Lemon Cream - a re-do

I've sold out of one batch of my new cold process soaps - yay!! The Lemon Cream was really popular it seems (but I've found that with citrus, everyone always loves them so much).  For the previous Lemon Cream, I'd not added any "cream" element so I wanted to do it this time.  And, because I'm greedy and always want more, more, more, I didn't just use single cream but double cream for this soap - the thinking being, one is good but double has to be twice as good, right?? (I think it could be called heavy cream in the US? The single cream might be called pouring cream?). 

I used the same recipe I used for my Fresh Orange soap - Golden Olive Oil, Shea Butter, Cocoa Butter and lots of pure tussah silk.  I blended Lemon fragrance oil with May Chang (or Litsea Cubeba) essential oil to give a good, strong, sherberty lemon fragrance that sticks (as we all know that Lemon essential oil sadly tends to disappear in cold process soaps). 

I weighed the water portion out (subtracted my double cream amount) and added in my silk and then my lye.  It was only a small amount of water so it was a rather strong lye solution.  I allowed it to cool as I weighed out the oils and butters and allowed them to melt.  I mixed my titanium dioxide with a little oil and kept that close by me (so I didn't forget it, we all know what that feels like!).  And then I added some Lemon Mica to another container, mixed with a tinch of oil, ready for the traced soap. 

I added my fragrance to my oils/butter mix and then added the lye (after checking the temps of course) and stick blended.  I then added the titanium dioxide mix and stirred again.  I had put my double cream in the freezer whilst I was working on the soap and then mixed it in.  Hmmmm good idea or not? In hindsight, maybe not because my soap turned to soap in a bucket in seconds.  I don't know if it was because of the level of fats in the cream or the fact that the cream was so cold compared to the rest of the mix that this happened? I have made this before and it kept nicely fluid so I'm still not sure.  Any thoughts are very welcome!

So, I had to choose... keep it as a new look, soap in a bucket or hot process it.  Whilst soap in a bucket might be an interesting design, I can't see it catching on so I decided to HP it .. out came the crockpot.  I was a little annoyed, it wasn't what I wanted but I think it turned out really nicely.  It smells lovely, a nicely tangy lemon and it feels great on the skin (double cream may not be the best thing to eat but by God, it's a great addition to a soap!). 

So... here we go... Lemon Cream with fabulous oils and butters and real Irish dairy double cream in a zingy lemon fragrance ... ohhhh and I forget, it's all topped with my signature dusting of glitter:

Glittery tops

Rustic but beautiful

Top & Sides ... pretty!

A lovely wall of lemon soap

Side on view

More glistening tops

Lots of soap!

I really hope you've liked looking at this .. if you're interested in trying one out, they'll be available from 24 April on http://www.soaperstar.com/.



Soaping Fairies and Saving the Day

I haven't been too well lately, suffering from extreme tiredness - I've had a few days off work to rest and relax and decided I'd make a soap to help me de-stress.  I had in mind a nice swirl maybe (I always have this in mind, it rarely actually works that way ... is this going to be any different?!) and wanted to work with the Pomegranate Noir fragrance oil I've used many times before in body butters and my glycerine soaps.  It's a lovely fragrance, deep but beautifully scented.  It's also really popular with men and women. 

So I decided to make a nice cold process soap with Sweet Almond Oil and Cocoa Butter plus add my favourite pure silk to it as well ... then maybe a dark pinky swirl (thinking of the pomegranate element) and a deep dark blue swirl (to illustrate the depth of fragrance) alongside pure white soap.  So I weighed and checked everything, double checked in fact.  Weighed out my water and my lye (I was tempted to reduce the water level a little but then thought best not to since I was going to try and swirl).  Did everything the way I've done it before and it's all worked fine.  The only variable was the fragrance oil which I'd not used in cold process soaps before.

Everything went fine ... I mixed the fragrance oil with the now liquid oils and butters and mixed it all thoroughly in; then added the lye and wham bam thank you Ma'am, it was seize city! I mean whoooooo hoooooo.... ricing too, lumpy bumpy.  I beat that thing, beat all the ricing out of it and thought, to hell with it, I'm going to do my damn colours anyway, so I poured my prepped titanium dioxide in the batter, stick blended it as much as I could, then poured (or glopped in reality) some of the batter into my pink and some into my blue colours.  Then beat it again because it was starting to rice and sieze and then glopped the white into the mould, then glopped the blue, more white and then the pink and the last tiny bit of white on top.  Banged any air bubbles out of it and hoped for the best.  It looked like creamy semolina at this stage.  Hubs was around and helped out by carrying it upstairs to the spare room which is a sort of soap airing room now. 

