Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Soap Making Disaster? Not so much...

Soap making Disaster Part 2 - A lesson in NEVER GIVING UP!!

I wish I had thought about asking one of my students to take a picture of the mess as we were trying to push, chop and smush it into the mold...however I was up past my wrists in soap, working feverishly to save this very expensive batch and it didn't cross my mind.  This post would have been much more effective to y'all if you could have seen the disaster and compared it to the results.   However, this should mean a lot, lesson wise, to my students who saw the ugly mess and can now see the results.

So...students...this one is for you!

Let me start by telling you what I did after everyone was gone.  Remember that I doubled the insulation over this mold. I wanted it to get to a very hot gel phase.  After doing some initial clean up from the class, I checked under the towels to see how hot the soap was getting.  It was super hot. I took off the towels and peeled back the paper.  The top looked pretty much like it did when we put it in the mold - lumpy, lots of holes and really ugly.  Very dry and scaly looking the entire length of the mold.

However when I put a spatula in it and turned it a bit, the bottom was hot gel!  So, I carefully scooped up from the bottom, turning everything over as I went.  Sort of like folding something into a baking mix.  I went slowly, and gently down the length of the mold.  I wanted the lumpy hard top to go to the bottom and the hot gel to come to the top.  I wasn't horribly worried about mixing color at this point, although I didn't do any stirring.  Just scoop and turn, scoop and turn.  When the top was the gel part and it looked as though all of the hard lumps had been turned to the bottom, I pressed it down as best I could.  I covered it back up with the paper and both towels.  Double the insulation - I believe that was very important.  I also prayed. (the most important part...our Father truly cares about the small things in life that are important to us!)

I cut it 24 hours later.  I had no idea what I would find but was pretty sure I would be re-batching this soap.  As I said in the last post, it was the worst seize I have ever had in my entire soap making experience.

Here it is fresh out of the mold...surprisingly it didn't look to bad..







 .until you looked at the ends!




Here is one up close - looks a lot like the top did before I folded the gel to the top and the lumps to the bottom.





Pretty awful - the ugliest thing to ever come out of my soap kitchen.

BUT!!!!

When I began cutting the bars?





 Absolutely gorgeous!





This is quite possibly the prettiest soap I've ever made.  It is much more of a "marbled" effect than when I just swirl the color.  Not that I would ever want to go through that again to get this look!

Here is a picture of the regular swirled soap (cured) next to the new marbled soap (very fresh from the mold)

The regular swirled soap is on the right and the soap from the problem batch is on the left.  I like the disaster soap better!

I''d like to hear from you students who were here (you are the only ones that saw how awful this truly was!)...did you ever think it could be this pretty?  Which of the above soaps do you like better?  Marbled disaster on the left or properly swirled on the right?  Comments? Thoughts? Think it is marketable? (A question many of you asked :)

So...lesson learned...pray, don't stop and never give up, never give up, never give up!

Thank you class for your encouragement, for helping me chop it up and push it into the mold, for understanding and grace.  Y'all were a ton of fun!  Thanks for joining me in my soap kitchen!

Blessings,




2 comments:

  1. From B - a student from the class:

    Hi Cheri, I think that soap is gorgeous and more than marketable. I prefer it to regular batch. I never could have imagined that would have come out so pretty. I had fun thank you so much for having me in your class. I hope I get a chance to buy all the ingredients I need and get started. Looking forward to the herb class. Have a great day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. From K - a student in the class:

    So that batch of soap, under the skillful hands of its creator, was salvaged and molded into something beautiful! A perfect description of my life...

    ReplyDelete

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