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northwoodsgal

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  • Gender
    Female
  • Location
    Wisconsin / California
  • Interests
    General DIY Homesteading: Crafting, Sewing, Soaping/Cosmetic Making, Ceramics, Jewelry Making & Furniture Making.

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  1. This is a really helpful post! Thank you! I'm going to try it out one of these days!
  2. Hi All! I'm new to the forum! I'm making hot process soap and also melt and pour soap. Recently, I've been getting feedback from people that the scent they describe smelling in the soap, is almost nothing like the scent I'm smelling. I'm using straight OOB fragrance oils, no mixing. I smell, for instance Black Amber Musk, and 3 different people are saying the soap smells like "dirt." Not as an insult, but as in that fresh gardening soil smell. When I smell it, I smell a fainter version of the OOB scent and it's nothing like a fresh dirt smell. How do people reconcile and work with differences in perception of scent? Any suggestions?
  3. I'm here in this forum to solve this mystery as well. I have seen two YouTubers: ByrdieJean and Hot Process Queen create very liquid smooth HP bars with swirls, texture and color on par with CP. That said, Hot Process Queen appears to be controversial with some undisclosed recipe because it's hard to believe that smoothness comes without continued heat or pouring the soap before it's passed the zap test? There's not enough content in the videos to get clarity about what's really happening, but it seems more like CP to me. I don't have enough soap knowledge to say. She says it's HP and it sure looks smooth. That's the infer I have. As for ByrdieJean, her approach creates such gorgeous smooth HP bars. I see that another user has addressed this, but for the sake of sharing here's one of her videos. In the comments she explains the water discount at the beginning to add in water at the end to get a smooth pour. I'm too new to the HP process and yet to have had success with this method, so any experienced folks with this method would be more helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1rDiQowxIE
  4. I know I'm pretty late to the party here, but those are absolutely gorgeous works of art!!!
  5. Thanks for your replies and warm welcome, Old Glory and Vicky! Looking forward to seeing you around.
  6. Hello there! My name is Julie and I'm new to this forum board. I've been doing many different crafts for years, as a hobbyist. I'm experienced with lip balm, candle making and melt and pour soap. That said, for years I've wanted to make soap from scratch, so I've decide to embark on hot process soap making. I've now made four batches of hot process and I'm loving it. My first batch was *sort of* an epic disaster because a local homesteading guy sells lye and soap supplies, but doesn't know too much about it and at that point, neither did I. He said "oh yeah, this is the stuff to make soap with and it said 100% LYE in all caps on the bottle." Turns out it was KOH and not NaOH. You can imagine my surprise and feelings of ineptitude when the soap never got hard after sitting for 24 hours. In frustration, like a good scientist would, I reviewed everything and all my calculations. I looked closely at the small print on everything and the back of the "LYE" bottle said it was Potassium and not Sodium Hydroxide. I wasn't familiar with Potassium Hydroxide at the time and just assumed it was a special lye but with a quick internet search, I figured out that I was making liquid soap. I took the gelled liquid soap out of the mold and followed HP liquid soap instructions and I ended up with liquid soap. So, my first ever batch of homemade soap was liquid soap! Go figure. Out of the frying pan and straight into the fire... After grueling hours of trying to get to gel and nearly burning out my immersion blender because I wasn't using liquid techniques, but rather HP techniques, I thought: 'this soap making is for the birds!' Now, I find regular HP soap is a walk in the park-- so easy compared to my first challenge. I signed up to this forum because I saw someone mention the "byrdiejean" hot process technique and I'm really interested in it and love her videos in Youtube. I do small batches for me and family only. I like to keep as much of the end stage ingredients (essential oils, butters, infused oils) intact so after research what I can tell is that HP is best for that, but I'm hear to learn and I'm sure that will change cuz I'm so into all the decorative swirls in CP. I've attached a pic of my "Frozen" melt and pour bar of soap that I make for my nieces. Looking forward to being here!
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