LindaColo

Great looking soap

Did you neutralize the soap? One time I used citric acid instead of boric solution and the soap clouded up right away. Also,too much boric acid can reduce the clarity.

Have fun making your liquid soap. If you want a clearer liquid soap, avoid more opaque oils and butters. For example, I made a batch with cocoa butter and it took 3 clarifying attempts before it was on the clearer side. :embarasse

Beautiful soaps. Your scent descriptions really makes me want to try some Backwoods fragrances.

Beautiful soaps and it's great to hear that your soaps are being appreciated by family and friends.

Great swirls. I never would have thought of adding an anise star.

I wish I could smell your soap thru the computer screen.

Beautiful. I really like your labels.

Great looking soaps. I like your soap stamp.

Beautiful soap

I'd be happy to take your "ugly" soap anytime. They look good to me.

I can't see your first soap, but your second soap looks great.

Looks tasty.

The lye I get from the hardware store is sodium hydroxide (naoh). This is the stuff that most people use for solid soaps, whether cp, cphp or hp method. It makes a finer grained soap than KOH.

KOH is potasium hydroxide. It is available at chemical supply places if you want a 50 lb bag. Usually, I get a smaller amount on the internet. This is what is used for liquid soap. I've heard it is more forgiving, but makes a larger grained soap than naoh.

Yummy

The soap smells wonderful. I waited an extra day to cut the soap because it was a little soft. (Hard to imagine that when the soap wanted to set up in the pot.) When I cut into it, most of it looked fine. However, there was one cut that had an oil pocket. So, into the oven bag to rebatch it went.

Part of me was glad to rebatch it. The original colors ended up being light sage green and gold (didn't have time to add the black layer I wanted). Now the colors are dark green with black specks. Well . . . at least the black color is in the soap. It's hard to imagine Polo Black without some black in it. :rolleyes2

I'll try cutting it tomorrow.

Beautiful jewelry.

Ack! I decided to soap the Polo Black today and it tried to rice on me. Used a soap recipe loosely based on Lady J's Shaving Soap Recipe

8% Caster Oil

30% Coconut Oil

10% Grapeseed Oil

30% Olive Oil

22% Virgin Palm Oil

Added lye to water and let cool to room temperature. Then, added 1 gram silk powder and left for several hours until powder was completely dissolved.

Heated up oils. The oils were too hot, so I left them on the porch until they were 100*F.

Poured the lye water into the oils and hand stirred. Added my bentonite clay. Lite trace had started. Then the fun began when I added the fo and coloring. Maybe the oil was too hot at 100*F?

My soap started looking like mashed potatoes. Okay, just stir a little faster. Nope, now it's lumpy mashed potatoes.

Okay, bring out the big gun and use the hand blender. The color is not what was originally intended, but I am more interested in the soap's texture. Once the proper texture was achieved, the soap was too thick to try to swirl. (I suppose that isn't too bad because my swirling technique needs lots of improvement.)

Tried to layer the soap. We'll see how that turns out tomorrow.

Beautiful soaps.

Stearic helps harden the soap.

Nice waves of colors. Your soap turned out nicely.

I really like how the soap turned out. Pretty.

They're all beautiful. Love the chocolate mint.

Looks absolutely yummy.

You might be able to get it locally at a chemical supply company. Mine has it but you have to buy something like 50 pounds.

Also, leather tanners might have a supply of potassium hydroxide. I bought some online from a tanner and only had to get 5 pounds. However, with shipping and handling, it was around $30.