Soap Update!

Since beginning my soapy adventures blog, I’ve shared three batches of soap. All have been unmolded or cut, and I’m excited to show how they came out. 

Mr. Fabulous’s bastille came out of the mold pretty nicely. I was impressed! It was still too soft to cut though, so I saved that for today when I got home from my first day at internship (!!!!). It still has the consistency of firm cookie dough, but it cut beautifully and should cure out to be a fabulous soap.

My rose soap ended up being nicer than I thought it would be. It didn’t turn completely brown, but it did form some ash on the top.

Soda ash forms when the soap cools to quickly, at least that’s what I’ve been told and my experience thus far. I’m not surprised, however, because the chemical reaction in which the soap gets all hot and gelatinous and goes into “gel phase” didn’t extend throughout the entire mold. I also didn’t pop a towel over it as I wanted to see if just the wooden mold by itself would be enough. No worries, though. The soap is still perfectly alright to use, and the ash can be scraped, washed, or steamed off (though I’ve never had any luck with that last method).

 

Last, but certainly not least, is my lilac soap with the cellini blue mica. I’m going to have another go with the lilac, as my soap forum of choice is having a challenge for the month of May that has to do with floral scented soaps. It will be my first soap picture post there, which makes me excited. My current lilac soap, however, turned out better than I even imagined. The purple color is amazing, the smell is perfect (even has that earthy “dirt” quality that real flowers have), and the soap is just overall awesome. Yay!

I’ve got so much soap. This is just a little bit of it. I can’t wait for it to all cure so I can package it and give it away.

My First Bastille Soap & a New Mold

When one hears the word “bastille,” one may think of France, Dickins’ A Tale of Two Cities, or the French Revolution. When talking soap, however, bastille is a term that is short for “bastardized castile.” That cleared it right up, didn’t it?

(From Wikipedia.com) 

Castile soap originally was soap made from olive oil pressed from olives from the Castilla region of Spain. These olives were believed to produce the finest olive oil in the world. Today, it basically means a soap made with 100% olive oil. Don’t let tricksters trick, however. Some would have you believe that the term “castile” simply means an all-vegetable soap. It does not.

Today I made bastille soap by special request. My fiancée wanted an uncolored, unscented soap to take camping. Because we do that, evidently. He wanted castile, and I wanted to use my new shipment of shea butter. So we compromised with a 95% olive oil/5% shea butter formula.  

I took the opportunity while at the local big box hardware store to check out their PVC pipe. I wanted to be able to make round soap without all the pouring that individual round molds require. I ended up with a nice two foot section for about $3. I decided that this soap would be the first one I made in my new round mold.

Carefully, I lined the bad boy up with freezer paper. I could grease it with mineral oil, since it doesn’t saponify, but there’s no way my arm was going to fit in there!  Then carefully, I poured the soap, and left it to sit. I’ll check it tomorrow when I get home from work, and then slice it up and give it a good long cure. Generally, I like to cure my soaps for 4-6 weeks. Olive oil soaps, or soaps with high olive oil content, however, do better with a much longer cure. So this is one treasure that just may have to wait.