I’m having a soap making weekend! This weekend I am going to be putting to use all three of my wooden molds and one of my plastic molds. This weekend I plan on making cold process Pink Sugar scented soap. This fragrance is a bit of a pain. It has a high vanilla content and turns dark brown when used in cold process soap. I separate the batch into two portions one third I don’t put any fragrance oil into and I add red coloring to make pink, the other portion I add a little titanium dioxide to bring the dark brown to a slightly lighter brown. The fragrance doing discolor right away, I’m always a little disappointed when my beautiful pink and cream colored swirly soap starts to turn dark brown and pink. The Pink Sugar fragrance oil I use is extremely strong and this is one of my all time best sellers, even though its brown! I also add a shimmery silver swirl to the top of my batches of Pink Sugar. I plan on making 17 bars, which means Ill be using my biggest mold. I debated with myself if I should do this in a slab mold like I did last time, that would yield me 12 perfect bars and then I would use a second plastic mold to get a few more. But I don’t think I’m going to fuss with the slab mold and second mold this weekend. I have other plans for the slab mold!
Finding a supplier can be tricky. For little odds and ends that I want to play with Ill go to eBay if my regular couple of suppliers don’t have what I want to play with. Unfortunately eBay isn’t always a super fantastic place to purchase from. At first finding a supplier can be a lot of trial and error. If you have a friend who makes soap or body products they are a great person to ask for information. Many professional soapers will not give up their suppliers, rightly so, it probably took lots of hard work to find the perfect supplier. But they can tell you where NOT to buy from. You can also check soaping or bath and body message boards for supplier reviews or just Google the business name. If anything fishy comes up go on to the next supplier, saving a couple of dollars is not worth the hassle of having a bad supplier. The first place I ever purchased anything from was 1 pound of citric acid, 2 ounces of cotton candy fragrance oil and half a pound of cocoa butter. I purchased it from Coastal Scents. I have been purchasing from this company for years now and have never ever had a problem. Unfortunately for me they have gone more into mineral make up supply so I don’t often order from them these days.
If you are looking for an all natural soap it can be a little tricky to find if you aren’t sure what you are looking for. Its probably easiest to look on the label and start from the last ingredient and work your way up. Most likely you are going to find the synthetic ingredients near the end. Watch for ‘fragrance’ that’s a synthetic version of essential oil. Next look for the method of coloring. If the soap is vividly colored that doesn’t mean its not a natural colorant. Mica’s, clays, ultra marines etc are all naturally occurring and can make very vivid colored soap. If you are in doubt ask the soap maker! Its their job to know whats in the soap they make. If they cant answer your questions go to the next soap maker, keep looking until you find one you feel good about buying from. There are tons of people out there who make soap and each person does it slightly different so if its natural soap you are after its definitely out there but you are going to have to look. I personally only have one natural soap. It is simply saponified oils, water and peppermint essential oil.
Strawberries N Cream soap is on the list for this weekends soaping adventure. This will be the second time I make this scent. The first time I made this it seized on me. I had never witnessed first hand a full on soap seizure but wow, it was more than surprising! I thought I was making soap cool, that usually helps with keeping the soap from tracing too fast but nope, that batch went so fast! It also SOLD fast!! I did a quick and simple re-batch of it since the seizure made it look pretty ugly. This time I’m more prepared for how incredibly fast this fragrance oil moves. I’m also planning on using my slab mold for this batch which should afford me a few extra seconds so I might be able to get a little swirl going on, if not Ill do a shimmery swirl with mica. If this fragrance oil wasn’t so awesome I would definitely move on to another brand or formula that behaved better. But this one is definitely worth the trouble! It is my soap of the month selection for July.
I am planning on making Blue Sugar soap this weekend it is a new scent that I had to try. I’ve always loved Pink Sugar and Auqolina has come out with a masculine version of it and named it Blue Sugar. I can definitely smell Pink Sugar in there, there is that familiar sweetness but the blue sugar has some woodsy notes in it, fir or pine, and maybe a hint of licorice? I think it could be popular for either gender. Personally I like really girly scent so its to masculine for me but I definitely wouldn’t mind my husband using it! This oil unlike its feminine counterpart does not discolor at all! That is really exciting for me!! I am envisioning a light, light blue soap with a cream colored swirl and perhaps a very thing bold navy blue vein running through out. I’m kicking myself for not having any ultramarines around. Those would be a perfect choice to color this soap with! I will have to go through all of my colorants and see what I have to give me a dark deep blue. I know I have some jojoba beads that are dark blue, but I’m not sure if I want this soap to have scrubbiness to it. It would give a nice affect with the color though. I’m using my smaller 13 bar mold for this.