Little Information and another experiement

The little information part is easy,  I am taking any baking I do and putting it on my other blog. Foodylove.blogspot.com I think it should go there rather than here. :) Makes sense to me. There. Done.

Now on to the experiement. The thing that I did was a thing I have not done before but thought about many times.  Mixing Melt & Pour and cold process. Sounds easy, right? Well, I found out I was kind of wrong and well...kind of right, but I had a few other things happen I had not thought about.

I made my cold process soap like I always do and mix it at about 95 degrees F., added my fragrance at trace and tried to layer the M & P before I swirled it. I thought it would just swirl right in and that it would turn out like I was thinking in my head.

Sounded good to me.  Except I did not take into consideration two things; 

  1) My fragrence oil accelerated trace and,

2) M&P gets hard at lower temperatures

The accelerated trace was no big deal, I have salvaged many a batch from the dreaded sieze. But I was feeling a little sheepish for not realizing that the cooler temperature that I mix my CP at would have such an effect on the M&P.   I went to swirl like I usually do and stuck my knife into the batch and it was met with hard melt and pour. Ooops!

Overall, the batch turned out really well and it smells fabulous! Not quite the swirl I wanted but....a success afterall. (I do love the marble effect.) Next time, I'll try soaping at highter temperatures and swirling between layers.  Wish me luck.

Love this

I was testing out this new fragrance I bought from Brambleberry, not to mention it was a good time to practice layering. I did not really think it was going to real well. But I love this. The storm that is busy brewing over that ocean matches the fragrance well. Ummmmm.

I call it Stormy Waters.

Orangalicious, Finally!

Love to get ready to make soap, whether it is a new batch or not it is always an experience. It is like a science experiment and you not quite sure what the end product will look like. So I was elated when this batch turned out the way it did.

Here are just a few of the ingredients plus, a few that I had lying around. "The Gathering" of ingredients, as I like to call them.

The colors I used are micas, copper on top(love this) and apricot blush(love this even more) on the bottom. I love my colors intense and they both embody the fragrance I put into the soap.

MMMMmmmmm....love how pretty the colors swirl ont he top of the mold. This is the first test of a new mold I made, trying to get the dimensions just right for the size and shape I was going for. The shape was right but the length was not quite there and it did not fit the whole batch of soap, so I improvised and used a plastic container that worked well. You can see it in the back kind of hiding.

I had read about soap growing and cracking, this was my first experince with it. Duh, I forgot to insulate the top well so it grew and cracked. Boo hoo :( The picture does not show how much it really did grow but I did manage to stop it.

Beautiful! I am delighted with how it turned out and the aroma is fabulous. i wish I could have smell -o-web or something so you could smell it through your screen! Orange rounded out with a little grapefruit, so energizing!