First Ever Goat's Milk Soap

I had an itch to make goat's milk soap and had to give in & scratch it today. I managed to get away with it not curdling or seizing, no smell of burnt milk and finally managed to get the right trace to have a go again at swirling. I need to learn not to faff once I'm reasonably happy with the swirls/contrast colours or I'll end up just mixing the swirl colour into the base completely.

I remembered to take a pic before it morphs into some kind of monster and then stuck it in the freezer for a couple of hours. At the moment, there are some nasty cracks forming so it's now sitting in the fridge to see what happens. Hmmmm.....

Baked Beans

I thought this week I'd have a play with a liquid colourant in some CP soap. Yet again though, I took out too much soap to colour for the swirl - will I never learn? I got my fragrance oil mixed up with something else too and thought it would discolour to cream (and not a caramel colour).

The aim was a delicate cream-coloured soap with orange swirls. The fragrance moved quite fast though and by the time I came to add the swirl colour, it had almost set. My timing is still off and something I'm having trouble getting the hang of. I didn't think it looked too bad in the end until my sis very kindly asked me not to leave the end result hanging about in case my niece came in from school & thought it was baked bean sauce. Oops.

Note to self: Do not remove too much soap for colouring; Read notes on fragrances properly; Stop having pictures in head of what soap should look like when it's done. :-)

SMelties!

Just to show I can make things that work as I want them to sometimes, here's a pic of my soy wax melts which I call SMelties. I sell them in bags of 3 tarts (and sometimes make other smaller shapes too when I'm feeling brave) in loads of different lovely scents, and the only complaint I've had so far is that they last too long! I love them because the wax has no nasties in like petrochemicals etc and if you do spill it it just washes off with hot soapy water. I really enjoy making them and when I've made a batch, my whole house smells lovely!

Gorg (as in onzola, not eous)

Today I decided to make HP soap using sodium lactate for the first time. It really helped with the fluidity but the soap set really, really fast (so much so I made a whole bar of soap out of the pot scrapings). The idea was to have a whitish base with pink & blue swirls. I used beetroot powder to get the pink colour, but when I added it, it disappeared completely so it ended up as whitish with just blue swirls. The fetching air holes gorgonzola style, are because I didn't really have time to get the air out as it was setting so fast. Another day, another croap......

Crapple Pie & Crudstard

This week my idea was a creative new croap
As ever I planned it & was living in hope
I love baking, so I had in my little mind’s eye
A soap to resemble a real apple pie.

I pre-tested the FO to see if it would go brown
But no! It stayed nice & light and would not let me down.
I rang my friend for advice on how to make “pastry”
She suggested I add oats to make it look tasty.

So, off into the kitchen I went – all fully prepared
I’d worked it all out so I wasn’t too scared.
I divided the base into 3 different parts
So I could add colours etc for my soap apple tarts.

It was all looking good, so I left it to gel
Apple Pie & Custard – it’s a really nice smell.
But when it came to unmoulding, I ran out of luck
It wouldn’t come out, ‘cos the “pastry” was stuck.

I smacked it and froze it, and then I got cross
‘Cos my sweet apple pie was another dead loss.
So please don’t look too closely, and please try not to scoff
But when I pick a piece up to sniff it, the custard falls off.

Quest For Blue Soap

I'd tried every way I could to make blue soap and it kept evading me. I tried liquid soap dye - it didn't disperse and I ended up with blue blobs; I tried making an alkanet infusion which nearly worked but was more lavender (and has since morphed into a browny-purple because of the discolouring fragrance).

After a barrage of blue comments on the Fresholi forum, I was going to make blue soap come hell or high water. A wonderful surprise came in the post from a fellow forum member - blue ultramine. Last week I finally made blue soap (and it's still holding).

It doesn't have a "blue" fragrance but I don't care!

How It Started

While in Portugal in 2007, my good friend Isabel got me hooked on handcrafted soap. She was making melt & pour soaps and I spent a fair amount of time "playing" in her kitchen. My curiosity got the better of me and I started to research making cold and hot process soaps.

I then found a new forum http://www.fresholi.co.uk/ and spent a fair bit of time being a wimp and gawping in awe at the beautiful products being made by the very talented, and knowledgeable bunch of members. After I'd picked their brains, and moaned and whinged for several months, I finally took the bull by the horns and had a go.

What a disaster, but hey, I'd made soap (well sort of). So, the word "croap" was born - cr*p soap - and I've since been promoted on the forum to Croap Queen. Without the encouragement and help from my fellow Fresholettes, I would never had had the courage to have a go. So, ladies (and you know who you are) a big thank you, and I apologise for the monster in me which has been unleashed in the world of handcrafted soap.