, and it is very strong. The soap is sitting on my curing shelf now, and I can smell it from a room away.

I wondered, though, would anyone really want to use bacon-scented soap? Is it a novelty thing?

So, I asked my husband, Ken, "Would you use a soap that smells like bacon?"

"Sure," he said. "I'd use it."

"What if the neighborhood dogs start following you around?"

"That's okay. I like dogs."

Hopefully, we won't be attracting dogs. Especially since I don't need any help attracting dogs - they already love me and they will follow me to the edge of the world. If I charm any more dogs, I'll look like I'm leading a big, slobbering canine parade. They'll follow me home in droves and it will look like Dr. Dolittle up in here.

And how to best convey bacon through soap? I decided to use the tiger stripe technique, figuring that it would give me those wavy lines that you see on bacon strips. To do the tiger stripe, you split your batch into two or more colors and then pour lines of soap down the center of the mold, one on top of the other while alternating colors. For my soap, I lightly colored one portion with brick red oxide and left the other portion uncolored.

I used a recipe that would allow for a nice, slow trace: 45% olive oil, 29% coconut oil, 17% palm oil, 6% avocado oil, and 3% castor oil. The fragrance oil behaved beautifully - no ricing or acceleration, and I had plenty of time to work.

Here is a video of me making the Bacon soap:


I'm very pleased with how it turned out! I tried to use the brick red oxide a little sparingly, and it mellowed into a lovely reddish-pink color. And the fragrance oil discolored the uncolored soap to a perfect bacon-colored light beige.

And the scent is spot-on and sticks very well.

This seems like a guy soap, and I'll bet my dad and brother will get a kick out of it when I take some home soon. I just hope that my brother's dog doesn't eat the soap. Or him.

So whaddaya think? Pretty cool, huh? Have you or would you use bacon soap? Who do you think it would most appeal to?

Getting Ready For A Soapy Swap!

It's been a while since I've participated in a soap swap. About two and a half years ago, I joined a melt-and-pour soap swap that Bramble Berry was sponsoring. It was a lot of fun - I got to try some new soaps and fragrances, and I met some great soapmakers through their creations.

When Bramble Berry announced recently that they were sponsoring another soap swap, I decided to get in on the action. This time, I'll be making cold process soap.

So, how does the soap swap work? Participants make twelve bars of soap using a Bramble Berry fragrance of their choice (I'm going with Wasabi). Soaps are then sent to Bramble Berry headquarters, and they send each participant back twelve bars made by twelve different soapmakers.

Cool, huh? It's always fun to try other soapmakers' soaps and experience new fragrances. I just hope that everyone who receives my soap enjoys it!

For my contribution, I decided to make a soap with my vertical mold for a couple of reasons. First, it is the only mold I have that will hold a batch large enough to produce twelve bars. I have two 3-pound molds that make about 9-10 bars each, and my column mold probably would come up a little bit short, too. The vertical mold holds approximately four pounds of soap, which works out to about thirteen bars. Second, I wanted to try Anne-Marie's vertical twist technique.

I decided to substitute my own recipe, though, instead of trying the palm-free one. I have no doubt that it is a great recipe, and I do want to try some palm-free recipes. But I wanted to work with something familiar, especially since I had enough Wasabi FO for only one batch.

Here's my recipe:

Olive oil - 40%

Coconut oil - 28%

Palm oil - 26%

Cocoa butter - 6%

(Superfat @ 7%)

I also added sodium lactate (1 Tbsp for 45 oz. of oil) and Wasabi FO (.8 oz. per pound of oils) to the cooled base oils before adding the lye solution. For the colorants, I mixed Gold Sparkle mica and Hydrated Chrome Green pigment with a bit of glycerin to work out the clumps. After splitting the batch in half, I colored one portion gold and the other green. Then I poured the gold soap into one side of the vertical mold and the green into the other. (I find it works best to pour both colors into the mold simultaneously to prevent any soap from creeping over onto the other side.) When I removed the divider, I twisted it round and round as I pulled it up and out, making swirls.

Here is a video of the making of the Wasabi Vertical Twist Soap:

I think this batch turned out pretty cool! Every bar looks different. Some are very swirly, others look kinda like yin-yangs, and one bar even has a zig-zag look. 

