The Road to Soap Making Part 3
Posted by Lyschel Bersch on
Oh wow, I knew there was a reason that I stuck with candles these past 30 years. I am trying to bring soap making supplies to my customers so I need to fully understand all aspects of soap making. I need to be able to understand what I am selling. That being said, I am trying to start easy with Melt and Pour Soap bases. Well, our bases are in stock! And currently we are working on knowing each of the 14 different types. We want to know how they smell. How they feel. How they taste. (That was an accident, not good.)
I love how each of these bases smell right out of the bag. They have a freshness to them that is just heavenly and will meld well with most any fragrance that is added to them. The smell is almost a little floral. A little sweet. Very lovely. I almost want to make a scent out of this smell! I guess I was expecting more of a harsh scent. You know, like when someone smells certain candle scents and says "ew, that spells like soap". Well, I was expecting it to smell like "soap". The Oatmeal has the strongest "grain" like smell that may work against some scents but I find it wonderful. I would definitely recommend testing each scent with different bases if you are planning on selling your soaps. I do think that citrus, floral and earthy scents will do fine with these bases. I am wondering the most about bakery scents. But not sure if people use bakery scents on their buns anyway. (Notice the little play on words).
We started out playing with the Low Sweat Clear and White bases. I had read that you can hand mold the soap bases at about 95 degrees. I heated my white melt and pour soap base in a Presto Kitchen Kettle like I do with my wax.
I heated to about 140 and added .3oz of Fairy Dust and Twinkle Toes to 1 pound of soap base. Stirred for about 30 seconds. I divided it into three portions by transferring the soap base to a pour pot and added some of the dyes that I am testing. I just did a little slosh from the bottle. Probably around 10 drops.
I thought it would be like working with paraffin wax. You can hand mold and play around with wax while it is warm. Well, soap is not wax. I poured out three colors side by side on a tray.
I was going to roll it up and make a cute mushroom. I got it out of the tray immediately after pouring the last color and I think it was already too cool.
It was brittle and did not make a nice tight roll. But some still managed to gush out the side. I probably should have tried hitting it with a heat gun to warm it up a bit for the parts that were too brittle. All I can say is epic fail on the shaping part. Psychedelic ice cream cone maybe?
But the colors turned out beautiful and the scent is amazing! The grapefruit part of the scent just pops! I cut off some of the pieces and gave them to some little boys and called them snails. Mom says they went right home and took baths. So I guess something good came out of my mess. I also took pieces and have them labeled for color fast testing. I have some in direct sunlight, some inside the interior of the building and some in total darkness. I will look at them periodically to see how well they hold their color. I have read that a lot of the soap dyes fade quickly so I don't want that to happen. 6/12/17
NOTE:10 drops or whatever amount of color that I put into the base was too much. It made colored bubbles. But it didn't stain the skin. Also these dyes were very color stable. I didn't notice a color change even with the direct sun for 6 months.
Next steps are to research droppers, molds and cutters. And more dye research. Fun fun fun! Stay tuned!
Need soap making supplies? We can help with that. View here.
I love how each of these bases smell right out of the bag. They have a freshness to them that is just heavenly and will meld well with most any fragrance that is added to them. The smell is almost a little floral. A little sweet. Very lovely. I almost want to make a scent out of this smell! I guess I was expecting more of a harsh scent. You know, like when someone smells certain candle scents and says "ew, that spells like soap". Well, I was expecting it to smell like "soap". The Oatmeal has the strongest "grain" like smell that may work against some scents but I find it wonderful. I would definitely recommend testing each scent with different bases if you are planning on selling your soaps. I do think that citrus, floral and earthy scents will do fine with these bases. I am wondering the most about bakery scents. But not sure if people use bakery scents on their buns anyway. (Notice the little play on words).
We started out playing with the Low Sweat Clear and White bases. I had read that you can hand mold the soap bases at about 95 degrees. I heated my white melt and pour soap base in a Presto Kitchen Kettle like I do with my wax.
I heated to about 140 and added .3oz of Fairy Dust and Twinkle Toes to 1 pound of soap base. Stirred for about 30 seconds. I divided it into three portions by transferring the soap base to a pour pot and added some of the dyes that I am testing. I just did a little slosh from the bottle. Probably around 10 drops.
I thought it would be like working with paraffin wax. You can hand mold and play around with wax while it is warm. Well, soap is not wax. I poured out three colors side by side on a tray.
I was going to roll it up and make a cute mushroom. I got it out of the tray immediately after pouring the last color and I think it was already too cool.
NOTE:10 drops or whatever amount of color that I put into the base was too much. It made colored bubbles. But it didn't stain the skin. Also these dyes were very color stable. I didn't notice a color change even with the direct sun for 6 months.
Next steps are to research droppers, molds and cutters. And more dye research. Fun fun fun! Stay tuned!
Need soap making supplies? We can help with that. View here.