Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Soap... A Rescue Operation...

Before I molded the last batch of soap, I divided it in three and put grapefruit and bergamot EOs (essential oils) in one portion, sweet orange EO in another, and lavender buds in the third. The grapefruit and orange came out lovely, but the longer the lavender bud soap cured the more the buds bled and the bars ended up looking like they were infested with bugs. Not a pretty sight!

Poking around the web last week I stumbled upon a great solution: milled soap. So yesterday I took the 3 bars of "bug infested" soap and grated them up. My Kitchen Aid mixer with the attachments made easy work of that:

I melted this grated soap down with 7 oz. of water. To that I added 2 oz. of coco butter, 2 oz. lanolin and 1 oz. of glycerin and remolded it.

Ah... it looks much better now. Darker in color, as the buds got ground up, but still speckled. Speckles that are too small to look like bugs!

It did not mold as well this time around and methinks I will have to do more research on milling soap. I didn't do too much investigation into different methods but basically used the first I came upon.

1 comment:

  1. Bugs or not, I am always impressed with your wonderful soaps.
    A big learning curve isn't it.

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