No pink?

What a beautiful fall weekend we have experienced.  I hope you were able to go out and enjoy it.  I made soap this past week and I planned to enter it in the Great Cakes Soap Works Making Contest.  They were making cyclone swirl soap.  This is basically made by placing various colors into a pitcher and pouring it into the mold.  Sometimes it helps the effect if you shake your hand while pouring the soap into the mold.  I tried this and it was fantastic!!!  Then Stupidity Set In.  I covered the top with plastic, which stuck and as I pulled it off, it took away the design.  Here is the design left after I messed up the top and after the cut and the soap set up:

I experimented with this to see what it looked like if I took a thin layer off the top of the soap.  The cyclone effect was there. 

 I sliced off a couple edges that were not perfect.  Aren't these ends pretty?

With the extra soap batter I made a re-batch soap type.  I add little shredded pieces of soap that I have from previous batches of soaps.  This is ugly pieces, end pieces, and edges from trimming, etc.  I mix these pieces into the batter real well, then I can add and additional colors or fragrance.  In this case, I left the fragrance as an Irish Spring copy.  It smells heavenly in the house with a predominant lavender fragrance.  I used the left over colors from the cyclone soap experiment and swirled them in.  If you add the shreds after you place the soap into the mold, gaps can form around the edges.  It only makes the soap less attractive, but it is still good soap.  Even when you mix the shreds in well, you can get gaps or holes in the soap. 

The front two are examples of gaps at the edges.

I put pink in most everything I make.  There are probably some pink shreds, but I didn't make pink soap.

PS  Don't forget to go to my website at: https://www.slipperywhenwetsoaps.com or my website at: https://www.custercottage.com or my Etsy shop at:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/CusterCottage

Enjoy your week!!!  Dawnie 

Annie modeling a newly made scarf.  I enhanced the lips.

Re-batch Soap

Once and a while I make a re-batched soap.   I use bits and pieces of previously made soaps and melt them down into a new soap.  The bits and pieces come from ugly soaps, end pieces, pieces trimmed off of bars, and from batches of failed soaps.   When I re-batch soap, I chop or shred the pieces of soap and place them into a crock pot.  I then add raw milk and a bit of water to aid in melting the bits and pieces.  I intentionally add some larger pieces which do not melt all of the way down.  If the larger pieces are able to be bright pretty colors it adds to the beauty of the re-batch bars.  Most of the soap pieces melt down to a brown color, so the bright pieces really are desired.  Once the soap is mostly melted down I usually add a fragrance, but it may be fragrant enough since the pieces of soap all have varied fragrances melted into one.   Re-batch soap can be made with one batch of ugly or failed soap.  Due to the additional amount of liquid used in the melting process, the bars may shrink and leave a concave look where the sides are slightly higher than the center.  I usually cut the top of each bar off because it does not set up smoothly and this step usually eliminates that concave look.  It is best to place the soap into a log mold where the bars are cut leaving some of the larger bits and pieces exposed.  If I place the soap into molds that pop out an individual bar of soap, the colored pieces will not show up until you start using the soap.

Please view my web store at:

http://www.custercottage.com

And visit my Etsy shop at:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/CusterCottage