Southern Crafter

Does your rose water smell like rose water? I did another batch today and it smells like a musky rose water - not a true rose scent. Does anyone else notice this?

I just got a distiller and made my first rose water. I wished I had gotten some essential oil, but you know how it goes - 600 pounds of petals for 1 oz of oil. Well - that won't happen here. Anyhow - do I need to add a perservative to the rose water? What is the shelf life? Anyone know? AND - what kind of bath products can you make with rose water? Any good recipes?

AAA Chemicals has the best prices, very fast delivery, and excellent customer service and products. Keep check on their website, because very often they put soap lye on sale at very very good prices.

I have been using heavy duty saran wrap for 9 years and have never had a problem. The Walmart brand works great, because it seems to be thicker than most others.

Well, thanks to everyone's suggestions and thanks to this board. What an awesome place to get help and share information. Thanks to my friend Debbie for telling me about it. This test was done with melt and pour glycerin, so the way it looks now won't change. I haven't tried this in cold process soap, but believe me - that is on the agenda for tomorrow! Here is the link for the pics of the melt and pour with roses. It really did work. http://www.southerncrafter.com/roses_test.htm

Carebear - IT WORKED!!! Oh, my gosh - the roses look great. I tried 2 kinds 1 dark pink dried, 1 white dried & 1 dark pink straight off the rose bush + 1 white straight off the rose bush. I used this wax that was a very clear wax. I coated each petal once, let it dry a few seconds and coated it again. The wax did not turn the roses white at all but actually brought out the color of the rose. They both turned out great. And, honestly - the ones directly off the bush look just like they do on the rose itself. As soon as this soap hardens enough to pop out of the mold, I will put up pictures on my website and post the link. Thank you for your awesome suggestion. Now, I will be making rose soap over the holiday weekend.

You did not say how much lye and water you used. When I plugged this in my calculator - it came up with 10.5oz water with 4.7 lye. This recipe appears to be pretty balanced as far as hard oils and soft oils. If you used the above lye and water it should have come out beautifully. I can give you a few tips I have learned over the years and a new one just recently. If you are using a stick blender - always blend with the mixer a bit and then hand stir with the mixer a bit. Alternate this back and forth and it gives the soap time to truely trace. Sometimes you can pour at a false trace if you only stick blend. Alternating gives the soap time to "stir down" and trace as it should. Also, and I just recently learned this - if your soap is hard around the edges it could be (only a thought) because your mold is cold. I had this problem for years and now, I put my prepared molds in a small room with a heater on and let them get warm while I get my soap to a traced stage. You might be able to put the mold in a warm oven, but it would depend on what you had it lined with. I have never tried this. I just put mine in a hot room while I'm working on my soap. *Since I have been doing this, my soaps have turned out perfect. In the hot summer time, it is not necessary. But, during the winter or colder days, is a must for me.

I think what Carebear was saying is that if we lightly coat rose petals with wax, then put in the melt & pour glycerin soap, that the petals might retain their color. It makes sense to me, but the only problem might be is that the wax might turn white when it gets hard and then the rose won't look like a rose anymore. However, if the glycerin was hot enough to lightly melt the wax - it might remove enough off to allow the rose color to show through. I love to experiment. So, I think I will give it a whirl this afternoon and see what happens.

We have a lot of banker type boxes that we use. They easily storeo on top of each other. After the soap has cured, we put each individual soap in a large gallon ziplock bag, zip 1/2 way, and leave 1/2 open to keep it aired out some what. We try and store similar soap in a banker box. No scent soaps in the same box, complimentary scent soaps in another box, etc. It is amazing how long the soaps retain their original scent by doing this. I have had soap's fragrances remain the same, as they were at cure, for almost a year by doing this. The essential oils work excellent this way.

Now the wax is a VERY good idea. I have been playing around with freezing my roses before letting them air dry and have had wonderful results as far as the roses keeping their original color. BUT - once they hit soap - "poof" brown! I think I'll try the wax idea. Good post!

I decided to give the Shea Butter Soap a try and honestly, I was very pleased. I had to cut the soap in 10 hours, because it got hard real fast. The bar is not orange at all and a pleasant off white color. The bar produces very creamy lather with few bubbles, but my hands feel very soft and heavily moisturized.

Yeah - I will. And, if anyone else finds out - please post it.

Gosh. No wonder you can't find it for sale. Thanks.

Thank you so much for the replies. I just placed an order. I would like to say a small order, but there is nothing small about wholesale. I bought about 5 different items (including the cocoa butter), but no Shea. I signed up for the co-op here and am getting 20 lbs of Shea.

I read earlier where someone said that Columbus Food's cocoa butter was horrible. Is this the same for all their Shea Butter and other products? They seem to have very good prices, but my products are based on quality butters and oils.