5 ene 2011

Of beautiful soaps and such

 Balsam offers this beautiful soap, which is complete inspiration to me. Such a marvelous piece of art, perfectly balanced colors which temp you into taking a bite. I want my soaps to look like that when I grow up.

I've been trying to do CP soaps for two days now, both attempts have failed horribly. The first one, a 100% coconut oil soap, which when I cut it crumbled to a million pieces. The fix? Put it in the crock pot with a couple of more oz of coconut oil and cook it out. The result? A marvelous white on white soap - scented with rosemary mint form Elements Bath & Body. My second try was with a cinnamon ginger soap. I mixed ingredients, got trace, took out 4 oz and mixed with cinnamon and swirl with the rest. 24 hrs later I had a beautiful glob of soap covered with 1/4 of and inch of oil. GRRRR. The fix? You guessed it, stick it in the crockpot and cook the heck out of it. I lost the swirls but ended up with a nice brown colored bar, with amazing cinnamony smell, half of which is natural (5 bars) and the other half I added Mediterranean Fig fragrance, again from Elements.

I seriously thought CP was easier to do than HP, but it seems not. If I come home early today I'll give it another shot with beer soap. The beer is sitting on the counter with salt since this morning, so it will be nice and flat. I'll whip up some soap and see what happens. Next up...coffee soap! Hopefully, it will end up looking like Balsam's bar and not another glob.

2 comentarios:

Patrice-The Soap Seduction dijo...

I've never heard of a 100% coconut oil soap. I've always been taught that using more than 20% of coconut oil in your formula leads to a drying bar. That could have possibly had something to do with it? Maybe using some softer oils like olive or rice bran would have helped. But don't give up! If you do succeed at a 100% coconut oil bar, do share:D

Irene dijo...

Hi Patrice, the 20% rule holds true. However, after a long period of curing (around a year) full coconut oil soaps are supposed to be extra bubbly and conditioning.
In the end I just put it in the crock pot and cooked it, which led to a perfectly white and cuttable bar, I did superfat a little so I think the problem probably was I did not use enough oil to begin with.

Thanks for your comment :)