Check out all of the different looks from the same batch!

And I love the Wasabi fragrance oil! It behaves well in cold process soap and it smells great! It may sound like an odd scent, but, trust me, it is uhmazing. To me, it smells very green, like fresh-cut grass, with a hint of peppermint and ginger in the background. Definitely very refreshing, invigorating, and unique! It's one of my all-time faves. Hopefully, I'll be able to introduce it to someone who hasn't tried it yet through the swap. I first encountered the Wasabi FO as a free sample in one of my Bramble Berry orders. One sniff and I had to get more. That's the great thing about free samples - you discover new fragrances that you might not have ever bought on your own. Plus, they're FREE!

If you want to participate in the soap swap, there's still time if you step lively. Soaps are due at Bramble Berry HQ by May 6, so they recommend mailing them no later than April 30. The categories are melt-and-pour or cold process soaps. If you want to make cold process soap but worry that it won't cure in time, you can put a note indicating the cure date on your soap if you're cutting it short. Or you could do hot process. And make sure you email Bramble Berry to let them know what you're planning! Get all of the details here.

Are any of you participating in this swap? If so, what are your plans for your soap?

Honeycomb Soap Revisited

If you've been following this blog for a while you may remember that about a year ago, I wrote about making honey soap. Well, we finally used up that batch and, because it's such a favorite around here, I had to make more. But this time I've got a videoooo!


Honey is wonderful in soap. Honey is a natural humectant (meaning that it retains moisture), and its sugar content helps boost lather.

I typically use about one teaspoon of honey per pound of oils, but I bumped it up slightly to 1 Tablespoon (which is about 3 teaspoons) for 32 ounces of oil. To avoid honey streaks in the finished bars, I subtracted one Tablespoon of my distilled water and heated it in the microwave briefly to warm it. I whisked the honey into the warm water to dissolve it, and then stickblended it into my oils to fully incorporate it.

The last time I made honey soap, my recipe was 48% olive oil, 29% coconut oil, 17% palm oil, and 6% shea butter. This time, I tweaked my recipe a bit to 40 % olive oil, 28% coconut oil, 26% palm oil, and 6% cocoa butter. I wanted to see if I could achieve a harder bar by dropping the percentage of olive oil and upping the palm oil. And I used cocoa butter instead of shea because, hey, why not? It's fun to change things up every once in while and see what happens.

Because the natural sugars in honey can cause the soap to overheat, I soaped fairly cool. My oils were around 95 degrees F and my lye around 100 F when I combined them.

And I stuck with the same fragrance oil this time - Elements Bath and Body's Honey (L'Occitane Type), which smells uhmazing.

We are looking forward to soon having another batch of honey soap ready to go!

What are some of your favorite soaps that you always try to keep around?

Peppermint Lemongrass Sage Swirl Soap

If you have been following this blog for a while, you may remember that I bought a bunch of essential oils last year and vowed to play around with more EO combinations.

I haven't done too much experimenting yet, but I did recently make a batch with lemongrass, peppermint, and sage EOs.

With spring coming, I wanted something fresh, clean, and light. And I wanted bright, outdoorsy colors. Peppermint is one of my all-time favorite essential oils, and I also love anything lemony. (Spring always gets me thinking about lemons.) I figured peppermint and lemongrass would be very nice together, and sage goes hand-in-hand with lemongrass.

So peppermint, lemongrass, and sage it was. And the colors would be bright yellow and green. I had been itching to use my vertical mold again, and I thought the yellow and green would look beautiful side-by-side.

I've also been wanting to experiment with some new recipes, too. I remembered that my blogger friend Cee Gee shared one of her recipes on her blog, Oil & Butter. I adore Cee Gee's soaps and was eager to try her formulation. I did not have mango butter, but that did not deter me from trying the Mango Butter soap recipe. I substituted shea butter instead, but I will have to obtain some mango butter (which I plan to do soon) because I have heard so many wonderful things about it. And, of course, since I changed the recipe, I ran it through a lye calculator to get the correct amount of sodium hydroxide for that particular list of ingredients.