So I tidied up (I was literally in a sweat now cos I did all that in milliseconds, rushing like a crazy thing - isn't soaping meant to be relaxing??) and sat down - I have to say it didn't help my exhaustion! Then I decided I'd have a peek and take a photo anyway.  Oh my Lord, this is what I saw:

See the granulation and the pools of oils on top?

This picture shows the pool of oil on the right hand side of the mould

This isn't what it should have looked like at all - I wasn't happy! Fearing it was incorrectly mixed lye (but thinking it couldn't have been either because I stick blended that thing to within an inch of it's life) I checked and found it was definitely oil but didn't want to find out if it was fragrance oil (by tasting) because I'm not that brave.

I went online to my soaping buddies and was advised to hot process it in order to able to save it.  As I put it in the crock pot, I had to scoop it out of the mould and found it had seperated inside also so it was definitely a goner unless I HP'd it. 

As it was cooking, we discussed it online and the consensus was that the fragrance oil heated up the batter so much that was already gelling in the bowl and that it was seperating or leeching out oils - this one is obviously one to HP from scratch.

So I HP'd it and, though it ruined my nice layered effect (which, as I dug it out of the mould to put in the crockpot, I was happy to see that it actually looked really nice), and blended all the colours into one, it certainly made for a nicely smooth soap.  I was pretty happy with the end result and it does smell pretty good. 

In the mould, just at the end of cooking

Cut pics, it was only after that I thought I should have dusted the tops with some mica

Pretty smooth side for HP soap (which can look rather rustic at times)

Finished article

So the moral of this story is that, when something goes wrong and you're sure you've done everything right, HP your soap in order to save any waste ... plus maybe test new fragrance oils on a smaller batch first!

If I had a stamp, I think a stamp and some mica would really bring some life into this soap - I don't though! It does smell really good though and I'm growing to like HP more and more!

Happy New Year, Burns & Soaping

Oh I've been so lax in posting here - I notice my last post was Happy Christmas... well now, isn't that all very 2010 of me, get with the programme Celine!

So Happy New Year to you all - I sincerely hope that 2011 brings you all the happiness and health (and hey, wealth too, might as well go the whole hog here) that you wish for. 

People are talking about setting goals and plans for the year and, to be honest, I'm in such a brain fog right now that it's as much as I can do to decide what I want for dinner.  Oh yep, I've been VERY lazy indeed over the Christmas period.  We had a friend stay for a few days and we all did very little, watched lots of DVD's and had lots of laughs.  I'm not excusing any of that at all because I obviously needed it.  I keep finding that, by the time my holidays hit, I've worked myself up into a state of tension and exhaustion and I obviously need to unwind and just veg out for a while.  Plus, with visitors coming and going, it's not always possible to get time to work on anything, even if my brain had allowed it.

Yesterday, 1.1.11 (what an auspicious date!), I decide to do "something".  What that something was took the form of a facial cleansing/conditioning soap - I had worked on a formula that I wanted to be extra conditioning but didn't lack a bubble factor and didn't fall apart in my hands either (when you up the conditioning factor, you often lose out on the hardness factor and I didn't want a slimey ball of goo to clean my face with, no matter how good it might have felt). 

I had a window of opportunity where there was no-one around and set to it.  I thought a very conditioning bar with silk (naturally, I can't do without this because I really believe it brings something magical to soap), I wanted to use pink clay because it has a ton of lovely goodies for the .. ahem... more mature skin and I wanted to try sodium lactate too in order to help counteract the reduced hardness factor (plus it is a natural humectant). 

So I got everything ready - I decided to hot process this soap as I wanted to see the results sooner than 6 weeks from now (because I leave my cold process soaps at least 6 weeks before testing).  I weighed out my oils and butters, got them melting in the crockpot.  I weighed out my water & lye, adding silk, sodium lactate at 2% of the oil weight (though I've been told 3% of the oil weight works well too) and I included a teaspoon of sugar to help with the bubble factor [again, when you up the conditioning, bubbling can so bye bye too so I've read that a little bit of sugar helps restore that] - so I included 1 teaspoon for 300g oil weight). 

