MarieJeanette

Sounds like you have the powder and not the fibers. The fibers that I have from Scent Works come in a big fiberous clump in a plastic bag and are very cottony in texture. I pull off cotton ball-sized amounts for each pound of oils in my batch much in the same manner that one would pull small clumps of cotton candy from the main clump. When I've pulled off enough for my batch I then separate the fibers by pulling on them and spreading them out as thin as possible before adding them to my water amount. I let them soak in the water for a few minutes before adding my lye and then mix until completely dissolved. My lye water is always clear in the end. MarieJeanette

Wholesale Supplies Plus has a great Midsummer's Night dupe. It's the one I use all the time. It's good and strong. MarieJeanette

Honey is water soluble as opposed to oil soluble, so I keep back a little of my water amount to dilute the honey with, and then I add it to my soaping pot just after adding the lye water to the oils. Then I stickblend it well to incorporate. MarieJeanette

I'm brand new to lotion making, but from what I understand, e-wax is an emulsifier and cetyl alcohol is a thickener (two different things with two different purposes). Do you have any stearic acid in your lotion recipe? If so, I would use cetyl alcohol in place of it, because from what I've read it's the stearic that gives one a waxy feeling in lotion. I use cetyl alcohol instead of stearic and really like it. My lotions are very smooth. MarieJeanette

I use WSP's, too. I've never smelled the real deal from B&BW, but my SIL has (it's one of her personal favorites), and she says the WSP dupe is right on the mark with the real deal. MarieJeanette

I've used both and noticed no difference in my soap either. MarieJeanette

I just let mine cool down on its own. MarieJeanette

To mix my lye, I use Polypropylene (PP)- it has the #5 stamped in the recycle triangle on the bottom of the container. I've read that this is one of the best plastics to use when mixing lye. It stands up very well to lye and heat. The plastics to stay away from with lye solutions are PETE #1 and also PS #6. I've used PETE #1 before and can attest that the lye solution eats it up for lunch and then pops the bag. I'd stay away from glass, too, as you just discovered. The lye solution etches the glass and makes it weaker and prone to breakage. Many people use stainless steel to mix their lye solution in with great results. I've heard that it should be good quality stainless steel, but I'm not sure of the gauge. Maybe someone who uses stainless steel will chime in on that as I only use it to mix my soap in and not to mix my lye solution in. HTH! MarieJeanette

Yep, definitely weight. A scale is a soapmaker's best friend. MarieJeanette

Like Carebear says, "Sure you can", in regards to having your cake and eating it, too. My 100% coconut oil bars with a 20% s/f are hard as bricks, just like Carebear's. They are not salt bars either. They are just CO, water, lye and F/O and they are hard as bricks within only hours of making them. If I don't unmold and cut them within 6 hours after pour I think I would need a bandsaw to cut them with. I still let them cure for 4 weeks, though. MarieJeanette

The motives of the opening poster really have me wondering and scratching my head. Daystar has been and continues to be one of my regular suppliers, as well as one of my favorite suppliers for both excellent service and quality. Never have I ever once recieved a bad FO from them or bad service. Never ever in all the two years I've been ordering from them. Stacy has always been very good to me and her FOs are top notch and strong- so strong as a matter of fact that I can get by quite well with using many of them at a lesser strength than the usual .7 oz ppo. I use with other FOs. Hmmm...I agree with Chris that there's probably more to this story that we are not being told. :rolleyes2 MarieJeanette

I guess it would depend on the kind of stamp you use. For the most part, I use rubber stamps with well-defined, raised impressions on them from the craft store to stamp my soaps with as soon as the soap is unmolded and cut, and they work great. It's so easy to use them. All I do is take a dry, natural bristled basting brush, dip the tip of the dry brush into the mica, and then shake the mica off the brush onto a small dish (this gives me a nice, light dusting of mica to dip my stamp in). Then I just take my rubber stamp (also dry) and press it into the mica on the dish (making sure all the raised, decorative parts of the stamp are well dusted), and then press the mica dusted stamp onto the soap, and voila! No need for the muss and fuss of glycerin or painting the mica onto the stamp, etc... Just press the dry stamp into the mica dusting and go. The only extra thing I do is give my stamped soap one light spritz of alcohol to 'set' the mica in place, and that's it. I also have a couple of other stamps, but they are made quite differently from the rubber stamps, and it's impossible to use them in the same way as explained above. These particular stamps are recessed instead of raised, and so pressing them into mica is useless. For these I have to hammer the stamp into the soap to make an impression, and then I paint the resulting impression on my soap with soap paints and a fine paint brush. Brambleberry sells the soap paints, but you can also make your own with mica and a little glycerin. Just mix the two together until it's of paintable consistency and paint away. It takes about a day for the home-made paints to completely dry, while Brambleberry's dries quicker. HTH! MarieJeanette

