Coolah Creations

I’m dreading the long hot Summer…

On Nov 29, 2012 2 2 Comments

I’m a Winter girl. While I hate the wind it brings, and I get annoyed when it rains right as school pick up or drop off times roll around, the cold does not bother me. Not one bit. I am that freak you see walking around in a sleeveless top and thongs (flip flops) while others are wrapped up in scarves and worshipping the hot coffee that thaws out their hands. Cold? I just don’t feel it.

If you want to kill me however – crank up the earth’s furnace. I just don’t cope with heat!!

Looking back to my childhood, I have never coped with the heat. I remember a stinking hot day in primary school going out to get a drink from the water taps because I felt sick, only to completely scar the other girl doing the same when I looked at her, rolled my eyes back and proceeded to suicidally faint – hitting my head on the wall, the tap, the edge of the tap basin, and finally the concrete ground. And going that far back, ‘stinking hot’ would have been about 35 degrees then, not the 50 we can reach now…

Wasn’t the first time I had passed out from the heat, and it would not be the last. The heat and I just do not get along. Fast forward a few (quite a few!) years, pack on some post baby / drive thru loving weight and I hate the heat even more now. Especially if it produces anything liquid that runs down my body!! AKA sweat! ICK! A dry heat I can tolerate providing I can mumble and moan… but a humid day is my kryptonite.

These past two days have zapped all my super powers! The below picture pretty much sums up our current weather:

Dead Cat hanging. Poor Max. No, he’s not dead… he just felt it was too much effort to lift his head up after it slid off his sleeping spot. Poor Coolah seemed to be coping even worse, which is ironic as he has less fur…

Naaw, look at Max looking on with such concern… how much longer would he have to wait for Coolah to fall off so he could take the spot in front of the window?

Today hit a very unpleasant top of 39 degrees (celcius). The last weather check I did last night, it said it would be 31. Big difference. Especially when miss five asked if she could ride her new bike to kinder this morning and I said yes. I felt so proud of myself – walking the kids up instead of driving. Especially as I needed to grab some groceries, I had a bad night’s sleep due to being too hot, some muscle in my foot was making it’s presence very known, AND it was the first ride on her new, bigger bike.

Apart from one really awesome crash (down hill – freaked out child forgot to apply breaks – stopped at full speed by a chain rail!!!), it wasn’t too bad a walk. Except for the unpredicted overheating. I couldn’t get over how hot I was… blaming it all on being completely unfit and overweight. That was until I got home and realised at NINE AM it was FREAKING 30 DEGREES ALREADY!!! What the???

It was all downhill after that. With the waste of space evaporative cooling system this house has, it turned my wooden floors into ice-skating rinks and my poor soaps into crying masses of accumulated soap sweat. Even my CP soaps were sweating!! My poor M&P Rufus Soaps are going to have to be rehomed to my bathroom instead of the order they were created for.

Given it’s not even December yet – the official launch month of our Summer period, I’m scared for what’s ahead!! My plan to play with body butters has ground to a screeching halt and I’m considered not bothering with listing all the kids/specialty soaps I can do as if today was any prediction for what’s ahead, M&P will not even be a consideration. I mean my CP soaps were sweating man!! The ones IN their boxes, ON their shelves, stored in the room with THE most airflow in the entire house!!!!

Summer… I am dreading you!! I can’t soap at night – the coolest period of the day – because it wakes my kids. Damn you sound making stick blender!!

And I can’t soap during the day for fear of dying from heat exhaustion. Ooooh, geez imagine fainting while mixing the lye. EEEK! And even if I did manage to successfully create soap – how sub-par will it be if it’s constantly sweating. *panics at the thought of DOS*

My laundry is nice. It’s cool. It’s also about the size of a kitty litter tray. So unless I move my washing machine OUT (hey i’ve seen European TV shows where theirs is in their kitchen!!) and just move racks and racks of shelving IN to store everything… I’m kinda screwed right now!

Think I will wait until my brain isn’t being slow roasted inside my own head to decide any major moves. For now, it’s time to try and get some sleep… and not wake the kids with my rendition of the wicked witch “I’m melting…. I’m meeeelllting” as I walk down the hall. Oh, you know I would be doing that too!

