Finally got to make a soap today. It's been over half a year since I made my last soap. A bad car accident, surgery and a long six month recovery before I could walk on my own two feet, made soap making the last thing on my to do list,.
But finally, I've caught up with garden work, at least to a point where I don't feel guilty about the few remaining weeds, veggie harvesting is slowing down a bit, and my paperwork is almost caught up, and life looks like I can soon get into a nice, normal routine with time for making soap and other fun and creative things filling in the gap.
Today I dipped my toes in the water again with a small one pound mold using a Bramble Berry's Mango Papaya Fragrance oil with a spoon swirl. Love that scent out of the bottle and hoping it has legs. ,
My recipe with 48% hard oils worked just fine by mixing only to emulsion and then getting the colors and fragrance in the batter and mixing by hand to a light to medium trace, which gave me plenty of time to mix my four colors and take my time. I would have done a video but could not find the top part of the tripod I'd been using for the videos. I later found it hidden behind some thing on top of my microwave. Another tripod I dug out of a back closet, didn't seem to work either. I just couldn't get the camera to point down enough into the mixing bowl. After the soap was made, I worked with it and got it to move, so I may do a cutting video in a day or two.
It felt so good making soap after all this time, that I left my setup in place after getting all my tools washed. Hopefully, by the end of the week, I can make another soap. I want to make another batch of my Nag Champa which is my favorite, in house soap and loved by my family as well.
I have a lot of other fragrance oils on hand I'd like to try, so now that the colder weather is quickly coming upon us here in Southern Oregon, it looks like we will be getting a killing frost in another couple of weeks, and once the garden is put to bed, there will be plenty of time to fill in that gap with more soap making, which I'm looking forward to.
Hope everyone is busy making their holiday soaps. Mine will probably have to wait till next year, since I don't even have a single suitable fragrance oil for holiday soaps and will focus on using up some of these other fragrances while they're still viable.
But finally, I've caught up with garden work, at least to a point where I don't feel guilty about the few remaining weeds, veggie harvesting is slowing down a bit, and my paperwork is almost caught up, and life looks like I can soon get into a nice, normal routine with time for making soap and other fun and creative things filling in the gap.
Today I dipped my toes in the water again with a small one pound mold using a Bramble Berry's Mango Papaya Fragrance oil with a spoon swirl. Love that scent out of the bottle and hoping it has legs. ,
My recipe with 48% hard oils worked just fine by mixing only to emulsion and then getting the colors and fragrance in the batter and mixing by hand to a light to medium trace, which gave me plenty of time to mix my four colors and take my time. I would have done a video but could not find the top part of the tripod I'd been using for the videos. I later found it hidden behind some thing on top of my microwave. Another tripod I dug out of a back closet, didn't seem to work either. I just couldn't get the camera to point down enough into the mixing bowl. After the soap was made, I worked with it and got it to move, so I may do a cutting video in a day or two.
It felt so good making soap after all this time, that I left my setup in place after getting all my tools washed. Hopefully, by the end of the week, I can make another soap. I want to make another batch of my Nag Champa which is my favorite, in house soap and loved by my family as well.
I have a lot of other fragrance oils on hand I'd like to try, so now that the colder weather is quickly coming upon us here in Southern Oregon, it looks like we will be getting a killing frost in another couple of weeks, and once the garden is put to bed, there will be plenty of time to fill in that gap with more soap making, which I'm looking forward to.
Hope everyone is busy making their holiday soaps. Mine will probably have to wait till next year, since I don't even have a single suitable fragrance oil for holiday soaps and will focus on using up some of these other fragrances while they're still viable.
