#soapdate

[nevermore117]

soapdate: I fucked up

[nevermore117]

the newest chapter of my soapmaking adventure: I absolutely fucked it

this is supposed to be liquid btw

[nevermore117]

sequel to this disaster

after a couple of weeks... it's soap! It works fine! It's got a little of that young castile soap slime feel, otherwise it works fine and that should get better with time.

it didn't occur to me how hard washing only one hand would be until I was doing it

[nevermore117]

Corporate needs you to find the difference between these two pictures

that's right gang I accidentally made meat soap

[nevermore117]

soapdate: poured the water! I used a new brand of soap colorant that was WAY darker than I was used to, even after diluting it the color was stronger than I wanted. That's fine though, they still look ok. A little disappointed that the top surface had some weird textures instead of a smooth finish, but that's a question for another day.

bonus: used the leftover after diluting to test some metallic mica powder dye. Turned out cool as hell, probably cooler on this glycerin soap bc it's translucent. I'd like to get some matte colors soon.

[nevermore117]

soapdate: seashell soap is still sticking to the molds. I demolded the two experiments, one yesterday and one this morning just to see how they would fare. Both are still quite soft and suffered superficial damage. I'm not sure why it's taking this long for them to harden, but hopefully with another couple days the seashell ones will be firm enough to survive without too much issue

My oil ratios were pretty normal (castor oil can make em soft and sticky but it's only 3.5%) and I didn't add much besides bentonite clay. With some cursory research adding clay seems to harden bars rather than soften them, so I don't know! Might just be bc it's so damn humid out.

[nevermore117]

soapdate: seashells! My aunt knows I make soap and got me a little silicone mold of various seashells, they're too small to use on their own but I wanted to try adding them as decorations to other soap. I'm gonna try adding a layer of translucent blue glycerin soap as water on top, we'll see how that goes.

bonus experiment:

I know vanilla scent tends to fuck with colors, so I wanna know what it does to soap without colorant. I have a bit of bentonite clay in this batch but no other colorants.

[nevermore117]

soapdate: things got a little weird

so when I unmolded it first off the color is waaay lighter but that's normal. What surprised me is that the brick had a weird color gradient where the middle was green but the ends were almost a cream color? Much more warm yellowy toned than expected, and I could really see it on the disk. The whole top that was exposed to air was green, while the inside that was shielded by the mold was solidly cream-colored.

It was really too soft to cut without it being a mess, so I left it as it was after demolding and so I could come back in like 5 hours before bed.

... buuuuuut I forgot about it for like a day and a half, so it got way harder and ended up a mess in the other direction. Whoops. I also got fuckin SODA ASH again, I gotta look into how to avoid that bc it's annoying.

Weird thing was, when I did get back the warm tones had totally faded into light green. Wild. I ended up with a mild swirl effect like I wanted, and they smell great (eucalyptus and mint with a little of a fragrance oil helpfully defined as "morning rain").

What I've learned: exposure to air and/or temperature differences can cause color changes, and soda ash seems to form with air exposure.

What I need to learn: how to prevent soda ash more effectively, since I can't just not expose the soap to the air ever.