ShareI’m a Winter girl. While I hate the wind it brings, and I get annoyed when it rains right as school pick up or drop off times roll around, the cold does not bother me. Not one bit. I am that freak you see walking around in a sleeveless top and thongs (flip flops) while others…

Soap Show Off – Lavender / Jasmine

On Aug 14, 2012 2 2 Comments

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After waiting for my lye solution to cool, my oils to cool, measuring out my essential oil quantity from my very expensive bottle of Lavender, I was ready to soap. And then, I leave my stick blender sitting upright in the container of oils that promptly tips over and, while I manage to save the oils, I can not save the shot glass full of EO that spills all over my counter top.

Damnit!

And of course, Murphy’s Law… it was the last of my Lavender.

While I did knock the glass over, I grabbed it quick enough that there was about 1/3 to almost 1/2 left. I decided to mix it with some Jasmine, a very small amount as it’s so expensive and voila – we have Lavender / Jasmine EO Goat’s Milk Soap!

Since my essential oil cupboard was open and the last bar of Spearmint has just been grabbed up by a girlfriend of mine, it was time to get my favourite EO of all time out!

Voila! Spearmint Swirl!

ShareAfter waiting for my lye solution to cool, my oils to cool, measuring out my essential oil quantity from my very expensive bottle of Lavender, I was ready to soap. And then, I leave my stick blender sitting upright in the container of oils that promptly tips over and, while I manage to save the…

And the soap bites back!!

On Jun 9, 2012 6 6 Comments

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Fellow cold process soapers are familiar with the term ‘zap’. For those non-soaping readers of mine, zap is what happens when soap isn’t actually soap yet. When it’s still going through the soaponification process, it will zap you. This means it’s unsafe basically.

Tonight, I got well and truly zapped! I’m part of the ‘club’ now… a true soaper!

A lot of people try and explain the zap, what it feels like. Licking a 9V battery is the most common explanation given. I’ve never licked a battery of that size, which I did learn among my fellow soapers means I lived a sad existence for a childhood because everyone has licked a battery at some point. I was special in my own right though… no one else ever had the walls talk back to them! So /raspberry

As I enter the “I’ve been zapped and all I got was this T-Shirt” club, I look for my special seat. The one just away from everyone else. You just know I didn’t get zapped the way everyone else does. I have to be different, even if my conscious mind isn’t aiming for it.

Most people get zapped when they lick their soap. I’ll pause a moment and let you re-read that sentence a few times. Yes, we soapers lick our soap. The boring ones use pH strips, but where’s the fun in that? Licking a soap will zap your tongue and give you an indication if the soap is “lye heavy” or in non-soaping terms, safe. We don’t lick all our soaps, it’s not some weird fetish like pregnant women wanting to ear rubber. Only those soaps that could perhaps be a concern are licked.

No soap was licked in this house tonight however. Nope, my soap decided to let ME know it was still zappy.

Wanting to make a batch with ground oatmeal in it and not wanting to risk my poor little cheese slicer / soap cutter, I brought out my Nizzy mold. But my normal recipe size is too small for this, so I jumped into my soaping program and changed the size.

Two problems with this:

I couldn’t actually remember how much the mold could hold, and of course over-guesstimated. Sort of like every meal I dish up… eyes were bigger than my, well, soap mixture.
I forgot to factor in the added oats and the volume that would then add to it all.

Ooopsie! As my five liter bucket started to get quite high, I said a little prayer to the soap god’s for nothing to go wrong as that was a whoooooole lot of ingredients at risk there. The scent I was using was Honey Almond, and I wanted to do a dark brown swirl through the mix. *shakes head* Yes, I actually though oats (lumpy) + swirl (requires smooth) would work. /facepalm.

But that’s not where the soap slapped me back to reality. It was mixing the brown colour into about 1/3 of the batch, which was in fact more than my normally full amount. I felt a tingling just where the upper lip meets the bit under the nose.

I licked my lip…

AAAAAH!!

Like a dehydrated dog under a running tap, my eyes rolled back into my head as the icy-cool water rushed over my lips and tongue. In my head I imagined a 9V batterly grew legs, wrestling arms, whistled to get my attention then slapped me, right in the kisser!

Lesson learned. Next time find a bigger container to mix in, or move into a bubble and soap from there. I have a tiny burn on my lip now which stung like a mother in the shower!! Ouchies!

