TallTayl

That is a thing of total beauty. A smidge of vaseline seals the seams up quick as a lick in a pinch. Good idea on the wick stickum. i don't know how many times you'll be able to open/close, but maybe the next iteration try velcro dots? You will need to be able to release the vacuum created by the mold, which is where thenTSM silicones are handy. I can pull the sides away and push on the bottom to slide the log out. 2.5 inches is the width of my nurture TSM. I would not want any rhinner, but give it a test run before going wider. You may be surprised at how that width looks and feels once cut. Off to locate some cloroplast myself now! I need some quick, temporary block molds! BTW, the cloroplast may make a nice "box" type of support for flimsy silicone liners too.

Not a bad haul for the second session. A few more pieces have yet to hit the glaze kiln, but this is a happy collection for March and April! Soap Dish Concept. All wheel thrown. One i was testing a little pour or drain spout. Candle stick holders. Next sets will have cute handles. Another size for mini tapers is on the drying shelf now. These can also hold incense cones and smudge. This was a fun hand built plate. I rolled the clay, used texture plates and formed the ruffled edge. I intended this to use for incense cones, smudge or similar. Though, i love the way the glaze played in the texture so much i may use it for something else altogether. Since the idea worked, i will be adding little holders for mini tapers and different designs for Faire. Some pendants are being fired now, along with a couple other fun things I hope work out.

I didn't have the patience for dealing with what you're going through, lol. It's possible the stuff you have is processed to be more oil dispersible or extractable. I have not looked to see. After the pre-reduced crystals i decided no more natural colorant unpredictability for me. The pre-reduced crystals dissolve quickly in plain old water and stir right into the waiting soap. It took far more than what everyone told me to get a reliable, decent blue. I stick to ultramarine blue or cosmetic micas now.

The pre-reduced indigo crystals are a little easier.

That is a LOT of oil in very little soap. Liquid "castile" like Dr Bronner is maybe, at most, 25% soap diluted with 75% water. There is no emulsifier in there to keep the water phase from separating from the oils. Plus, in colder climates that coconut will separate out and solidify (coconut 76 solidifies at 76*F). Not sure if you would need to preserve that mix to prevent bacteria, fungi and mold spores from growing... Soap itself can be self preserving, but once other things are added all bets are off. :-/ You may be better off using the oils before (or after) washing with a diluted liquid or high superfat bar soap to achieve a similar effect without worrying about separation or spoilage.

The % calculation many use for wax threw me for a while. When making soap and cosmetics the formulas for the whole are written as percentages of each individual ingredient in the sum total. Ingredient A = 10 % Ingredient B = 20% Ingredient C = 70% Total of all = 100% This makes scaling recipe sizes up or down a snap. I add up ALL ingredients to equal 100% in cosmetics manufacture and did the same with wax when i started. All of my worksheets were already designed that way, so i never thought anything of it.... so my interpretation has always been: 1 oz per lb of wax = 1 oz FO plus 16 oz wax = 17 total oz. 1 oz FO divided by the total 17 ounces = 5.88% FO in the whole blend.

I get tired of melting the pails of organic palm and blocks of cocoa and shea to stir and master batch. By extension i get sick of making soap before i even start. Once i force myself to start making the actual soap it's a breeze. I just have to talk myself into starting.

I duped them for myself, but can co-op or list some in the classies if you want to try them out. The new keg of Pink should be here in a couple of weeks. Blood Orange Patch at Daystar, i bought a few lbs during the prebuy and just got to putting it in soap a few days ago. It is every bit as good as the original. I usually add more patch Eo and extra blood orange to make it sparkle a bit more. Last summer it sold out every week i had it at Faire. With 60+ scents available to choose from, it says a lot to me when a single scent sells out quickly. It's fab in palm candles. Still need to get some into soy and beeswax, but believe they will both be spectacular.

I had Pink Sugar duped along with Dragons Blood. Tonic is at the lab. Hoping it turns out as nice as the other two!

I usually discount to a 40% solution. Sometimes 45-50% for simple designs. Less water does not mean a shorter "cure". It just evaporates out less moisture during cure and allows me to package sooner. A nice long cure time is still best.

Have you tried adding mineral colorants to your favorite liquid face cream? That is basically how BB creams are formulated. The creams are altered somewhat to hold iron oxide pigment colorants, but it may be a new direction to try with things you already have. I can't use dry minerals either. All of them feel like rubbing sand on my face.

