Nature's Garden Bite Me

Even a rough day making soap is still a good day...

When I started my new soap business at the beginning of June I wasn't expecting to be very busy and I've been pleasantly surprised with plenty of orders to keep me busy!

A very big THANK YOU to everyone who's bought my soaps!  I've been staying busy (and totally enjoying myself) making 3 to 4 different soaps each week but I feel like I missed last week blogging completely.  

Wednesday I started my day dreaming up a soap for Halloween using a fragrance oil from Nature's Garden called Bite Me.  I did all my "homework" on the fragrance and formulated my recipe to fit my 5 pound mold and have some extra for samples, then I went to work.

The house was quiet, husband at work, kids at school...

When I got my oils and lye solution mixed together it came together really fast and I had "soap on a stick" when I tried to get my spatulas out of the bowls.  What???  I have five colors going on here and the soap has gotten so thick it's hard to get it into my molds.  After I'd gotten it in the mold I looked at the table and saw I hadn't added the Coconut Milk, oh duh, no wonder!  

Since the lye to oils ratio is off from not having enough liquid in the finished recipe it was time to chisel it out of the mold and get it into the crock pot to save it.  It was going to be so pretty too!!!  The above picture is the soap right out of the mold and in the crock pot.

It was looking good at 45 minutes in the crock pot but needed to be thoroughly mixed to incorporate the missing Coconut Milk, so I set the timer for another 20 minutes.  I ran and got another small crock pot and weighed out some of my cream colored soap shavings and had them melting down too.  Since my pretty soap took a turn I decided I'd try adding color back into it later using the light colored soap.

As the crock pots are heating I got out two clean molds.  The white one is a support for the red silicon mold inside that had just come in the mail, lucky for me!  

I was able to add some color back into this soap but won't know for 24 hours what it's really going to look like.  That's the fun of cutting it, seeing what you really have in there!  At this point I have six pounds of soap that smells good and I've washed up the mess of dishes I made and it has great lather and bubbles.

Oh, I forgot to mention at the very beginning of making this batch of soap I had all my ingredients measured out and lined up on the table ready to go.  I went to check something on the computer for a few minutes (still in the kitchen) and thought, "wow that fragrance is really strong!"  When I turned around and was back at the table the fragrance oil had melted the plastic cup I'd put almost 5 ounces in and it was all over the table, yikes!  I took it in stride and cleaned it up and tried to air out the house.  Re measured out more of my fragrance oil and put it in a small mason jar.

Thursday I cut the small 2 lb. loaf of soap and it revealed what it's going to look like.
I'm waiting until Friday or later today to cut the larger soap loaf, this first one was kind of soft yet.

Not exactly what I'd planned but I like it!

Bite Me seems like an appropriate name for the fragrance oil, not that I think my problems came from the fragrance oil, they came from my own operator error.  I think the name of this soap should be "Monster Mash" because I had to mash it up and mix it together again to save it.  

So... even a rough day soaping is a good day!

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