ShareFellow cold process soapers are familiar with the term ‘zap’. For those non-soaping readers of mine, zap is what happens when soap isn’t actually soap yet. When it’s still going through the soaponification process, it will zap you. This means it’s unsafe basically. Tonight, I got well and truly zapped! I’m part of the ‘club’ now… a…

Key Lime … SIGH!

On Apr 8, 2012 0 No Comments

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I lurve Key Lime Pie fragrance oil. To my nose, it’s a sickly sweet smell. The description calls it; “Bitter lime and green lemon zests on a dry down of vanilla cream”, but to me it’s just sweetness on sweetness.

Vanilla – like. Lemon – like. Bitter – how do you smell bitter? I know a bitter taste, I know bitter old ladies, but never a bitter smell.

Frustratingly, as much as I love the smell, it’s a PITA to soap with (CP anyway).

This was just cut – so you can see the colour I intended the soap to be. I thought with only 2% Vanillan content I could squeeze it through without any stabilizer. I was wrong. I would have used stabilizer except I didn’t have any at the time.

The batch also over heated on me – can you see the ring of frustration? I tested a bar in the shower last night as I always do before listing, and there were zero bubbles when used on the body. Now this is the exact same recipe I’ve been using for all my soaps for the past month, but this is the first major disappointment in the shower.

At first I thought it was me (no no, it’s not you, it’s meee) and perhaps I was just super dirty. Would have been odd given I had just laid around all day, but you never know. Have you ever washed your hair and the shampoo just didn’t seem to do much lathering, but if you rinse out and wash again, you are drowning in lathery goodness? I thought the soap might have worked the same. I was wrong.

Rubbing it between my hands produced bubbles, so I know they were hiding in there. But rubbing it straight against my body produced nothing. So, I’ve advised my friends and testers that they are hand soap only, because this scent is just way too good to bin.

Was it the scent? Was it the over heating? Was it just a bad day in the shower? Not 100% sure. I’m leaning towards the over heating…

Refusing to believe it was the scent, I did a second batch with my M&P base. Wanting to cover all bases and perhaps wondering if it was me *gasp*, I also enlisted my latest assistance – Miss four and a half. Please don’t forget that half, it’s very important!

Together we were able to produce this little masterpiece:

The soap has an oatmeal base which can help exfoliate, a sweet middle center and a whipped soap top. Miss 4 and a half loved making the whipped soap as it filled the kitchen with fairy size bubbles (they were really teeny tiny)…

Next I will try bath bombs!!

ShareI lurve Key Lime Pie fragrance oil. To my nose, it’s a sickly sweet smell. The description calls it; “Bitter lime and green lemon zests on a dry down of vanilla cream”, but to me it’s just sweetness on sweetness. Vanilla – like. Lemon – like. Bitter – how do you smell bitter? I know a…

Coffee Concoction – Part Duo

On Apr 6, 2012 3 3 Comments

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After my last coffee soap failed miserably, I decided to give it a second go, but on a smaller scale. I still had the other half of the caramel latte coffee packet left, and since I don’t actually drink it, I might as well soap with it.

Instead of doing a large loaf mold however, I decided to do individual soaps. Less mass which would hopefully mean less overheating. I didn’t do just any individual soap shape however, I did… dun dun da daaaaa

Coffee Shaped Coffee Soap!! And cupcake… that was just left over mixture. I can’t even take credit for that awesome frosted (whipped soap) top. That was the portion that wrapped around the beaters! It actually came off the beaters looking like that, I just whacked it on the top of the cupcake hehe. If only it was always so easy!

Made from scratch, the water was partially subbed for a pre-cooled coffee brew. Unfortunately however, they’re a flop. While the cooling coffee smelt D I V I N E and I would gladly have it scent my house every morning, the actual soap smells… well… G R O S S!!

It’s lost all it’s coffee scent and replaced it with, well, I can’t describe it. For any fellow soaper reading, it’s part overheated soap, part that goat’s milk smell that you can get (x 10!!!) and part something else I can’t pin. What ever it is, it makes you instantly gag.

Knowing it was going to join the soap grave, it was put through the ritual autopsy first. After being left to sit out for a few days and noticing it turn dark (dark!) brown, it was sliced down the middle. The photo above is after a few more days and more darkening. It also goes really grainy and ‘rough’ when exposed to air.

Close up of the middle. You can see the graininess, and the lighter parts just under the white in the center is where it really overheated. That’s got the start of that icky goop threatening and I think what is dominating the smell.

