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Thursday, August 02, 2007

My Very Own Soap Opera

I borrowed this book from the library Making Soap for the First Time by Linda Orton. It wasn't the one I wanted, I'm sure I've borrowed one of Melinda Cross' books from there before and was a little put off because I couldn't find 'Lye' anywhere. I was so disappointed when I got it home and sat down to read it. It's mostly melt and pour stuff. There were perhaps 2 cold process recipes in there. Don't bother with it, it's really not worth the effort of actually even opeing it.
Anyway, I was desperate to get another soap fix in, especially as I have now found a cheaper and convenient source of coconut oil, so I scoured the Internet and found a couple of recipes and ideas. I dutifully measured all the oils n things out but didn't really stop to consider the size of the batch I was making. Throw some numbers at me and I get totally confused. I can't figure out what 40 oz of olive oil is going to look like! Anyhow, I didn't quite have enough of the olive oil so I juggled a few other oils around and checked on the Bramble Berry Lye calculator whether it would work and yes it would, so here's what I used: 5 oz palm oil, 5 oz coconut oil, 15 oz olive oil, 25 oz grapeseed oil, 10 oz sunflower oil, 16.5 oz lye, 16.5 oz water. Okay, this actually makes LOADS! I had to transfer it to another pan as I was adding the oils coz I seriously underestimated the volume of this! (Hopefully it'll still work okay though!) It made enough for me to divide it into several batches and try different fragrances. I made one lavender, patchouli and orange oils with dried lavender flowers in, one with callunder flowers, mango and orange oils, and one with chocolate and mint. They're all insulating now in my insulating bag that I normally take lunches and things in *lol* I won't be needing to make any more for a while. Well, unless it doesn't work of course! I'll take some piccys tomorrow when it's done it's insulating and I'm cutting it up. I have another 2-3 weeks before I can try the batch that I made before.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

OOOOH more lovely soaps!!
I went to Boots yesterday for Castor oil and they had none, I'm going to try the other pharmacies in town today and see if anyone has some for me! We are a town full of pharmacies, flower shops, card shops and estate agents. Nowhere to actually do SHOPPING though - bizarre!
I know my latest batch of soap still has to cure but I couldn't resisted and licked a slice of it yesterday : ) It only tasted soapy .... but I guess I'm better not risking it.

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