The time you can cut a soap is dependent on a lot of factors - your recipe, the outside environment (drier means you can cut earlier, damper, like it is here at the moment, you need to leave it longer, whether you gel the soaps or not etc). I don't gel and I cut only a couple of days after making the soap - in reality, I should have left it for a week and then cut it.
Lemon Cream - scented with Lemon & May Chang Essential oil:
Sprinkled with poppyseeds
You can see the subtle swirls of white against yellow soap - if you look at the previous picture, the yellow was so vibrant and now so pale. You can also see that the poppyseeds get everywhere which drove me nuts!
Green Tea - you can see the slight drag due to cutting too early; its an incredible fragrance though, I just adore it.
I'm going to leave the soaps to cure and possibly trim them on a beveller (as I'm looking into ordering one) to tidy up the final soaps.
I cut my bars on the 3rd day, always using a wire cutter. I think those really are the key to smudge free cut, due to zero surface to which the soap can stick as you move on to the next piece..yanno?
ReplyDeleteI think you're right; I want to invest in a wire cutter but the Tank is out of my price range - do you have any suggestions where else to look to buy something suitable? I'm not very handy when it comes to building things!
ReplyDeletedoesn't have to be the tank. get some guitar string, take a simple hand saw where you can take out the blade, replace with guitar string, fasten..don't know if you can picture that. is the hubby a handy man?
ReplyDeleteOh I think we might be able to do that - will have a look see in our local DIY place and see what we can find. He's handy-ish LOL
ReplyDeleteI made a new soap yesterday, would love for it to cut beautifully and now I'm getting the cutting fear ... eekkk I had the cutting solution sorted for my glycerine soap but need something different for the CP. Cheers, I will check this out today and report back!