This is a fresh cut. Anything not exposed to the air is lighter in colour, but also still ‘sticky’… ‘tacky’. Every cut brings a new waff (woff?) of that smell.

Sadly, the coffee cupcakes didn’t even pass muster. I thought I was so clever creating a little coffee cup and matching cupcake (muffin), but the smell penetrated those as well. And that’s just wrong, NO cupcake should ever smell that bad!!

What did work, and smell F A N T A S T I C is my Morning Mocha M&P Coffee Cups!! Complete with a babychino because that’s what those posh people do. I’m just nice and don’t want the kidlets to miss out.

I figure there’s a tall and a short, with the babychino. Otherwise known as ‘I can’t” and “measure equally” with the “left overs” *grins*

I’m loving the cellophane wrapping too!! Makes even my soaps look fancy!!

ShareAfter my last coffee soap failed miserably, I decided to give it a second go, but on a smaller scale. I still had the other half of the caramel latte coffee packet left, and since I don’t actually drink it, I might as well soap with it. Instead of doing a large loaf mold however, I…

C’mon Weekend! Hurry Up!!

On Mar 29, 2012 6 6 Comments

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It’s only Thursday. Urg. I keep thinking tomorrow is the weekend. Could be because it’s a ‘daddy weekend’ so no kids. And no house inspection next week so no urgent need to clean. Wait, so that means… omg… two days, kid free, nothing needing to be done. SOOOOAAAAAAPPPPPP!!

I’m itching for the weekend! Haven’t felt this way since I was working a nine to five job. I have BIG plans for this weekend!

My first go at hot process soap making! I want to make a Honey and Oats batch again, but this time via hot process as I only have a small amount of the fragrance I want to use, and I want to see if this way stops cooking my oats as bad lol.
My first real go at cold process cupcake soaps. Bit excited about that, although expecting many a floppy failure.
My first go at a new swirl technique. Sort of. Not sure if it’s so much a ‘technique’ as it will be a “I wonder if it’s done this way, let’s give it a go” attempt lol.

And not forgetting the cutting up of the batches I’ve made this week as well. Oh and more bath bomb attempts if I get time. I was also going to try some more wax melts, but I’d really like to wait until I can get in some proper candle colours I think…

Oh yeah, and I want to sit down and make a list of all the current fragrances I have as I have some bubble bath ready to go. I could just say ‘let me know what scent’ without letting them know what’s available, but I’m not that cruel. I only have about 50 options at the moment lol.

What a weekend I have waiting for me though!! Is it here yet? Is it here yet..? Is it here yet…? Is it here yet?? *fades out*

ShareIt’s only Thursday. Urg. I keep thinking tomorrow is the weekend. Could be because it’s a ‘daddy weekend’ so no kids. And no house inspection next week so no urgent need to clean. Wait, so that means… omg… two days, kid free, nothing needing to be done. SOOOOAAAAAAPPPPPP!! I’m itching for the weekend! Haven’t felt…

Oil Slick Dead Ahead Captain!!

On Mar 11, 2012 3 3 Comments

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Cheesecake. Yum, right? Baked or chilled. French Vanilla or Raspberry. I would hesitate a guess that 99% of the population likes a cheesecake of some sort. My grandma used to make the best cheesecake around!

I can make cheesecake… soap! Or, so I thought. Perhaps less soap, more oil slick. Oil and cheesecake are not two words that belong in the same sentence! So, what the hell is this?!

Gross huh? This was the first batch of soap I made with the cheesecake fragrance that I drooled all over when I first smelt it. It’s the same soap recipe that I’ve used with all my batches this past week – dare I claim it my ‘finally found my perfect base recipe’ recipe? Although I’m still waiting to test a bar in the shower (damn cure time), so far it’s poured fantastically, set up beautifully and cut divinely! AND it even makes a really light bar thanks to finding a super light, yet non virgin olive oil! I like my oils slutty…

The only difference with this batch was I popped it into a cooling oven to force gel through. The oven was still warm as I had cooked lunch that day – perhaps that just shocked the shit out of the soap given I don’t normally “cook”? The process is known as CPOP – cold process, oven process. Sounds technical, really isn’t. Soap is made the same way, yet instead of leaving it on the bench to cool, you leave it in an oven that’s turned off but still warm. This forces the soap to go through a ‘gel’ phase which doesn’t always happen if left to it’s own devices on the bench.

