Austin Texas Soap Making Bootcamp

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Amanda

A couple of Saturdays ago I had my first Austin, Texas Soapmaking Bootcamp where I offered both the basic class and an advanced class. It was a ton of fun. I had some repeats for the basic class so we stepped it up a bit by making a milk soap. The advanced color and swirling class was amazing. Some of the students came up with designs that were simply stunning masterpieces!

Check out the photo gallery on Facebook!

The next Austin, TX Soapmaking Bootcamp is scheduled for February 22 & 23 and will include three classes!

Basic Cold Process Soapmaking (Friday, Feb 22, 4-7pm) – Learn to make your own natural handcrafted soap! You will learn what soap is, how it’s made, oil properties, additives, coloring, molding and much more! This is a hands-on class where you’ll actually get to create, custom scent and color a two pound batch of cold process soap to take home with you. All supplies, including fragrance oils, essential oils, colors, molds, oils, botanicals and clays will be available in class so you can design your own soap! No experience necessary! You will take home two pounds (about 9 bars) of soap!

Layers, Lines and Embeds (Saturday, Feb 23, 9-noon) – Learn how to take your soap design to the next level by using unique layering and embed techniques! In this advanced cold process soap design class you’ll create a unique and funky soap using layering techniques, a mica pencil line and round embeds. All supplies, including scents, colors, molds, oils, botanicals and clays will be available in class so you can design your own stunning soap! *You must have prior cold process soapmaking experience or have completed the Basic Cold Process Soapmaking Friday class. You will take home at least two pounds of soap!

Cupcakes and Cold Process Piping Techniques (Saturday, Feb 23, 1-4pm) – Cupcakes are all the rage these days! Learn how to make adorable cold process soap cupcakes. We’ll go over piping techniques, recipe selection, coloring, decorating and more! Cupcake soaps make wonderful gifts for children, wedding showers, baby showers, teacher gifts…you name it! All supplies, including scents, colors, molds, piping tips/bags, oils, botanicals and clays will be available in class so you can design your own stunning soap! *You must have prior cold process soapmaking experience or have completed the Basic Cold Process Soapmaking Friday class. You will take home over two pounds of soap!

Get more info and sign up! These classes are limited in size because of the hands on nature of the workshops. So don’t miss your spot!

-Amanda

Palm Free Recipes

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Amanda

Here are the first five palm free recipes that I soaped today! Some of them are recipes that I’ve soaped before and love…some are new formulations.

Recipe 1

Olive oil – 12 oz
Coconut oil – 8 oz
Castor oil – 2 oz
Cocoa butter – 4 oz
Rice Bran oil – 6 oz
Lye – 4.4 oz
Water – 8 oz

Recipe 2

Olive oil – 16 oz
Coconut oil – 8 oz
Castor oil – 2 oz
Shea butter – 6 oz
Lye – 4.35 oz
Water – 8 oz

Recipe 3

Olive oil – 10 oz
Coconut oil – 10 oz
Cocoa butter – 4 oz
Rice Bran oil – 8 oz
Lye – 4.5 oz
Water – 8 oz

Recipe 4

Olive oil – 18 oz
Coconut oil – 8 oz
Shea butter – 6 oz
Lye – 4.4 oz
Water – 8 oz

Recipe 5

Olive oil – 12 oz
Coconut oil – 10 oz
Shea butter – 4 oz
Sunflower oil – 6 oz
Lye – 4.5 oz
Water – 8 oz

I poured these into the tubes with liners and all of them gelled. Gelling the soap does make them harder when unmolding.

I need some testers! Post in the comments if you would like to test. I would like about five more people. I have a couple from Facebook (Holly, Carrie, Linda, Courtney, Stacey) but could use some more. I’ll be sending the bars out by post in about two weeks. Please only volunteer if you will give feedback! That is the whole purpose. Then after we recieve feedback we can tweak the recipes as needed and make them even better!

Cold Process Rock Soap

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Amanda

photo by Bramble Berry

Head on over to the Soap Queen blog to check out my new guest blog post. This tutorial shows you how to easily create rock shaped soap using cold process soap. I also share one of my favorite palm free soap recipes that is great for those that want to go palm free.

See the full tutorial on Soap Queen!