For the essential oils, I chose a 1:1 ratio for the peppermint and lemongrass, and I used half as much sage. Lemongrass sticks pretty strongly, and I wanted the peppermint to come through as well. I didn't want to overdo it with the sage - I was going for a subtle hint of greenness, so I opted for half as much sage as peppermint or lemongrass.

It was hard for me to imagine any other colors than yellow and green for this scent profile. And I wanted the colors to be bold and bright. So I chose Bramble Berry's Fizzy Lemonade and Hydrated Chrome Green colorants. To make things a little more interesting, I decided to do two in-the-pot swirls - one green with yellow swirls, and one yellow with green swirls - and pour them into either side of the mold.

Here is a video I made of the process:


Overall, I am very pleased with how this batch turned out! I was hoping that the soap would be more swirly. Perhaps I was a bit too light-handed with the swirl colors. But the effect is still gorgeous. I think a vertical twist swirl would have been fabulous, too. I will definitely have to try this technique in the future as well.

The scent combo is nice. I mostly smell lemongrass, with peppermint coming in right on its heels. The sage is not as strong, but it lends a bit of herbal earthiness in the background.

The soap has been curing for about seven weeks now and I have been using a bar in the shower. Cee Gee's recipe gets two enthusiastic thumbs up! The soap has a bubbly, creamy lather and it feels great on the skin. Thanks for sharing your recipe, Cee Gee!


The Peppermint Lemongrass Sage soap looks and smells like happiness. It will be perfect for spring!

What kinds of scents, colors, and themes do you enjoy in the springtime? Anything in particular that says "spring" to you, soap- or otherwise?

Valentine's Day Soap: Roses and Champagne

My Valentine's Day soap

Happy Valentine's Day!

When I was little, Valentine's Day meant classroom parties where we all gave each other cards, made heart-shaped arts and crafts, played games, and ate cupcakes that someone's mom brought in. Everybody was in on the fun and nobody was left out. We were like tiny hippies - peace, love, and candy for everybody! And if your crush was in your class, you got a Valentine from them since everybody gave Valentines to everybody. I remember in fifth grade the guy I liked was in my class and I cherished the Valentine from him, even though everyone else in the classroom probably got the same card. Those were good times. And my mom and dad always got me a box of Valentine's candy, too. I'm talking a Whitman's double-decker or a sampler from the candy/nut shop in the mall. You know, the good stuff.

As I got older, Valentine's Day became increasingly disappointing, as many things do. Once I got to middle school, there were no more classroom parties. No more Valentines from your crush just because he was in your class. No more love for all, all for love. It was suddenly a dog-eat-dog world, and only couples were in on the Valentine's Day fun. Single and want a Valentine's cupcake? You'd better bake it yourself because nobody's momma was gonna show up and give you one. Want a long-stemmed rose or even just a Valentine's card? Better find yourself a boyfriend or girlfriend. Want someone to serenade you? Well, the glee club sold singing telegrams, but chances were good that you weren't going to get one unless you sent one to yourself, which would be very sad.

High school was more of the same. It seemed that the Valentine's Day festivities ended in elementary school.

I quickly became cynical beyond my years, which probably didn't help my chances of getting a singing telegram. I told myself that I didn't care, that the whole Valentine's thing was stupid. That it was a scam, just a corporate gimmick to make people spend money. Although part of me did still wish that what's-his-name would finally come to his senses and give me a stuffed gorilla holding a heart that said "Hot Stuff" on it or something. Thank goodness I could count on my folks for a box of candy. That I did care about.

Once I became an adult and finally found a significant other, I liked Valentine's Day a lot more. Now it means roses, some sweet treats, a nice dinner, and spending time with my sweetie. It means taking to time to reflect on the love you share with someone else, although I think it's good to do that everyday anyway.

Melt-and-pour heart embeds, made with a silicone ice cube tray.

When I started thinking about making a Valentine's Day soap, I thought of roses.I had originally planned to use a Sensuous Black Rose fragrance oil on its own, but then I remembered that I had a bottle of Champagne fragrance oil, too. Why not put them together? After all, roses and champagne go together like soap and water.

