Brown Sugar & Fig Soaps

Blueberry Yogurt Soap UPDATE

BLUEBERRY YOGURT SOAP

Here is the Bluberry Yogurt soap, it's finished curing and is ready to hit the floor of the shop! I told you that I would keep you posted about any changes the soap made during the course of it's curing. Well, the fragrance is still strong, the colors are still bright, it did discolor the white part of the soap a little bit, but I think it's worakable.

The bar is now very hard and it held it's blue colors well, it's just the white uncolored part of the soap that discolored a little turning a creamy off white color. If you don't mind your soap being off white then I recommend this fragrance with 2 thumbs up. You can't beat the fragrance of this fragrance, it's strong and very true to blueberries.

HAPPY SOAPING!

Holly Berry Fragrance oil from Candle Science Review

HOLLY BERRY SCENT FROM CANDLE SCIENCE

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Okay, I love this scent, it's from Candle Science, it smells divine. A very Holiday orientated fragrance that is a common request from my customers around this time of year. I've used this fragrance in candles and it's been a hit.

This is my first time soaping with this fragrance. On Candle Science's web page it says that this fragrance is candle safe and bath and body safe. NO mention of reactions within soaps.

Yesterday I made my Holly Berry soap, I used my normal soaping formula, my oils and lye were at room temperature. I had my color's already set out and ready to go, as a just in case, since this is the first time I have used this fragrance oil in soapmaking. So I was prepared.

When I'm not sure how a fragrance oil is going to react with my soap I will add it to the oils before I even add the lye to the oils, that way if/when I start to see acceleration in the soap I can react and get it into the mold without issues. I started to see the soap accelerating on me, so I turned to pour the soap, now mind you this was a thin trace, by the time (in about 5-10 seconds) the soap started coming out in chunks into the mold. I had a little on the side and added colors to them one was a red mica he other was a green oxide, I QUICKLY put these into piping bags, and started piping leaves on top of the loaf, until I got half way down the loaf, and the soap was solid in the piping bag. now mind you piping a loafe of soap usually only takes me about a minute. I then grabbed the red mica for the berries on the leaves, and by this time the soap was starting to crumble coming out and seperating on me.

Now mind you I tried to 'work' with this soap, I got a little work that I was able to do on my loaf, and I wanted to show you that. However, as you can see in the picture the soap was crumbly and did not set up as normal.

Holly Berry Fragrance From Candle Science, in cold process soapmaking got a big boo from me. I was so frustrated with the sieze in my soap. After the soap was in the mold it heated up to about 130 degrees.

Holly Berry Fragrance Oil gets a big NO WAY when it comes to Cold Process Soaps from me. The fragrance is incredible, I love it! But this fragrance oil is not one I would use in Cold Process soaps, I will look to other fragrance oil suppliers for this fragrance! I do not recommend this fragrance oil, it accelerates, rices, and seperates.

Pink Sugar Fragrance Review & Comparison

PINK SUGAR FRAGRANCE BAR FROM CANDLE SCIENCE

PINK SUGAR FRAGRANCE OIL BAR SOAP FROM NATURES GARDEN

PINK SUGAR FRAGRANCE OIL FROM CANDLE SCIENCE

'PINK SUGAR' FRAGRANCE OIL!

We all know the tempting sweet scent of pink sugar, everyone want's it and being a soapmaker it's one of the hottest requests that I recieve. What your seeing above in the two pictures is the same fragrance by two seperate fragrance oil suppliers: Nature's Garden and Candle Science.

This review is about both of them and the possitive's and negatives of each one's fragrances.

Let's take on Candle Science first, this would be the cake soap. This first thing you will notice is that the cake soap is not dark in color. NO it's not! Pink Sugar did not accelerate my soap, giving me ample time to 'frost' my cake and also pipe the top, I did have a lot of time to fully decorate the cake soap. Now Candle Science does not give too much information on their fragrance oils other than it being safe to use in candle wax and body safe. I do like the way this turned out, I can still smell the pink sugar in it when I smell the cake slices. Mind you this cake was made back in June of 2011, I can still smell the fragrance in it and still no major discoloration, there was a slight cream coloring due to the vanilla in the fragrance oil but as you can tell it is workable. This cake soap was made WITHOUT the use of white stabilizers of any kind.