Thanks!

Amanda

The Peacock Swirl Soap Design

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Amanda

Inspiration here. I saw this paper on Paper Mojo and thought it would make a wonderful swirl in soap! So here’s how I did it.

You’ll need a slow tracing/moving recipe. Something high in olive oil, low in castor and low in hard oils/butters will work.

The Slow Moving Recipe:
Olive oil – 12 oz
Lard – 12 oz
Coconut oil – 8 oz
Rice bran oil – 4 oz

Water – 11 oz
Lye – 4.98

I used charcoal, spirulina powder, sandlewood powder and rose clay to color the soap.

Make your lye solution and melt the solid oils. Add the liquid oils to the melted oils and let everything cool down to about 115. While things are cooling down you can measure out the natural colorants into each of their containers. I added some water to hydrate the colors for easier dispersion and to hydrate the clay.

Make sure your molds and squeeze bottles are ready to go. You don’t have to use squeeze bottles…I just thought it would be easier to line up the color pours in straight lines.

Bring your soap to a really thin trace. If you can recognize emulsion before you get to trace…that’s even better.

Divide the soap into the different containers. I believe I did about 3/4 cup for each color.

Pour all of the soap into squeeze bottles. Again…you don’t have to use squeeze bottles…I just thought it would make things easier.

Pour a layer of uncolored soap into your mold.

Rotating between all of the colors and white…layer the lines until you use all of your soap batter. You don’t have to pay attention that closely as you go along. But when you get to the surface of the soap make sure you have each color visible and that you try and have light colors touching dark so you have plenty of contrast.

Make sure the lines are going all in one direction.

Now its time to swirl! Using a small spatula or a craft stick we’re going to swirl through the lines.

Here’s a line drawn so you can see how I drug the utensil.

Now mirror that move. Start back up at the top.

Repeat that down the soap.

So that’s the peacock swirl! I haven’t had a chance to cut it yet but will post pics when I do. Next I want to try it with peacock colors and round out the humps a bit more like the paper. But this is the general idea.

Cutting a slab mold

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Amanda

I made a column swirl soap in a silicone slab mold yesterday and today I wanted to show you how I cut slabs. If you’re lucky enough to have a slab mold with lines or dividers then that makes it easier. But if you don’t…it can be a bit of a challenge. Here’s how I do it.

I first trim the edges by running a knife along them.

I like to use a Fiskars 3″ x 18″ see through ruler when I cut soap. You can find them in the sewing/cutting section of most craft stores. I use the ruler to make a cutting grid to make cutting easier.

My soap slab is about 12″ x 8″ and I want to cut 2″ x 2″ pieces. Lay the ruler on an edge of the soap so that it measures out 2″ and score the soap with the tip of a knife. Keep doing it all of the way down the slab in one direction and then the other.

Once you score the first line…move the ruler up to where the two inch mark is on top of your first score and score another mark two inches from the first one.

Once you score up one way…score up the other way.

Once scored…cut it using a knife. I like to drag the tip of the knife through the soap instead of using a chopping motion.

Happy Soaping!

-Amanda

Color Soap Naturally – Calendula and Paprika, Layers and Swirls

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Amanda

This is an advanced soap design using natural colorants. It includes calendula and paprika for color and texture and swirling and layering techniques. I’ll also show you how to do the thin cocoa line you can see between layers.

Bring your soap to a stable emulsion. You don’t want to see trace or you won’t have enough time to separate out your colors and swirl.

Divide your soap into three containers. The amounts are up to you but I did about 2/3 for the bottom base, 1/6 for each top swirl color. Add a pinch of calendula petals to the base container and stick blend to a thicker trace. Stick blending with the calendula helps break the petals up a bit so they aren’t so big in your soap. Pour the base mixture into your mold and spread evenly. Drop your mold down onto a counter or the floor to help the soap flatten out.

Add 1/8 teaspoon of paprika to one of the swirl containers. Do not stick blend these as we want them nice and fluid so we can do a swirl.

Next we’ll do a cocoa line. I like to use a tea strainer to help sprinkle on the cocoa. Cover the bottom layer of soap with a thin line of cocoa. Don’t completely cover the surface or you might have soap with layers that separate. You can see plenty of the bottom soap surface peaking through. It will still look like a solid layer when you cut.

