Adventures With The Sage

Supplies needed:
Soap Chunks to embed
Transparent Melt & Pour Soap
Fragrance if desired
Spoon
Alcohol Spray (70% or 91% Rubbing Alcohol)
Thermometer (This is good until you can pinpoint a temperature by the appearance.)

Normally, I melt my Transparent soap until everything is melted and the soap is fairly hot. However, pouring my soap as hot as I normally have it, is not beneficial to embedding soap chunks in the soap. To have an appropriate temperature for pouring over the soap to be embedded, melt your Transparent soap until you have a few large chunks of soap that are not yet melted. Use the spoon and stir the Transparent soap until all of the chunks are melted. You can add fragrance at this point if you desire. You want your soap to have a slight viscosity to it, about the same viscosity of a slightly thinned rubber cement. The temperature should be between 115 and 125 degrees Fahrenheit (46.11 to 51.67 degrees Celsius). Once your soap to pour over has reached this temperature range, you are ready to pour. Spray your chunks to be embedded with the alcohol and gently pour your Transparent soap over the chunks. Once the mold has been filled with soap, spray the top of the soap with alcohol to help prevent a skin from forming and the bubbles to pop. Now you can make any final adjustments to your chunks.

Allow your soap to cool until it is completely solid. Remove from the mold and enjoy your beautiful soap!

Can you see that the mold was warped by the excessive heat? This soap got hot so fast we had a hard time holding the beaker to pour the soap into the mold. Unfortunately, pour isn’t a great descriptor as the soap glopped into the mold rather than pour in the fashion I’ve shown you before.

Aren’t you glad this happened in our testing rather than your production?

Happy Soaping!

Once these mishaps have occurred, there is very little we can do to fix the soaps unless we decide that these soaps are not mishaps, but soaps with artistic license. Look at these soaps and decide for yourself. Are these soap mishaps or soaps with artistic license?

You will need:

Curls and Cutouts
Translucent Melt and Pour Soap, Scented
Soap Molds
Alcohol Spray (70% or 91% Rubbing Alcohol)

Place your mold on a flat surface. Fill your mold with your curls and cutouts. Arrange them until you are satisfied. Remember, you are looking at your soap from the bottem. Spray your curls and cutouts with alcohol so bubbles do not form on them inside your soap.

Slowly pour your cooled melt and pour soap into the mold. You will want to do it gently otherwise your carefully arranged pattern will move and you may not like the result.  Once you have filled the mold, allow the soap to cool. Now you have an incredibly classy soap. You can use it for everything from bridal showers to birthday parties!

Note: You will want to be cautious because if your melt and pour soap is too hot it will melt your curls and cutouts and make them swirl. It is an interesting effect but one you may not want.

Don’t miss Melt and Pour Mishaps, Pouring Techniques and Scientific Analysis next week!

You will need:

Melt and Pour Soap of your choice (Transparent, White and Olive)
A Baking pan or Flat Mold
Parchment, Waxed Paper or Silicon Spray
Miniature Cookie Cutters
Knife
Container for melting soap
Lavender Fields Color
Cinnamon Bear Fragrance Oil
Tooth Pick

Line your baking sheet or mold with parchment, waxed paper, or a silicon spray for easy removal. Melt the soap designated for your cutouts. Color and scent as desired. Remember, do not use a dye as it will bleed through your finished bar of soap. In this example, I used the fragrance Cinnamon Bear and the pigment Lavender Fields. Pour the soap on your baking sheet and allow to cool. Pour in enough soap to create the thickness you want your cutouts to be. Once cool and firm, you can use miniature cookie cutters, a knife, or a toothpick to create and cutout your designs. It is recommended that you cut your designs when your soap is firm.

If your soap cutouts are extremely thin, they will curl. Should you desire that effect, pour your soap so you have a small thin sheet. If you do not want it to curl, pour your soap sheet so it is thicker.