Now on to Nature's Garden Pink Sugar Fragrance oil, as you can tell this is the same favorite fragrance that I am used to, but when I used this one in my cold process soap it turned my soaps to a dark brown/chocolate color, now in the defence of Nature's Garden, on Nature's Garden website they do say that this fragrance will turn your cold process soap a dark chocolate color. This bar had originally had pretty pink swirls in it and I was expecting to see those pink swirls, however the fragrance had another idea in mind for my soap.

 Natures' Garden Pink Sugar Fragrance Oil did not accelerate my soap, I had plenty of work time with it, it just badly discolored my soap. Mind you these bars are about 6 weeks old, I still get a nice scent off of them and it's the same scent as Candle Science.

Being a soapmaker and soap purchaser, I like color, my eye is automatically attracted to a bright beautiful and colorful bar soap. I love the fragrance of Pink Sugar, I also get tons of requests for it. When I switched to the Nature's Garden fragrance oil, my bars took on a drastically different look to them, they were no longer colorful they were chocolate brown, I had to explain to my customers that I had purchased from a different supplier.

Regardless of supplier, both fragrances performed well in cold process soaps, both gave plenty of workable time, both gave good fragrance 'throw' in all 3 batches of cold process soaps.

The bottom line to this fragrance oil comparison is a personal one, they are both more than perfect fragrances and perform well in soap, it depends on what you'd like your finishd product to look like. I give both companies Nature's Garden and Candle Science 2 thumbs up for their Pink Sugar fragrance oil, but I have to say Candle Science gets' an extra vote in my book because of the aesthetic purpose.

Blueberry Soap with Yogurt

BLUEBERRY SOAPS WITH YOGURT

Blueberry Soaps ~ these smell heavenly!

I bought this fragrance oil from Cajun Candles, I originally was going to use this fragrance for candles, but I loved it SO much that I decided to make it into a soap. Cajun Candles blueberry fragrance oil is usable in all wax types including gel wax, and is able to be used in soaps and bath and body, making this an awesome fragrance to have and well worth the couple of extra dollars. I bought 2lbs of this fragrance so I could use it in all of my products, the price including shipping was approximately $43, and that is for 2lbs of fragrance oil, not bad considering I can use it in everything!

Blueberry fragrance oil works well in cold process soaps, I did not get any acceleration with it, when I initially added it to my oils they turned a light yellowish color, but that did not stay. Above you will see that that the white part is truly white, and the colors I added, blue ultramarine, did not change at all either.

Cajun Candles shipped my order out quickly, I had my order in about 4 days after ordering it. This is my 2nd time ordering from them and they have shipped rather quickly both times, my items came packaged nicely and padded well. I will admit that their website is a little confusing to order from, but once you get to the point of knowing it, it's rather easy to navigate yourself around in.

2 Thumbs up for Cajun Candles so far!

I used my standard recipe for my soapmaking.

80oz total of combined oils: 50oz of hard oils and 30oz of soft oils, with 5oz of the soft oils being castor oil.

I did add yogurt to this batch of soaps, I used 12oz of yogurt, which I took away from my water amount, the amount of water I used was 12oz to create a concentrated lye solution, which I cooled to room temperature along with my oils being at room temp when I combined them all.

I have found that adding yogurt to the oils and whisking it together better emulsifies the yogurt before you add your lye solution works much better than trying to add it to the already combined oil and lye solution. You get no clumps of yogurt in the mixture when you add it to the room temperature oil prior to adding the lye.

I have to say I have gotten in the habit of adding my fragrance oil to my oils also when I make my soaps, that way I can watch for the soap to start to accelerate and know how fast I am going to have to work with it.