The only micas that I've gotten to stay stamped on my soap and look good without clashing badly with the color of my soaps (until they are bathed or showered with, that is) are gold mica, bronze mica, and silver mica. The gold and bronze micas look great on any colored soap, but I've found the silver to be more finicky. That one looks good only on my blue colored soaps. I've also used blue, pink, and shamrock green micas, but they just don't look as good to me on my soap as the others do. MarieJeanette

Welcome to the board and the addiction! MarieJeanette

I voted for SweetCake's version. 'Happy' is my best friend's favorite perfume, and she can't tell the difference between the real deal and the perfume and soap I make for her with Sweetcake's F/O. MarieJeanette

I see that you added stearic acid to your batch. If not soaped warm enough stearic acid can resolidify in your pot and cause what looks like a fast trace, but it's really just the stearic resolidifying into lumps because it's too cool for it to stay fluid enough. Your finished soap will then be peppered with white 'stearic spots'. I would soap warmer next time you add stearic. MarieJeanette

Avocado is one of my favorite additives to use in CP. I add it at 1 tbsp. ppo. I make sure it's totally smooth before I add it to my oils by stickblending it on its own in a small bowl first. I like to scent mine with Green Tea & Cucumber, or Cucumber Melon- anything that goes well with the color green. MarieJeanette

I've done it quite often with excellent results. I even gel all my MP-imbedded CP soaps and the embeds come through the gel phase just fine. I thought at first that the embeds might melt or something, but so far, no melting has ever occurred. MarieJeanette

Yes. So-Soy is absolutely correct: 100%. I got the word straight from Stacy at Daystar. Plus, it's one of my faorite F/Os and I've soaped both the Salty Mariner from AGE and Salty Sailor from Daystar. They are definitely one and the same without a doubt. MarieJeanette

I use the hand sanitizer base from BCN. I've tried my hand at making my own but I could never get the consistancy right to my satisfaction. I was such a happy camper when I saw that BCN carried the base. That's all I use now and I'm quite happy with it. It's the right consistency that I'm used to using with commercial sanitizers, and it has the proper percent of alcohol in it that medical professionals recommend as being the correct amount. It also takes scent very well. Just one drop of scent in a 2 oz bottle is all I need. I wish I could help you with a recipe, but I suck at it. Maybe someone who has had more success with making their own will chime in. MarieJeanette

WSP's is is the one I use. Smells exactly like B&BW's. MarieJeanette

Yes, Daystar carries the real deal that AGE used to carry before going out of business. That's who I buy it from now. Daystar calls it Salty Sailor, but it's the exact same FO. MarieJeanette

You must have one of the newer ones made with the plexiglass liners, but for what it's worth, I have 3 TOG molds with the foam liners that I use all the time with very good success. I absolutely love them and have never had a problem with them whether I make CP, HP, Salt Bars, or even the rare MP batch in them. MarieJeanette

I really like the Egyptian Musk from Oregon Trails Soaps. Once, when I was running low on it, I ordered some of the 'World's Best Egyptian Musk' from Sweet Cakes, seeing as how I was ordering something else from there at the time and I thought I could kill 2 birds with one stone, so to speak. Ew, yuck! I was so disappointed with it when I opened the bottle and took a sniff. It smelled nothing like what I was used to with my Oregon Trails version. To me, the Sweet Cakes 'World's Best', so called, smells just like a foot deoderant spray that my brother used to use back in the '70's. Blech! Not good. The Oregon Trails version, in comparison, smells like a nice musk with a pleasant hint of vanilla. MarieJeanette

I have the Midnight Pomegranate from WholesaleSuppliesPlus. I've never personally smelled the actual B&BW version, but my SIL has, and it turns out that it is one of her favorite scents. She has smelled my WSP dupe and told me it is 100% right on with the real deal. She now buys the dupe perfume from me instead of the real deal from B&BW. MarieJeanette P.S. It's good and strong, too.