Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Palm Oil and Grapeseed Oil: I’m jumpin’ up and down about this combo — a great batch of soap is waiting for me. I can feel it. I will feel it, as soon as my order from OBN gets here.

I used up the last of my CO, making a batch of the “Soap from Heaven”, 100% Coconut Oil w/Goatsmilk.  Now, I like this soap. But I wish I’d waited to make it, till I had a full supply of CO.  It IS  nice to know that I can make some good soap, with coconut oil and lye water. I don’t see this one on my top list of soaps to make, on a regular basis. Perhaps I will grow to love it, as much as others obviously do.

Folks really need to watch what they say online — especially those who sell soap and are doing it to make….money. Not only soapers visit soapmaking communities.

If I could only buy from three (3) suppliers EVAH, they would be: Oils by Nature, Wholesale Supplies Plus, Southern Soapers and Certified Lye. I know — that’s four, but think of it like a ”Baker’s Trio” (one extra, like a baker’s dozen).

NEA

Burnt Honey Bars

Yep, it’s all in how you present it. Honey is a wonderful thing.  Honey in soap is…decadent. It heats things up in the pot and the mold, though. No, I don’t fret about it. I don’t care if it gets “too hot” and causes little flecks in your soap — it’s probably a combo of the FO and the hot honey. I don’t like “un-gelled” soap. It’s YUMMY soap! 

Seven (7) wonderful oils and butters (including RBO, Hempseed Oil and Mango Butter), 2 tbsp of Stakich Raw Honey (local and LUSCIOUS!), and WSPs Iced Tea Twist FO (which faded considerably in my Iced Tea w/Lemon soap), combined to create a bubbly, creamy, lemony, honey-love bar of soap. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Island Pear Soap

I absolutely  rice bran oil in soap — probably more than olive oil. But my recipe was a little sticky in the mold — even after a full 24 hour setup time. So, after tweaking and still preferring my original recipe, I decided to use a 33% lye concentration, along with some sodium lactate. What you see above is the result — 12 hours after pour. Nice and firm, with no stickiness. Since I soaped in my Silvermoon log mold, of course the sides and bottom are like sheets of….polished glass. 

The soap batter was much…smoother. I hand-stirred, partly because I had no idea what would happen with a new additive, and a new FO (Southern Soaper’s Island Pear). I added .5 ounces of sodium lactate, per lb of oils to the water, before the lye was added. I then mixed in my lye, and then my Emporium Naturals’ green colorant. I let the lye bath cool a bit, while I prepared my oils.

Let’s see how it cures!

NEA