Pulling the soap out of the oven after a couple of hours, the top had a layer of clear liquid. I assumed it was just relating to the added head and assumed it would soak back in. Like Shell, I just hoped it would disappear (oooooh, no you didn’t girlfriend!). Frustratingly, it didn’t. It only got worse and more noticeable!

After conferencing with my fellow soapies on what it might be and what I should do about it, the consensus was … wait. Just wait. So I waited… and waited. Nothing changed. Today I realised nothing was going to change, so I might as well see if I can salvage it.

Um…

Say it with me… “EEEEEEwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!” My inner child flashed in for just a split second and thought about flinging the snot like substance across the room. Thankfully the parent in control knew she didn’t want to clean it up.

It. Felt. Gross! Like cold, runny, petroleum jelly. And rinsing my hand under the tap only washed the surface and instead left my fingers with a super slippery, greasy film. Oh gag it was disgusting!

The middle photo (above) is the oil slick cleaned up. But the top was still shiny.

No batch enters the bin without being dissected first! This is what I consider a soap autopsy. I couldn’t help but wonder if the entire oil slick was sucked out of my oatmeal base – it was dry and crumbly beyond expectation! Given the batch was gelled, if anything the oats should have been soft and ‘cooked’.

Those swirls (are they called swirls when they look like that? No actual ‘swirl’ to them?) are awesome, sad that they are being binned. But the entire batch has a sunken arch after wiping the goo away.

The complete disappearing act of my cheesecake fragrance has made it easier to bin. So sad that an ENTIRE bottle was made into two batches and both failed, miserably. Batch number two (pictured below) was the exact same recipe, same fragrance, everything. The only difference was it went into the cooling oven second and as a result didn’t stay in the heat as long. It still ended up with a slight oil slick however:

This would rate more in the ‘oopsie’ oil spill ranks… compared to the “omg the baby seals” that the first batch was!

Unfortunately cutting this batch also revealed another fail… and worse, upon cutting it, one of the hidden oil pustules POPPED! Like a pimple, it popped. Oh gag, gag, gag!

See the top middle photo? That’s the popping pimple of puss like oil! Nothing like pushing your knife into your SOAP and feeling like you’re dealing with a pre-pubescent teenager! It’s worse than my spots… my spots never POPPED!

I think I need a shower…

ShareCheesecake. Yum, right? Baked or chilled. French Vanilla or Raspberry. I would hesitate a guess that 99% of the population likes a cheesecake of some sort. My grandma used to make the best cheesecake around! I can make cheesecake… soap! Or, so I thought. Perhaps less soap, more oil slick. Oil and cheesecake are not…

Funky Fig…

On Mar 9, 2012 3 3 Comments

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Funky fig. And I don’t mean in a “oh guuurl, you look fuuuunkay!” way. I mean in the “um, baby, you smell a bit funky. You’re going to shower before we go out, right?” kinda way. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a nasty smell, it just makes my nose wrinkle. I’m clearly not a ‘fig’ kinda girl. It actually SMELLS green… is that possible? Can smells have colours?

Either way, all I see is my grandma’s old fig tree that I used to climb as a little girl. This tree was the BEST tree to climb – long thick branches, spaced just far enough apart to give you room, but not too far that you could fall out. The only down side – the smell. Fig. Bleaugh.

Makes you wonder what I was thinking when I picked that fragrance huh? Or Sage Flower for that matter – although I expected that to be more flower and less Sage. Even though it’s nothing like sage and more like fig. Either way, the two together…? No real difference. So basically it’s fig and fig. It’s a friggen figgidy fig soap!!

I’ve made two batches so far. The one last night REALLY didn’t go according to plan. I really have to work on my ‘less is more’ ability and not put so much batter aside for my minimal swirls. I always over-guesstimate and as I hate waste, my ‘swirls’ end up being the entire top layer of my soap … 3 inches thick…. and unswirlable.

The Idea:

The… erm… attempt:

The idea – pretty, minimal, defined swirls
The attempt – appears to be shedding it’s skin like a snake
The idea – very minimal highlighted white swirls
The attempt – again, I go with shedding skin…

You get the picture though. The white I put aside was clearly WAY overkill for the delicate swirls I was inspired by. I see dainty swirls, I do a layer of cream to make a biggest loser contestant dehydrate through drooling. The idea creator probably swirled with a femininity I can only dream about, I swirled with a wooden spoon a giant is currently missing!