I have both types of WS/PL customer. Some order directly from the shelf and i slap their custom designed label on them. Some order custom everything. I won't make any custom stuff ahead of time on my dime. I don't have room to store it, and will never be able to predict their selections well enough. The custom WS clients expect and get delivery in 2 weeks or less with instructions to cure for 2-4 more weeks before packaging and selling. Most never seem to order enough in advance and are always back ordered with their customer orders, which puts added pressure on me. I would rather they use their racks to cure so my own are not crowded with their things. I just know the curing instructions are ignored. They admit to it every time. They package and sell/deliver many immediately upon receipt. Very few hit their storage shelves to cure longer. I am Ok with whatever they do because i am very confident in my formula and process. The soap is safe, mild, formulated to be very hard & long lasting even fresh out of the mold. Plus, I steeply discount the water used to help minimize shrinkage during curing. Early on in my soap making career i would not have felt right sending it out so soon, nor would i have attracted or retained many good WS customers. The WS/PL customers i work with all want it NOW and will text and email almost daily to see if they can get stuff sooner.

Yeah, it can seem weak, especially when compared to others. In soap it fades fast.

Out of the bottle or in product?

Target has a huge candle aisle. Most of the ones I picked up without a glass cover had that plastic dust cover and smelled perfectly strong. They had tiny holes where a wick would go. as a customer I truly appreciated the cover.

They circled the drain with sketchy service and no communication for two years. Did not restock anything since 2013. Nobody, to my knowledge, has picked them up. Several of my friends and I tried but got no response. Too bad.... I have had a few things duped. Daystar had a few done for special order. A co-op or three have run on other forums.

I bought and built so many molds. When i finally standardized to a size everything else fell into place.

Could you keep the melting pot on a heat plate or griddle? I have to do that with lip balm and beeswax.

I use soapcalc to verify calculations for my own batch sheets. All of them get within the same ballpark. Soap oils have a range in their SAP values. Each calculator uses a slightly different one in that range.

Many of the advertised tall skinnies are anywhere from 2.2 or 2.25 inches wide by 3.5 to 4 inches tall. Those are super skinny IMO. I started out with 2.5 wide many moons ago, and find them to be so much nicer with that extra wee .25 inch in width. Nurtures tall skinny at the 2.5 inches wide and i love them. They are perfect. When cut to 1 inch thick the weight of each bar (poured 3.25 - 3.5 tall leaving room for other decorations on top) is right within the 4.5 ounce point when fully cured. The tall skinny cut 1 inch thick comes out light unless it is super duper tall, which looks odd dimensionally and can be ungainly to use.

How about those thick plastic dust covers? Placed under the cover, close to the wax surface, it makes them work to pull it out to touch.

I feel your pain. I cannot believe i ran myself out of olive this week. Normally, my process is for a quick inventory of staples every Friday. Skipped it last week, eek! I only buy soaping oils from Columbus. Thankfully they are so close i get things next day. Well, that is unless i don't complete the buy with a little click as happened Monday. Sigh. It's not as if i don't have other things to do, but when the soaping mood strikes i have to take advantage of it and fill fill fill all the molds. "Having" to make soap and "wanting" to make soap are very different.

I totally agree with being alerted when know changes like that are made. It is super frustrating...

OG, when IFRA changes limits for components it is entirely possible that an FO from the same drum sold today will not be rated the same tomorrow. That bottle you have may very well be from the same lot, and that the overall rating that changed with the latest amendment, As for color, i have watched as new FO changes color to darken a LOT over time. Comparing a new drum of Pink Sugar to some from a much older drum you would not think they were the same, but they are. Some FO can also separate into layers based on different component specific gravities. If a supplier does not shake those drums the. What you pull from the top will not be the same from the middle or bottom. I know that some bottles i bought during sampler sales are not the same as those i ordered bigger sizes later on from a few popular suppliers even though told otherwise. When you have two bottles sitting side by side and they smell very different, even when purchased within the same month that "something" changed. It has happened with more than one popular retailer. Time did not change them one bit. Someone who will only ever use EO asked me once why i would put up with all that with FO... I had to remind her that EO change from year to year, grower to grower too, along with price volatility that usually does not vary so wildly with FO.

Candybee, my current nitrile box is from farm and fleet. Blue ones. Makes me feel better even chandling with gloves since sensitivities to fragrance do build up with exposure. Eye protection is an absolute must. I have had spatter with goggles on and would not want to wish an eye splash on anyone ever. Clothing, it has to be easy to get off. A lye spill that soaks through clothing can be pretty serious. A facebook soaper accidentally spilled a jug of lye solution on herself a couple months ago. The solution pitcher hit her faucet and splashed all down her front and side. It glued the clothing to her causing severe burns. I would rather soap in shorts and a t-shirt with a waterproof apron than all top to bottom in tight clothing. Actually GMP calls for clean coverings like coveralls and booties to cover shoes plus hair nets.