I kept back some of my liquid oils for the superfat (7%) and mixed that with the pink clay, a dash of pink mica and essential oils.  I decided to use Lavender, Mandarin and May Chang - sort of a summer meadow vibe and God knows we need something to counteract the dank winter we have going on here. 

All perfect so far - yay the soaping fairies are off bugging someone else.  Well now, why the hell did I think that for God's sake??!!! Talk about inviting them in! So, I got my oils all melted and put in my stick blender and whizzed just to see and then realised I didn't have enough of the liquid to stop it from splashing all over the damn place.  The bell part of my stick blender has holes in it and, if the liquid level isn't enough to cover them, whatever your blending splashes everywhere.  Greattttt.... not.  So ok, all is not lost... I poured in the lye water plus goodies and covered the bowl with a cloth leaving just the arm of the stick blender out and blended, all splashes container by the cloth.  Of course, somehow the wire of the stick blender knocked against the spoon in my superfat & essential oil mix and knocked it all over! So now I have a pink oil slick on the worktop.  ARGGGHHH! So okay don't panic, I leaned over to get my spatula to scoop it all back into the bowl and OUUUUCCCHHHHH I burn my arm on the side of the hot crockpot.

Close up of my poor burnt arm!

So ok, stop screaming & swearing cos I still have a pink oil slick to worry about and I'm damned if I'm going to lose all those lovely essential oils anyway.  So I spatula up all the oils (basically by manoevering it all to the edge of the worktop and catching it all in the bowl).  Even though I wiped down all the worktops before I started, now I'm sure there's some random toast crumb in there too! Oh well, this is just for me and it'll add exfoliation right?!

So, the bowl with the half stick blended lye is still sitting there and, despite the burning sensation on my arm, I finish blending it, brave solider that I am.  I like that it's produced a very liquid batter but suspect that's because I have a higher level of liquid oils than usual plus the sodium lactate is probably doing it's thang too.  So I pop the bowl back on the crockpot and cover it and allow it to cook away whilst I go about cleaning up the mess everywhere. 

It didn't take too long as it was a small batch (too small in hindsight, next time I'm going to do a batch of at least 500g oil weight) and it was cooking nicely.  I kept checking for zap and zing which I got but then checked again and again til I had no zing and took it off the heat, adding in my superfat oil/clay/essential oil/random toast crumb mixture and mixed.  Once off the heat it sets up rather quickly (I have no clue how people do HP in those intricate moulds because my mix is never liquid enough to show off the detail - anyone has an idea on that, I'd be glad to hear) so I poured it into my awaiting silicone mould. 

So here it is in it's mould:

Apologies for a rubbish picture, it is actually pink and not some random pinky yellow and I will admit I do NOT like the tops of HP soap (if anyone has a remedy for that other than cutting them off, help me out here!)

And here it is cut about 6 hours later (I could do this so quickly because it was a very small batch, a normal sized batch I wouldn't have thought to cut til the next day at least but, in hindsight, I was probably better waiting):

The tops are all crumbly, I didn't like this - could be that I cut too early.  This would look far better if the tops were planed off but, again, this is just for me as a tester so I didn't bother in this case.   

This pic shows the bottom and the top - definitely need to shave off the lumpy top on this one I think. 

So I tried it when I cut it and it really felt good on my face, it has a bubbly lather that quickly goes into a very creamy lather and that washed away beautifully but left the skin very soft.  I applied my tester facial oil serum afterwards and, for a first go, I was very impressed because they seemed to work really well together and my face felt really smooth and sort of polished feeling - this is pretty impressive for me as I've rather mature, dry and sensitive skin so it can react oddly [when it hates something, I get little eczema patches].  I've left it now to cure a little and will use my small amount I cut off one of these bars on my face for the next few days.  I often think you need to use something for several weeks to see it's cumulative effect. 

So, that was my adventure for the first day of 2011 - a new year, a new scar and a new soap!

Happy New Year everyone and happy soaping!!!

Winter Berry - Cut Pictures

So, I promised you cut pictures of my first HP soap which I've decided to call Winter Berry.  It's a blend of berry, ginger and cinnamon fragrance - really lovely.  It's coloured with Grape POP mica too (it's more purple than the picture shows).  It's made with Sweet Almond Oil, Palm Oil, Coconut Oil, Cocoa Butter and Castor Oil with added silk. 

