Posts Tagged ‘Black Raspberry and Vanilla’

I’m not too sure what compelled me to have a go at gelling my soap the other week, but I did. I remember having over-heating problems in the beginning and once I discovered the freezer, I just never looked back. But, lately I’ve been wanting to de-mold quicker, cut quicker and see if there really is a noticeable difference in the smoothness of a gelled vs non-gelled bar of soap.

So, I gelled.

And, I failed.

Nope, I don’t make a habit of smearing jam all over the top (or in fact, the bottom) of my soaps. That’s overheating goop! Gross, jelly like, makes you dry reach just thinking about it, stinky goop!

Because all my soaps are milk soap, that adds to the heat factor and thus, can make gelling a little trickier. BUT I soaped cool – cold in fact!! My lye mixture was chilled, my mold was chilled, my oils were cool. Yet still, it overheated. Damnit! Perhaps coming into Summer isn’t the best time to start experimenting with gelling perfections?

After a quick autopsy, the entire loaf was binned. RIP Black Raspberry Vanilla loaf…

Thankfully, I’m smart! *taps temples knowingly* I only attempted to gel one out of three of my loaves. So, the other two were removed from the freezer, thawed and demolded. That’s about where my smarts ended. Or, I guess more specifically, my faith in my cats behaving ended….

See the wickedly cool paint splatter top I did? See how awesomely white my goat’s milk titanium dioxide free soap is? See the corner where I dropped the loaf moving it? Doh!!

Having a few ‘issues’ that day already, I decide it’s a good time to leave the house. The cats, the kids, the soap… something was going to cop it. So, we left…

And… we returned.

See that? The completely smooshed up corner? Want to know what I call that?! Either Max, or Coolah!! Otherwise known as ‘YOU FLIPPING CATS!!!!!’

That is the soap crash courtesy of shit-head one and shit-head two getting up on the kitchen bench while I was out all afternoon. It’s bad enough that one loaf overheated and had to be binned – but then my two ‘still soft from not being gelled’ loaves got knocked over by two poo heads claiming starvation and looking for food where they know they’re not allowed.

Unsure what to do with the non damaged sections, I decided to pick them up and try to save what I could. Because it had been tipped over, the loaf lying down hadn’t dried properly from the condensation that occurs due to freezing/thawing. This, combined with my butter fingers resulted in a dropped loaf onto the bench. Other end damaged.

No worries, I still had the samples. Oh wait, I left those in the mold until they were completely thawed, forgot they were still soft and now those are all smooshed too. Oh yeah, and I remember now, that was the last of my best selling fragrance!!!

With two damaged loaves and “bits” of sample soaps and such, I decided this was going to be a good soap batch to have a play with the embeds idea I had. There was absolutely NO love left for this batch, so who cared if it failed.

And fail, it did. The idea in my head – awesome. The result? Fugly!

The orange one definitely came out better than the green, but still, not as I had pictured it. Below is the rough idea (I have about 10 different pictures similar I looked at) of what I had in mind when I was creating it. Bear in mind that the below pic is made via a different technique/soap type…

Oh well. As I had no attachment to the failed batch, I don’t really care that it turned out fugly. Some nice cheap soap that no one will worry about using due to being “too pretty” lol. Scented with Pearberry (green) and Fruit Tingle (Orange), at worst they can go as freebies/samples alongside orders or such.

Of course now I am absolutely determined to do it right aren’t I? I’m such a glutten for punishment and frustration.