kidsngarden

My bombs just fizz, no bubbles. I actually use both the meatballer and the ornament, but now only sell the ornament size. I find the ornament to be far easier to work with than the meatballer and you make less bombs per batch which gives the mix less time to dry out. In the beginning I think you have more success making big bombs than large.

If you just want them harder faster then why not discount the water?

Chances are there was not too much weighing involved. Often times there was a lot of going by site and feel. But she did list 6.5 pounds of grease so who knows???

Providing that it was indeed red devil 18 oz net wt can of lye, that's lye heavy soap. (It very often was back then) I suppose if you are trying to be "authentic" and just using it for laundry that would be alright, but I wouldn't want my hands to fry using that soap. The wonderful thing now about modern technology is we can make a safer product! Grandma would have recjoiced! I make laudry sticks - just lard and 0% superfat. I have a gazzilion of them. IF I ever run out Iwant to try 100% coconut oil...

The general rule of thumb is the harder the oil is at RT, the harder the bar. The only liquid oil that makes a hard bar by itself is olive, and it will take quite a cure time to get it there (even with a discount) and olive gives a slimey lather in high quantities. Lard, palm, tallow, cocoa butter (I use it at about 5-10%), shea butter, mango. And of course palm. I prefer lard or shea. Soaps with lard are my favorite hands down. I soap RT and make some masterbatches of oils with lard at 50% and it still will work. I mix it really well, then keep mixing with the stick blender every now and again as things cool. I have never had any problems with it seperating out unless it wasn't mixed well to begin with (happened only once!) you can try adding up to 3% stearic acid as well, too much stearic will cause soap on a stick so don't OD on that.

www.brambleberry.com they have labomb and labcolors. I'm a lucky one as they are less than and hour from me!

Wonderful! I can't wait to see pics!

Nope, an ornament... here's my base recipe (pretty sure I got it off here and may have tweeked a bit): 2 cups Baking soda 1 cup corn starch 1 cup citric 5 TB liquid oils (sunflower, olive, avocado, etc.) 2-3 TB water (I'm always on the upper end of this) 1-1.5 TB FO liquid color. combine dry stuff combine liquid stuff Add the liquid to the dry slowly stirring like crazy. It should feel like damp sand. pack it good and tight in the mold. Tap all around the outside of the mold. Release and set on paper to dry. This makes 3 3inch diameter bombs and one meatballer bomb - I send those out as samples! I'm telling you bath bombs were the very hardest thing for me to learn to make. I tried for a month or so, gave up for about 3 months, then picked it up again messing up over and over. Then one day it happened - no cracks, no fizzing (before the bath that is!) so then I made about 100, no kidding, 100 bombs over two days. Over and over so I would get the feel ingrained in my head. 'Cause that's the secret, learning how that darn stuff is supposed to feel when you mold it - that can't be taught over the net! Oh and working fast, because it really does dry out quickly. If you start making bigger bombs I think it is far easier to get because you are making three as opposed to, oh, I think this recipe makes 9-12 meatballer size - start bigger, you'll be glad you did! and sometimes the weather makes you nuts because the humidity means less water, and the dry means more (or the moon is full, or the wind is blowing from the west, ) but the formula above is pretty consistent for Western WA for me. Man, I just got done helping a newbie soaper via a long email so now I'm feeling all nicey nice and teacher like...SORRY!

I just went to JoAnn's today before seeing Kimberly's liners. I was thinking of mylar like the silver fabric type stuff (which I think maybe mylar COATED) so I just could figure it. There was no clear, but the matte, frosted and graphed. I think the price was 3.49 per sheet. you would have to have molds that are small enough as the the sheets are maybe 18 by 12 inches? I didn't get one yet as I wanted to read up some more. I'm thinking I would put a piece of saran under these liners as I pour at a fairly thin trace sometimes. I did try those thin cutting boards that look similar to mylar, but they warped. so you've been doing this for 2 years and no warping? My soaps are all fresh GM and can get a killer hot gel.

Ok kimberly, I searched your posts and haven't found it...

Me too. .7 oz ppo. I would have to REALLY adore the fragrance to use 1 oz ppo. I expect all my FO's to be good at .7 oz ppo.

Where do you get the mylar for your liners?

Jeff, but to your slabs come with dividers like kelsei's? (so you don't have to cut)

Ok, I went and measured ... they are three inches in diameter.

They weigh just under 8 oz. They are about baseball size or just slightly bigger. Scented - I know the electric lime coconut should be green - but I thought the "lime" would be green, but the more I added the brighter it got, not greener. Started to sell them and that's what stuck! I hear ya' on colors. I've practically stopped using liquids in CP altogether so I have liquids for bath bombs and powders for soap...

I tried some new colors after your threads. These are all done with labcolors or la bomb colors BTW BRV (a blend of LaBomb lilac, fuschia and red labcolors) BB Energy (lilac and a blend of True tone orange and canary lab) BB Plumeria (lilac LaBomb) This isn't new, but pretty bright (the picture doesn't show how bright it REALLY is! AH da lime in da coconut - I call it Electric lime coconut (lime lab). If people think it makes the water look like they peed in it they aren't telling me! It's my # seller in bombs!

He was not upfront with me as I ordered from him directly, not through etsy. Then when I began emailing him about custom orders he did not respond so I figured he didn't want my business.

Every order I send out has a sample. Sometimes it is some new product I'm trying to promote, or I try to find something I think they would enjoy based on what they bought and send a sample of that. Bar soap samples are pretty generous - 1/4 bar or so. 1 oz samples of lotions, sheas, and LS. 2.6 oz bath bombs (the bombs I sell are about 8 oz)

I did not have a wonderful experience as far as customer service with TOG. Pauls molds are very lovely and work very well. I ended up wanting a custom size, and sold my TOG. I would have loved to have him make me a custom mold, but he took so long in just returning my inquiries that I finally did the smart thing - my hubby made A LOT of very rustic but functional log molds out of a single piece of 1/2 inch plywood. I cover them with saran (I do fresh GM soap so getting it to gel is rarely a problem - stoppin it is however!) I do have to line them - but for the price it has been well worth it!

I prefer powders - mica, untramarines, oxides, clays, botanicals - they morph much less than liquids (which also have completely disappeared on me!) I mix all my powders with a bit of glycerin or some of the oils from my recipe before adding to the soap, it really helps to get them to blend.

I didn't know that was standard terminology. I do make from scratch and I have been using handcrafted because it sounds more upscale to me than hand or homemade. Hmmm, maybe I will need to change things...

ditto to MMS. These days though I need too much to use them consistently so I have a variety of suppliers. When I just started they were what I used all the time though if I had to buy online (BB is local to me so I can go there if I want - but often MMS was cheaper than BB even if I paid shipping!)

vanilla mint sells well for me. I do a straight chocolate that has cocoa butter in it that I call hot chocolate. The thing I hate with the food FO's is that they turn brown. Vanilla is a dark chocolate brown, and of course so is the chocolate, OMH went tan (I put oats and honey in that one! My bath bomb selection has plummeted since the holidays and I really need to make some new fragrances. I did some from AH that were fab last year - Lemon verbena, vanilla lace, cucumber mint, da lime in da coconut, and raspberry!

Next time I have the stuff out I will check the wattage. All I can say is that the pictures I am taking now are WAY better than the pictures I (not my BIL) took before getting the light box! And it's such and improvement I am WAAAAY happy!

Ok, that would require some kind of knowledge beyond power, zoom, no flash and macro! I will see what I can figure out!