Winter Berry:

I'd love to hear your comments about this!

I broke my HP cherry... well, my berry really

I had it in my mind to make a cold process soap today.  I worked out a nice recipe with Sweet Almond Oil, Cocoa Butter, Palm Oil, Coconut Oil and Castor Oil (for the bubble factor!).  It was a lovely blend, nicely balanced between hardness, conditioning, bubbles etc etc.  I worked it all out on Soap Calc (for those who read this but don't make soap, Soap Calc is a calculator that helps you work out the correct amounts of oils/butters to use with the correct amount of lye so that you get full saponification - the chemical reaction between the fats and the lye that makes soap ... end of chemistry lesson!). 

Then I thought, I wanted to do something maybe pink or purple and maybe a berry fragrance but it's nearly Christmas so maybe something with a bit of spice too? So I raided my cupboard and found some Forest Fruits fragrance oil and blended this with a Ginger Spice fragrance oil - hubs, as usual, smelt it and agreed it was lovely and thought it rather a masculine blend (I suspect that was more the "out of bottle" fragrance rather than the "in use" fragrance, however). 

So, I got to work .. weighed out my hard oils and melted them, added to my fluid oils.  I decided to use some Titanium Dioxide to make the base soap whiter so mixed a little with some of the oils and added the mix back into my oils.  I weighed out my fragrance blend and added that to the oils too.  I'd made up my lye with my added silk and it was cooling in the sink, coming to the right temperature for me.  I put some Raspberry and Grape POP micas into two seperate cups and put them in front of me so they'd be close at hand when I was ready to go.

I put everything together on the work top and checked my stick blender was working ... and then got to work, pouring the lye water into the oils and stick blending to a light trace.  I mixed a third of this base batter into the pink, and another third into the purple and mixed them both carefully.  Then I did a nice in the pot swirl and poured everything into my new silicone mould.  All jolly fine, I was happy (wish I'd used more colour but I'll know better next time). 

I carried the mould carefully upstairs to the spare bedroom aka the soapy studio and thought, as I was walking downstairs "oh, this'll be really nice with the cocoa butter in it".  And then thought, "hang on, what cocoa butter??".  ARGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, I forget the cocoa butter!!! I never even weighed it out, I just totally forget it!!! Damn!

So what now? Well, as ever, after complaining a lot and feeling very rubbish and moaning at myself, I jumped on the net and asked on my favourite soaping forum "what do I do now?".  The answer was, if it's not fully set, melt the cocoa butter and stick blend it in.  Ugh, I'll lose my swirls.  If it was too hard, I could hot process it.  Now, seeing as I bought a crockpot (or slow cooker, which is the same thing) last weekend I thought, why not.  It's like the God of Soap was telling me to do it, go and try hot process. 

So I went and got the soap, turned the crockpot on and scooped all the soap into the bowl.  Yes I lost the swirls but I was doing something new so that'd make up for them.  So I let the soap cook as I went to melt the cocoa butter.  I also mixed a little extra grape POP mica in a cup with a little extra Sweet Almond Oil and a tinch extra of the Ginger Spice fragrance oil because, when I had mixed everything in the crockpot, it was a rather grey sludge and I wanted to try and keep at least some of the berry effect going. 

So it cooked; I left it for about an hour, stirring a little in between.  I tested the soap for zap about half way through - it's a very good way of learning what zap feels it! Boy, it did zap on me.  I cooked it a while longer and tested again - about 50 minutes in, it was pretty well cooked through, but I left it for another 5 minutes, just in case.  I then took it off the heat and added my purple fragrant oil mix and mixed it fully through the grey sludge of hot soap.  It was a really nice purple colour now and smelt fabulous - like hot spicy jam or something!  With the help of hubs, I glopped it in the mould (there's not much else you can do with HP soap, it's not as fluid as CP, glopping in the only choice really). 

So, here is my first hot process soap sitting in my new Crafters Choice silicone mould (yay no lining!!) .. I'll post cut pictures tomorrow to show you how it worked out.  Oh and I believe you're supposed to put a lid on and weigh it down which helps to compress any air bubbles out and makes for a smoother soap but I didn't have a lid and couldn't find anything to put on top that fit the aperture exactly ... so I didn't!

Hope you like it - more pics tomorrow.