Short answer: Not. Happy. Jan! (Non-Aussies watch this to get that reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2akt3P8ltLM)

Anyway, moving on. I had enough scent left over to attempt a second batch – imagine my joy. Knowing that it accelerates trace a bit, I went back to the trusty loaf mold (decision aided by the fact my only tray mold still has skin shedding soap stuck in it), and went back to the less swirly approach. The glob, pokey, poke method.(TM)

The idea is a white ‘base’, green in the middle, then some more white, then green frosting - a soap term for ‘minimal’. But knowing my ‘dainty swirls’ ability, it’s going to come out more like white – greeny white smoosh – green. And just like a real fig needs sugar to pass the palate, I added glitter to help it look just a tad more exciting. Which of course I think I overdid as well – yup, that’s green glitter on green soap, applied at night time. /facepalm

I also poked the top until it looked ‘detailed’ because flat just wouldn’t pass muster with fig soap!

I’m thinking I might have to shove some pieces under friend’s noses once it’s ready to get their take on the smell. My childhood memories could be clouding my opinion here…

The fact I’m addicted to sweets and my mouth waters with scents like cheesecake, sugar cookie and caramel sundae also isn’t helping the poor fig soap either. It’s like an instant reaction to fruit. Sorry figs.

The possitive out of all this – my first green soap!! I’ve already done the ‘Wish it was chocolate, looks more like poo, brown‘ soap, so now it’s ‘thank god it looks like tree leaves and not snot’ soap! Woo Hoo!

ShareFunky fig. And I don’t mean in a “oh guuurl, you look fuuuunkay!” way. I mean in the “um, baby, you smell a bit funky. You’re going to shower before we go out, right?” kinda way. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a nasty smell, it just makes my nose wrinkle. I’m clearly not a…

I long for boredom!

On Feb 19, 2012 0 No Comments

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This weekend was by far my busiest … possibly of my life! Saturday was spent getting down and dirty and cleaning the house! And I mean really cleaning it! Not just tidying or shuffling stuff around like previous weeks, oh no no, this weekend the dust mites were afraid. And with good reason! Sick of Miss 4′s bedroom not having a visable floor, I decided that enough was enough!

And clean I did. Oh boy did I clean! The kids bedroom, the toy / spare room, the lounge room, my work space, the kitchen. You name it, it’s now clean. (Please don’t name the bathroom….)

Satisfied with my now presentable house, I spent Sunday messing it up! My workspace was cluttered with more clothes being cleared out from my main business of the past 18 months. The kitchen was well and truly de-cleaned with glorious soaping ‘stuff’ and the results of said stuff being whizzed and whirled around.

I. Am. Buggered!

I am so longing for the feeling of boredom right now. Those moments when you just look around realising that you kinda have nothing to do. I remember complaining when there was nothing on TV … now I’m lucky if I can remember to turn the damn thing on it’s been so long since I’ve watched.

All weekend I was doing ten different things at once! That said, it was productive. Apart from the clean rooms lasting more than two minutes (kids were with their dad), I started on the men’s soap samples, managing to finish off five already.

P.S. Single white female making the most amazingly scented men’s soaps all weekend is CRUEL!!!! I would have just about jumped any guy that knocked on my front door today! Course who knocked? My ex… /facepalm

I also managed to whip up these beauties:

The delectably edible Vanilla Oak with shredded loofah and ground Walnut exfoliating soap! Smells D I V I N E! Best Vanilla scent I have inhaled so far!

The Tea Tree loofah food scrubs. Apart from the fact Tea Tree scent makes me gag, I was a tad disappointed with how little they seemed to smooth out my dreaded feet. I hate my feet. It’s my own fault – I own two pairs of shoes: Thongs, and Thongs. (Or for the non-aussies: Flipflops and Flipflops). One pair at the front door, one pair at the back door. And everything in between is bare feet.

This was a simple recipe followed and it was a good learning experience. It involved sticking a full loofah into a cylinder container and then pouring the soap mixture over the top. What wasn’t explained was the half an hour of holding the bobbing loofah down!! And I do mean bobbing … as in up and up and down. I’m not just PG rating my swear words there.

