Some soaps are naturally beautiful, some…are not. And some need to be polished to bring out that beauty. Polishing is something Ive only played with for the most part. There is only one soap that I have polished and sold. It really brought out the swirls. There are a few different ways to polish soap, they all take a bunch of time. First the easiest one cant be done on new soap, the soap has to be fairly hard. You simpley put it under running water and work out and imperfections, then put it on a fine rack to dry. If you do this with soap that is too soft youll get marks on the bottom of the soap where it sat drying. Some people do this in a large bowl instead of using running water they will add baking soda or salt to the water and polish under the salted water.
Another method is with a cotton ball and rubbing alcohal, simpley wet the cotton with the alcohal and rub it around, you can also use nylon in place of the cotton. This can be done on softer soap since it is never emerged in a liquid.
There is no ‘right’ method, its just a matter of preferance, all of the results are very similar.
I was reading about some experiments in soap and came across one that intrigued me. Apples in soap. Hmm…ew. But milk in soap is awesome (most commonly goatsmilk) and honey in soap is awesome….so why not something sweet like apples? I know that lye can make things go bad right quick but this one has piqued my interest. Im going to give it a shot, real apples pureed with just a touch of cannelli ricci for scent (sweet cinnamon) Im going to try to get that soaped on Monday! Yummy!
I had no idea how this batch would turn out since it was a made from many other batches. I had no expectations at all. After several hours of letting it slowly melt down and burn off the fragrance it sort of just came to me that this batch would look good with some clays in it. I started mentally going through my list of clays and muds that I have in my store room and settled on some Fuller’s Earth. I could have gone with some French Green clay which would have given it a very nice color but I went with the Fullers because its excellent at gently drawing oils off the skin, then I added in some finely ground oatmeal to make it scrubby. Suddenly my kitchen sink soap was taking shape. Some Lemon essential oil gave it just the right ‘clean’ notes. It has turned out to be a great soap for getting grease and oil off! Success!
I generally end up with lots of shavings from soaps, when I clean them up to label them, little slices off the ends that are too thin to make into samples and just bits and pieces of soap that I stick into a large clean baking soda bucket. I figured it was getting pretty full and heavey so i decided to dump it into the crock pot and see what comes of it. I plan on letting it cook down for at least 8-10 hours, this is a bit of an experiment for me, all of the soap shavings were still very fragrant and some where very colorful, there are a few browns, many pinks, some green, yellow, orange and a tiny bit of natural color. Im hoping I can cook off much of the fragrance oil, I havent decided how to scent this handmilled batch yet. Im going to wait and see how it looks once its cooked down to determine the scent.
I now have a bath, body and soap store up and running! Its still in its infancy, I havent added all of my products (not nearly!) but please swing through-now you can see pictures of all of my adventures! Enjoy! http://www.italianhandmadesoap.com/store/