Fragrance Oils Testing

Wish I could make soap in these colors.  I had this rose bloomed the day before yesterday in my garden, just love it.


I have quite a few fragrance oils that I have not yet tried and would like to know how they behave.  So I decided to do the testing by making a batch of soap and split it into 10 molds to try each fragrance.  In order to see how they would discolor, I used white base.

As you can see, I had difficulties unmolding these soaps, lol.  These are kept for nearly a month now.  The colors varied in very interesting shades.  All these fragrances are from Daystar.

Nectar's Blush - nice & strong, slight acceleration.

Pure Intention - subtle, but fresh, floral scent, a bit of acceleration.

Frosted Indulgence - sweet vanilla fragrance, no acceleration noted, but discolored to very dark brown.

Lea - vanilla type of fragrance, lost some note when soaped, lovelier in lotion.

Bamboo Sugar Cane - strong, this scent grows on me.

Liquid Crack - strong, not sure I like it but lots of other people do.

Magnolia Acai - nice floral, very subtle, acceleration noted.

Private Bloom - this one fades right out, noticed some clumping.

Peacefully Mango Breeze - didn't like it OOB, but smells better once soaped, fresh, strong fragrance. 

Green Tea & Ginger - nice & strong.

That was fun, but I had to work quickly especially toward the end.  May be next time I will try with less fragrance oils.

Thank you for reading, comments would be welcome.

DBHP Continues

Still I am making more DBHP.  It's quite fun and fast to see the result and to try out new soap recipe.  The only problem with this is, the soap I made last week is still quite soft after a week of curing.  Maybe part of the problem is the high humidity we are having at the moment.

Anyway here are two more batches, both of these, I did more water discount than the last two.  The first one was with 27% lye solution, and the second one was with 28% lye solution.  At the end of cook, the fluidity was still good.  Though admittedly, these two did not turn out as planned.

I wanted to make hard, dry soap with less cure time, so I pushed beyond the 35% water rule with my last one.  At the end of cook, the soap was quite dry.  I was able to mold it but barely and texture does not look good.  

So I guess with soap, the best we can do is to be patience. 

Double Boiler Hot Process Soap

I used to make crock pot hot process at the very beginning of my soaping adventure.  But after a few tries, I gave up.  However, recently I read some inspiring threads about hot process soap and just had to try it again.

And I wasn't disappointed, I love the way the cooked soap turn out.  I always added Sodium Lactate when I made CPHP, but still the soap was too dry to pour. But with double boiler, the soap poured perfectly into mold.  I am now in love with this method.

As this one turned out pretty well, I decided to do the second batch and cut down a tiny bit of water and also tried adding a little bit of sugar as well.  This batch had tallow in it so it's really white (I also added a bit of TD in it.)  But is it just me or does tallow soap smell more with hot process?

I think I have found another great method of soap making.  My thanks to all the great hp soaper out there.

We are in the Monsoon season right now.  The weather is lovely today, no rain but a nice breeze.  Maybe not so good for the curing soap, lol.

My First Blog

Hello, my name is Song, I live in Bangkok, Thailand.  I have only been soaping for a year and a half and still in the process of learning how to make a good soap.  As a hobby, soaping is fun but you have to keep giving them away fast enough that you have make more space for the new ones.  And the feed back, if given, is always appreciated.  How can you learn if you don't know what is good or bad?

Soaping can also be frustrating when you don't get the result that you are hoping for and you don't dare give it to anyone.  But I am addicted to soaping.  So far I have made over a hundred batches of soap.  I have boxes of soap waiting to used but still I make more.  Do you feel the same?

I am also interested in lotions making but has a long way to go yet.

Thank you for visiting and any comment will be most welcome.