kidsngarden

My husband owns a janitorial service that cleans banks. The very best (and free!) soap storing system I have are quarter (or any of the coin) boxes. The banks throw them out daily. I even use them for shipping smaller orders. You can turn them inside out for that.

I also use them as molds for my soap classes so they would be great for a newbie soaper looking for a mold.

I store all my scents seperately.

I have a lot of recipes with lard in them and have had few customers who care. I get more questions about it online than at markets - I think maybe one person all last season asked at my farmer's market!

I don't make melt and pour, but were those fresh mint leaves? If they were fresh they would add water to your soap.

I suspect you need to up your stearic and/or e-wax as it is not getting emulsified. This is not my forte' - trouble shooting recipes. I would suggest posting this on the bath and body forum.

One thing you will find if you are there selling the soaps (like at a farmer's market as opposed to a website) is that the soaps you adore the most tend to sell the best. Why? Because you talk them up so much. There are exceptions. I adore patchouli and patch blends, but that is really a love it or hate it fragrance.

Last year I managed to sell cucumber mint like gangbusters in soap and lotion converting many cucumber melon fans but this year I am so sick of it it makes me want to puke when I soap it. So I've taken it out of my lotion offerings and likely won't soap it too much either -slowly phasing it out.

Online I sell a lot of EO all vegetable soaps cause I think people really THINK (ok, sometimes people KNOW) they want the totally animal and synthetic free soaps. But live I sell way more FO soaps ( most of which have animal oils) because when they are there and can sniff most FO's win out. Lavender FO sells much better than my lavender bulgarian EO. There are some EO bars that always sell well - Citrus Mint and rosemary mint.

www.the-sage.com is a great one stop shopping place that is closer to you than BB. Though I am fairly loyal to BB cause they are and hour from me, sometimes I find the prices far better at MMS as long as I am buying enough to merit the shipping.

The ball ornaments are keepsake ornaments found in Micheals all year round, not just at Christmas. Ask for them and they will be able to tell you where they are.

Ditto on columbus foods (aka soapers choice) Good price too!

I would imagine you can still grate of chop up the soap, add the missing oil and it will still saponify, even with the other chunks in it. Nope, it won't be pretty, but likely still usable. Some of those ugly rebatches feel oh so good! you may need to add extra fragrance at the end.

Well one of the common signs of true addiction is blaming others for your...ahem...problem.

Double post! Sorry!

Don't do a 15% superfat for a laundry bar - that adds conditioning properties keep that at 0. The water as percent of oils I never even look at. I THINK it means that if you combine the weights of water and oils together the water is 38% of that figure. But really I have no idea.

The only stuff up in that corner I really mess with is the lye concentration and the superfat.

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!

Were they made with a snow baller? I love them! I have yet to find a recipe that worked for me I will conquer these one of these days!

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?

I make both log & slab molds. Sorry, I don't supply bon-bons with my molds.

BTW, it's spelled "viola"

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.