Sunday, April 1, 2012

Homemade Soap Challenge Week #2 "Milk Soap"

My Soaping Sister Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks came up with the brilliant idea of a "Soap Challenge".  I think there are 80+ participating soapmakers, and each week we all work on a specific soaping technique.  Sharpening our skills hopefully and sharing our results with soap friends around the globe.  You can see the beautiful soaps all in one place on Amy's blog. Before yesterday, I had never used fragrance oil in my goats milk soap.  As you probably know, essential oils don't accelerate trace the way fragrance oil tend to. 

My first batch also include lots of pink clay which combined with the fragrance oil traced FAST FAST FAST!  (I'll post pics of that, along with my attempt at The Soap Queen's "Cherry Blossom" soap technique -I'll give you a hint on how that turned out by saying unfortunately "Anne-Marie I ain't" :(
 
I will try that again, though, using EOs just because those "blossoms" are so CUTE!

I did another batch of Goats Milk using a different fragrance oil (white soap) lemongrass EO (yellow soap) and lime EO & pink clay (pink soap).  While this bad boy accellerated too (while I was messing around with the Cherry Blossom thing again) but I banged it into the mold hard (enough to jar my teeth) and it looks o.k. I think.


So here it is -all I could think of when I saw the cut bars was the old Eagles song "Tequila Sunrise":


Homemade Goats Milk Soap "Tequila Sunrise"


Considering the whole acceleration thing, I'm happy that it turned out at all! :)


Stay tuned for the Week 3 Challenge: Piping Soap


There are sure to be some blow-your-hair-back results from the participants!


Happy Soaping, everyone!   ~Becky

3 comments:

Amy Warden said...

Woo hoo!! You tamed that soap into submission - looks fabulous!! And of course, I'm curious about the cherry blossom soaps now too. I thought that looked like a fun project also!

Two Blooms Design Studio said...

Your soap look great, love the cheery yellow colour (is that clay you used)? The white is so smooth looking.

Michelle

The Soap Sister said...

Hi Michelle, Thanks -I'm happy considering the seizing issues I encountered! The pink is from French pink clay, and the yellow is just from the lemongrass EO. I chose the colors for my failed attempt at "Cherry Blossoms" -but I hope to try again, maybe later today & post the good, the bad and the ugly! ;) ~Becky