I was tempted to just leave the last 1/4 of the loofah sticking out – it was coming up for air every three seconds! I ended up sticking a plastic spoon on it, popping the lid on the pringles container (my ‘cylinder container’) and walking away. Still working on that patience thing…

What little patience remained this weekend was spent on round two of the rainbow slice soap. I decided to change things around this time as the last ‘rainbow’ only had five colours. Oops. This time I aimed for more numerically correct layers but I’m not so sure I am happy with the results. I will reserve final judgement until it’s cut.

I also decided to pipe the top this time instead of whipped. My first time pipping – at all! Not just pipping soap, but pipping period! Mostly happy with it.

This is my ‘bit-o-everything’ soap.

I needed to make a batch of soap (CP) to pipe the top of the rainbow cake, but you can’t make just that small an amount, so I might as well do something with the rest of the batter…
I had melted too much white soap and later on too much pink for the rainbow soap. I had also looked at a photo just this morning of twirly whirlies in the top of a batch so naturally decided to give it a go.
My first go at embedding MP into CP!

The idea was for a red/pink bottom half and a white top half with the pink and white twists in it. Instead the red barely showed through the batter and the fragrance oil turned my ‘white’ into yellow. Doh!

Red/brown and yellow soap with pink and white twirls and glitter. This poor soap feels like it was made by a colour blind drug addict! I can’t even work out how I will cut it! I guess that’s what I get when instead of concentrating properly, I’m going “shit hurry up, hurry up, the piping bottle is going to set! Aaah frack it just shove them in!”

ShareThis weekend was by far my busiest … possibly of my life! Saturday was spent getting down and dirty and cleaning the house! And I mean really cleaning it! Not just tidying or shuffling stuff around like previous weeks, oh no no, this weekend the dust mites were afraid. And with good reason! Sick of Miss…

I’m just never happy…

On Feb 10, 2012 0 No Comments

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I started soaping with M&P bases. With kids underfoot and a newbie to the world of suds, it was the safest option. The problem was, all the YouTube tutorials I fell in love with were done with CP soap. The column swirls, spoon swirls, stick anything long and pointy in swirls. ALL Cold Process.

I tried to replicate it with my MP bases. But try as I might, the only things I ended up with the almost mixed – not quite mixed – let’s call it marbled look. The best I got was an almost half and half soap. But still, I wasn’t happy. There were no clean lines, no defined swirls evident.

Determined to produce soap that was swirly, I took the plunge. I gathered my ingredients, and one day with the kids off at their dads, I took a deep breath in and pulled out the feared Lye. In the end, the only danger to me was the fact I forgot to let go of that breath until the soap was done. It’s amazing I didn’t pass out!

Like a child jumping into the deep end of the pool for that first time… I was hooked! Again, and again, and again I kept jumping!

Fellow soaping buddies are fully aware that I have not had the easiest of entrances into the world of CP. I’ve hit the bottom a few times, jumped to early and hit the edge with one part of the body or another, and god knows how many belly flops were felt. I was like an entire pool montage on Funniest Home Videos.

But, I didn’t care. Ok, I cared a little. I swore a lot too. But ignoring that, it was all practice for me. Every batch, whether fail or success taught me something new AND allowed me to practice swirl to my hearts content. Some more glop than swirl, but each and every batch was another step towards those soaps that had inspired me enough to start in the first place.

Then comes tonight. I make a batch of CP soap and purposely keep my batter runny. For what reason you ask? So I could produce this:

An almost mixed – not quite mixed – let’s call it marbled look soap. /facepalm

The scent is Fresh Mango (BB) and Pink Grapefruit (BB), and in my mind, I wanted to create something that looked like pureed fruit.

Right … so I spent a couple of months with M&P trying to get the defined swirls and hate the fact that the only thing I can get is the marbled/mixed look. I then switch to CP soap and, after a couple of months, purposely aim to create a batch that looks like the soaps I hated previously? And NOW I’m happy.

Now I know why men’s heads spin when they try to work out us females lol. Even I baffle myself tonight.

ShareI started soaping with M&P bases. With kids underfoot and a newbie to the world of suds, it was the safest option. The problem was, all the YouTube tutorials I fell in love with were done with CP soap. The column swirls, spoon swirls, stick anything long and pointy in swirls. ALL Cold Process. I…

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Posts Tagged ‘CP’

The Idea:

The… erm… attempt:

My Soaps

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