Now we’ll do our swirl on top of this layer. Since we brought it to a thick trace before we poured it into the mold we shouldn’t have any problems with it supporting the top layer. But just to test, gently spoon some soap onto it. See if it stays on top or if it breaks the surface. If it breaks the surface let it sit for a bit longer.

Spoon enough soap to completely cover the surface. Then simply rotate pouring the two different swirling colors until your fill your mold. I poured in lines all going the same direction.

You can leave it as it is or you can take a skewer and swirl the top. We don’t want the skewer to break the cocoa line and mess it up so make sure you don’t insert the skewer that deeply.

And there you have it! A beautiful soap design using natural colorants. I love the way the calendula doesn’t just provide color but also provides texture.

When you cut this soap be sure to lay it on it’s side and cut in that position. That way you won’t drag the cocoa line.

Happy Soaping!

Amanda

Color Soap Naturally – Advanced multi colored design with infusions

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Amanda

Okay, so making a solid colored soap with an infusion is easy. But what if you wanted to color a soap four different colors using different infused olive oils? You wouldn’t want to make your standard recipe, divide the traced soap in individual containers and add a tablespoon of infused olive oil to each container. Why not? You would be over superfatting your soap if you did that. You could always make different batches of soap at once but who wants to clean extra containers if you don’t have to? I sure don’t. So let’s go over how to make a multi colored soap colored with different infused oils.

First we have to modify our recipe a bit. Take your favorite recipe, plug it into a lye calculator such as soapcalc.net and change the lye discount/superfat to 0.

Recipe:
Palm oil – 300 grams
Olive oil – 300 grams
Coconut oil – 300 grams
Lye – 138 grams
Water – 280 grams

Decide what you want your superfat to be. I like to use an 8% superfat.

Add up all of your oils and multiply by 8%.

900 grams (oils) x .08 = 72 grams

72 grams is the amount of infused olive oil you have to work with to bring this batch of soap up to an 8% superfated soap. Since we want to do a four colored soap divide 72 by 4.

72 / 4 = 18 grams of each infused olive oil color

Let’s make some soap! I want to do a four colored swirl. Here is what the different colors will be.

Annatto infusion colored
Alkanet infusion colored
Plain – no color
Textured using black walnut seed powder

I will make my recipe at 0% superfat. Divide it exactly into four containers which will contain 18 grams of olive oil (two infused/two not).

The first thing I do is make the lye solution. Then measure out the oils for the 0% superfat recipe above. Do not include any infused oils.

In individual containers measure out the following:

18 g infused alkanet olive oil
18 g infused annatto seed olive oil
18 g plain olive oil
18 g plain olive oil with 1 tsp black walnut seed powder

This can be a bit confusing at first so let’s go over where we’re at.

We have our base oils and lye solution all ready to go. Our base recipe is made with a 0% superfat. Our superfat oils are measured equally out into individual cups based on the amount of colors we want. We are doing a four color swirl. We had 72 g to work with to bring our soap up to an 8% superfat so we divided that by 4. That gives us 18 g in each cup.

Bring your base to a very light trace. Using the scale divide your soap between the four containers. I like to weigh my mixing container empty, then weigh it with the traced soap. Minus the mixing container weight from how much the container + traced soap weighs and this will give you the exact weight of your batter. Divide this by four and weigh this number into each container. We want to divide it equally because we want each color to have the same superfat.

So above we have equal parts of plain soap, annatto colored, alkanet colored and black walnut powder colored. Now it’s time to swirl!

I simply rotate pouring each color in the same direction into my mold.

Then take a skewer and swirl.

And now you have a naturally colored swirled soap with an accurate superfat!

Color Soap Naturally – Coloring soap with natural colorant infusions

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Amanda

Now that you have your infusions ready to go…let’s make some soap!

Using your infused oils for coloring soap is easy to do. In this tutorial we’ll make a solid colored soap using alkanet infused olive oil.

To use an infused oil to color a solid soap you will simply use the infusion for all or part of the olive oil in your recipe. The amount will vary by infusion. When using alkanet I like to stay between 5% and 15% infused oil of total oils. This recipe has a total of 32 oz of oil. We’ll use 3 oz infused oil for color which is about 9% of total oils.