If you don’t want the trouble of trying to keep to two cookie cutter sets separate, you can trace your design on paper or directly on the surface of your soap with a knife or toothpick. Then you can cut it out. TADA! Now you are already to put your cutouts in a bar of soap.

Don’t miss the blog tomorrow for how to place curls and cutouts in soap.

Soap Curls. Wow! Where should I begin? Soap curls are fun, elegant and most of all, simple! They are used as adornments in bars of soap. They can also be used as quick one time-use soap like the soap petals made yesterday. They are adorable!

You will need:

Vegetable peeler
Pre-poured bar of melt and pour soap

Make your soap. You will need to select a mold that will give you a bar the height of your desired curls. Color and fragrance soap as desired. Allow to firm completely. Look at your beautiful soap! Now we are ready to make our curls.

Hold your bar of soap in one hand. Run the vegetable peeler along a flat side of your bar of soap. The soap will begin to curl. The thinner you peel your soap, the more it will curl. Do not put excessive pressure on the peeler. You do not want to injure yourself.

If you want to show more color, you can stripe or swirl your soap curls bar of soap. You can make event specific curls by the colors you use. You can make orange curls for Halloween, green for Saint Patricks, or blue for the Fourth of July. Just make sure you use a pigment for coloring your soap. Dyes will migrate through your finished soap. Have fun! Your imagination is the limit!

Don’t miss making soap cutouts tomorrow and how to place curls and cutouts on Thursday and Friday of this week.

Collect needed supplies for making soap petals.

Supplies for both methods:
Silk Flower Petals
Transparent Melt & Pour Soap
Spoon
Transfer Pipette
Container for melting soap and dipping petals (It is okay to have more than one container)
Fragrance Oil of your choice (I will be using Wedding Blossoms Fragrance Oil.)
Old newspaper, parchment or waxed paper to collect any possible drips of soap.

Supplies for the first method:
Tweezers
Metal Cooling Racks or Baking Sheets lined with parchment

Supplies for the second method:
Needle
Thread
Tray for dipping petals
Place to hang cooling petals

Melt the desired amount of soap and then add fragrance oil. I am going to melt one pound of Transparent Melt & Pour Soap and for a moderate scent level, I will add 7 mL of Wedding Blossoms Fragrance Oil.

First Method:
Drop several silk petals into the melted soap and stir until the petals are completely coated with the soap. Using the tweezers pull the petals out of the soap and gently shake them to allow excess soap to fall off your soap petal. Place on the cooling rack or baking sheet and allow to cool. Repeat until all petals have been removed from the melted soap. Add more petals to the soap and repeat until the melted soap is gone or you need to reheat the soap again.

Second Method:
Thread the needle with doubled thread for strength and stability while dipping the silk petals. Thread the petals onto the needle and thread. Leave adequate spacing for the petals to cool without sticking to each other. Once the petals have been threaded onto the thread, remove the needle from the thread. Make sure you have left enough room on the thread to hang the thread on place you have designated for hanging the threaded petals.

Once the petals have been threaded, dip the petals into the melted soap in the tray. If your tray is not big enough for you to dip all of the petals at once, dip all sections of petals until all petals are coated. Hang the thread horizontally to allow the petals to cool. Repeat with other strings. Once the petals have cooled, remove them from the thread.

It doesn’t matter what method of dipping petals you used, you have now reached the same point. The soap petals are completely cooled and ready to be packaged. How would you package them? There are so many different options, so here are just a few.

1) Package in a clear gusseted bag and tie with ribbon or raffia.
2) Place in a small shallow glass dish or basket and shrink film the basket.
3) Fill a small jar with petals for traveling.

Another way you can jazz up your soap petals is to add some Silver Mica or Ultrafine Iridescent Glitter to the soap before you dip your petals!

Note:
We also decided to make red petals and we scented one pound of Transparent Melt & Pour Soap and for a moderate scent level, we added 7 mL of Endless Love Fragrance Oil. However, the red petals would bleed excess dye every time we dipped them.

Have fun!