And because this is a special soap made with love, I got a little ambitious. It had been a very long time since I had played with melt-and-pour soap (almost two years!), so I decided to make some cute little M&P hearts to embed on the top of my loaf. And then it occurred to be that I could also add a mica line. And then it occurred to me that I could add TWO mica lines! And I would also try to master textured tops, which has been my Achilles heel in cold process soapmaking.

Here is a video of the making of my "Roses & Champagne" Valentine's Day soap:


I started out by making my heart embeds by melting some clear M&P soap base in the microwave. (It's best to chop up the soap into chunks so that it melts faster and more evenly. Also, take care not to scorch the soap - nuke it in short 30-second bursts until just melted.) Bramble Berry's Merlot sparkle mica gave my hearts a perfect deep, shimmery red. I mixed the mica with a bit of rubbing alcohol to break up any clumps and then I added it to my melted soap base. For my mold, I used a cute silicone ice cube tray that I found in the dollar bins at Target. After pouring the soap into the molds, I spritzed it with rubbing alcohol to burst any air bubbles, and then popped the soap into the fridge to set up.

Then I moved on to making my cold process soap. For this batch, I used olive oil, coconut oil, sustainable palm oil, castor oil, and cocoa butter. Because I was planning to put M&P embeds on top of my soap, I wanted to avoid gel phase. During gel phase, the soap heats up and becomes gelatinous as it saponifies. I was afraid that that kind of heat could melt my M&P hearts, so I decided to avoid gel phase for this particular batch. I kept my temps cool, partly to keep the soap from heating up too quickly and partly because I was using a new floral fragrance oil and wanted to avoid any acceleration issues. (Florals are notorious for accelerating and seizing. I am happy to report that the rose fragrance oil did very well. I used only half of what I normally would have, since I mixed it with equal parts Champagne FO, and I did use full water. The soap traced quickly, but never became unmanageable. I brought it to a medium-thick trace and it remained very workable for the entire soaping session.) I usually soap around 100-110 degrees Fahrenheit, but I let my oils and lye cool to about 90 degrees this time.

I added my fragrance oil combination to my cooled oils along with some sodium lactate (1 Tbsp for 32 oz. oils) and titanium dioxide. The sodium lactate helps create a harder bar, and the titanium dioxide whitens the soap. I stickblended to evenly disperse the titanium dioxide and then added my lye water. It didn't take long for the soap to reach trace, and once it did, I poured off 1 1/2 cups of soap, colored it with ultramarine pink oxide, and set it aside for later.

For my mica lines, I used some more of the Merlot sparkle mica. I poured about half of my white soap into my plastic loaf mold (which I had placed in the freezer beforehand) once the soap reached medium-thick trace. Then I used a tea strainer to tap out a line of mica that just barely covered the surface of the soap. (Too thick of a mica dusting may cause the soap to separate, so be careful not to overdo it. And remember to wipe the sides of your mold clean after dusting a mica line.) I had seen this video by Soaping101 and loved how Catherine made a double mica line in her soap. I wanted to try that, too. So I spooned some of my pink soap on top of the first mica line (being careful not to disturb it), keeping the pink soap on one side of the mold and reserving a small amount for later. Then I dusted a second mica line over just the pink soap, and then spooned the rest of my white soap on top of that. I drizzled the remaining pink soap on top of the white and texturized the tops. (To make texturizing easier, I popped the soap into the fridge for about 10-15 minutes to let it set up a bit.) Finally, I stuck my M&P heart embeds into the soap and then placed the mold in the freezer overnight.

I unmolded the soap the next day and let it sit for about four days before cutting it. The soap did sweat a little bit the first day or so due to condensation, but it dried out as it sat.

A couple of things to remember: Ungelled soap can zap for a few days longer than gelled soap because the saponification process is slowed. Ungelled soap can also be soft initially, too. When I cut the soap, it was still soft and my mica lines dragged a bit, even though I turned the soap onto its side to cut it. Fortunately, I was able to smooth away the mica smudges with my finger. A few days later, the bars were starting to harden up nicely.

The scent is lovely and perfect for Valentine's Day - a bit flowery, a bit bubbly. Definitely celebratory!

So happy Valentine's Day, everybody! I wish you all a lovely day of roses, champagne, and soap!