Whenever making cold process soaps make sure you have all your colorants setting out and ready to go, when working with goats milk and yogurt in a soap formula, the addition of the fats in them will make your soaps start to set up a little faster, then when you are using fragrance oils these usually accelerate soapmaking more than when using essential oils (depending on the essential oils you use).  

I will post a blog just about making yogurt & goats milk soaps seperately!



Candle Science's Plumberry Fragrance Oil

This is my 'Sugar Plum Fairy' Bar Soap

It's scented with Candle Science's Plumberry Fragrance oil.

Okay I know, doesn't look that bad!

However, I love this fragrance, it is such a sweet tart combination of plums and berries, such a yummy combination.

Candle Science does not offer much information on their fragrance oils, only that you are able to use them for soaps & candles. I must tell you, I had to race with this fragrance oil! When I soap, I usually make my soaps at room temperature, that means my oils and lye is at room temperature, I make 6lb batches of soap at a time, my oils are a total of 80oz, 50oz are solid oil, while the remaining 30oz of oils are soft oils. I do use a water deduction of about 20% of the total weight of oils. (Just so you have a slight idea of the type of cold process soap formula I am working with)

When I added the fragrance oil to this batch, yes I had my colors already set up ahead of time, I hardly had time to mix all the colors! I was dashing to spoon each of the colors into the mold, the soaps were setting up on me faster than I could spoon the soap into the mold. I kept spooning and smooshing the soap into the mold and this is what I came up with at the end.

I do love the end result to this soap, I really like the layered look of the colors in this soap. However fast I had to work at it.

I did go back over my soap recipe and adjusted my water amount to it, and removed the castor oil from my formula, knowing that this fragrance accelerated my soap formula, I had a little more play time with my soap. I was able to swirl 2 different colors into the soap, and spoon it into 8 different molds.

I would say as far a solution to this fragrance working well, would be using no water discount in your soap formulas for this fragrance oil, and eliminating all accelterants in your formula, like castor oil. This should give you enough time to work with your soap. However just to stay on the safe side, never forget that this fragrance WILL ACCELERATE the soapmaking process on you, be sure to have all your equipment and mold near by when using this fragrance..

Now that we have got down the fragrance and how it's going to react in your soap, on to how well your going to love the scent of this fragrance oil! This one is defiantely a keeper! I think this one is good enough to keep year around, and I am VERY happy that I did purchase this fragrance!

What this blog is about!

My Christmas Tree Cold Process Soap



Hello, I am writing this blog so that others can read it and become inspired about cold process soapmaking. Here I will offer advise about soapmaking, give ideas, post pictures of finished soaps, and give you information on the different fragrance oils, essential oils, and various 'choice' ingredients that are offered to the fellow soapmaker.

I have been making soaps for about 13 years now, I own my own soapmaking business and shop both online and a real live shop in Algoma WI. My name is Michele Collins and I am creating this blog to help other soapmakers with some of the common problems that we as soapmakers have. I would like to share with you some new ideas in soapmaking, how certain ingredients work in cold process soap, and to give you a place to check out how certain fragrance oils and essential oils react with cold process soap. My intent is to give you the information before you purchase certain fragrance oils and essential oils and they react with your soap where you may end up with soap on a stick.

Soapmaking is a fun process and adictive one too. Whether your an experienced soapmaker or beginner this information is to help you out, I believe deep down inside that regardless of our experience there is always something new to learn in the soapmaking world. So through technique and some of the information that I will offer you, I hope you will find this venture fun, creative, inventive, and informative.

I am no expert at soapmaking nor do I claim to be, I am simply giving my exerience and trial and error. Everyone makes soap differently, and not all of my results will end up like your's, please make a note of this. Depending on the various oils you use, the temperature you soap at, and the amount of water you use (whether you discount your water or not), is all going to depend on the results of your soap.

I hope to be able to offer you a reliable, informative and fun blog for you to enjoy and be able to help you along the way!