| The weather is changing to winter and while I love the holiday season, I couldn’t stop myself from daydreaming about next summer and the fresh flowers. To help solve my desire to stop and smell the roses, I made this fun soap that smells just like a fresh summer bouquet. I think you will enjoy this soap as much as I do!
Collect needed items:
* To make these soaps, I did need to do some work just to prepare the colors I would use. I mixed the Amethyst Pink Dry color with Liquid Glycerin and then mixed well. From now on, I will refer to this as Liquid Amethyst Pink Color. I used the amount I desired to color my soap, but you can use more or less as you desire. This item has been marked as q.s. “Quantity Sufficient” for this purpose. Measure fixed oils on your scale. Warm the fixed oils on the stove or in the microwave. I melted the oils in the microwave. Add sodium hydroxide to the water. Mix well. Combine the scent blend in a beaker and set aside. Combine oils and lye solution. Mix until thin trace. Upon light trace, add the scent blend and Liquid Amethyst Pink Color. Stir well. Pour soap into the desired mold I used a different style of the Guerrilla Mold from Dirk’s post. Allow to sit until soap is firm. The next morning cut into bars. Stack to allow good air circulation. Allow to cure for several days before using. Longer curing will result in a harder bar. Notes: Thanks for joining me on my latest scenting adventure. The Summer Rose Bouquet soap samples have been sent to the Shipping Department to send out in orders. I really want to hear your comments about this or any of the other recent soaps. I hope that anyone wanting a sample soap will request one and if we have any samples we will send them to you. What blends would you make to remind you that summer will come back? I’d love to hear what you would make!
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 Finished bars of soap.  Weighing the fixed oils.  Melted fixed oils.  Adding the lye solution to the oils.  Beginning to blend the lye solution and oils together.  Adding the color and fragrance to the raw soap. |
Adding the color and fragrance to the raw soap.  Completely mixed soap. |
 Mixing the color into the raw soap.  Pouring the soap into the mold. |
HELP! So I tried this recipe last night and it was a disaster. I did make some modifications to the recipe and maybe that did it. So, I made a half batch, using 2 oz avocado oil, 4 oz coconut oil, 4 oz palm oil, 2 oz shea butter (high melt), and 4 oz sweet almond oil. I used 6 oz water with 2.25 Pot Hyd. So i melted the oils in a pot on the stove and the lye in a glass mason jar, everything looked good, then I added the lye to the oils and it got very thich fast and almost currdled. I mixed it for a few minutes with the blender and then poured into the mold (wax paper lined, oops it melted). The oils started to sperate in the mold. I poured the mixture back into a bowl and tried to remixed it but it was so think the blender was having a hard time. There were alot of chunks as well. So I just poured it back into the mold and this morning it is quite soft. What did I do wrong and cant I rebatch or should I throw away? Thanks!
I think your problem here is that you used KOH instead of NaOH. According to the Lye Calculator, you used the right amount of lye for the NaOH recommendation, but KOH needed another ounce for proper saponification. Potassium hydroxide won’t saponify quickly enough to prevent separation. If you had used KOH and were using higher temperatures it would work just fine. The best thing to do is add the extra KOH and some boiling water to make this work. It does not need to be thrown away.
I hope this helps!
Andee
thank you for the response Andee. I just realized that I typed Potassium, but it was sodium hydroxide, sorry I have potassium on the brain to remind me tou order the lye for liquid soap. You mentioned using hot water, I jsut used distilled water from the jug at room temperature. Could this have caused the soft soap? I made another batch last night and it didnt seperate so maybe I had something weird happen in the first batch. even though this batch mixed nicely, after I let it sit in the mold for 24 hours, it was very soft and tacky. Any suggestions for harden the bar? Thanks
For the oils in the batch you will not end up with a brittle bar. It will be firm but can take some time. What are your beginning temperatures for the oil and the lye?
The lye was 140 and the oils were 160. I make my batches on the stove maybe I need to turn the burner off earlier so the oils are cooler? So the soap is still very soft 4 days later, I used a wood mold with a lid
Are you premixing your lye solution ahead of time? Is it reheated just before making soap?
Did you use fragrances? If so, which one(s)?
No I am making it while the oils are melting. I did not use a fragrance.
I think the soap got cold and did not go through gel phase. You can either rebatch this one or grate it and place it in another soap batch. We have a blog on how to do this. What about light chunks in a darker surrounding? Maybe a blue soap and we could call it Starry Starry Night.
I’m going to take a shot at this one…If I’m wrong, please let me know!
I think the culprit is the Palm Oil. I have heard that Palm Oil separates out in the bucket. It contains stearic acid(?) I think?
When you purchase Palm Oil, you’re supposed to melt it all down then pour it into smaller bottles – or whatever you have. This way the stearic(?) is well blended with the Palm Oil.
If you bought homogenized Palm Oil, I’ve heard that you do not have to or rather, should not melt it down. Of course if it was shipped in the warmer months and it melted somewhere along the way – then you should melt it all down and separate into smaller containers.
I’ve had such bad luck with Palm Oil and it sure sounds like what happened to your batch. I may be wrong too :o) Palm Oil and me do not get along!
HTH,
Kathy