The recipe:

Palm kernel oil – 8 oz
Coconut oil – 3 oz
Shea butter – 2 oz
Olive oil – 7 oz
Alkanet infused olive oil – 3 oz
Apricot kernel oil – 3 oz
Sunflower oil – 6 oz
Lye – 4.56 oz
Water – 9 oz

Be sure to gear up in goggles and gloves when working with lye. If you’re new to soap making…start here.

Make your lye solution and set it to the side to cool down. Measure out the palm kernel, coconut and shea butter and melt.

Once the solid oils/butters are melted add the liquid oils. Be sure to add 3 oz infused olive oil and 7 oz plain olive oil.

Add your lye water, bring the soap to trace and pour into your mold.

I have noticed that with most natural colorants you get more vibrant colors if the soap goes through gel phase. But you can expirament with gelling or not gelling.

When using some natural colorants such as alkanet or annatto you run the risk of using to much that it colors the suds of the soap. I was worried that this soap would have colored suds since it came out so dark but it actually didn’t! Whew!

So that was easy! Next we’ll get a little more advanced and talk about how to make a multi-colored soap using infusions!

Happy Soaping!

Amanda

Naturally colored lavender soap

Posted on June 18, 2011 by Amanda

There are a couple ways to get purple in soap using natural colorants. My favorite herb to use is alkanet infused in olive oil. But I wanted to try something different. For this soap I used indigo and madder added to the lye water. Here’s what I did…

The recipe – 2 oz castor, 8 oz coconut, 8 oz lard, 10 oz olive oil, 3.9 oz lye & 8 oz water.

Add 1/4 teaspoon of madder root powder and 1/4 teaspoon of indigo powder to your water before you add the lye.

Add the lye slowely while stirring.

Melt the solid oils, add the liquid oils and add your fragrance. I used lavender essential oil.

Once your oils and lye solution are ready…pour the lye solution into the oils. I poured my lye solution through a stainless steel strainer to strain out some of the herb powder.

Stickblend to trace.

Pour it into the mold. I let mine set up a bit and teased the top with a craft stick. Then I added some lavender buds.

Since the top of the soap didn’t reach above the mold I covered with a piece of wax paper and a piece of wood and set it on a heating pad to go through gel. Here it is in gel stage.

The next morning it was ready to cut. Here’s a tip on cutting soap with botanicals on the top without getting the “botanical drag” through the soap. Lay the soap on it’s side and cut in that position. It won’t drag the buds down through the soap like if you were cutting from top down.

So overall I’m pretty happy with the outcome. It’s not a dark or very striking purple that you can achieve using alkanet. It’s more of a dusty vintage type of purple. I think if it were a flat plain bar it would be a bit boring…but the sculpted tops and light sprinkle of lavender buds make it all come together and look pretty good. I’m happy with it.

Amanda

DIY Reusable Liners for Slab Mold

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Amanda

It’s no secret. I love my Bramble Berry 9 Bar Slab Mold! Take a look at most of my recent tutorials and you’ll see the mold in action. They do have to be lined. So to make that task a bit simpler I decided to make some reusable plastic liners.

I went to my local plastic supplier, Allied Plastic Supply, and bought a big stack of lexan (polycarbonate) sheets for 15 bucks. When looking for lexan locally check out your local sign shops, sign shop suppliers and plastic suppliers. It’s a really cheap material and works great for lining molds. You can buy it in large sheets if you have a big mold. If you can’t find lexan you can also use the thin plastic chopping mats (for cooking!). Just make sure that whatever you find has a smooth side. This will be the inside of your mold. Also make sure that whatever material you choose is thin enough that you can still get your dividers back into the mold when lined.

Measure your mold and cut out a bottom piece and 4 side pieces.

If your material has a smooth side and a rough side…place the pieces with the smooth side down. Tape all four seams. You can use clear tape, painter’s tape, masking tape…really any kind of tape you want.

You’ll need to leave a tiny amount of space between the pieces for when you fold the sides up. So don’t tape them butted up touching each other. To test to make sure you left enough space tape one seam. Flip it over and fold up the outer piece towards the inside to make sure it folds up okay. If so…flip back over and finish the rest of the seams.