Saturday Soap

A friend of The Mister just gave this to him for Christmas. He's always giving my soap away to his friends so if I'm the soap queen he must be the soap king. Ha. You know I'm taking this shirt away from him, right?

 Since the soap shelves are empty I went ahead and made some pretty pink soap for Valentine's Day. It takes 6 weeks to cure so I had to get moving on it so it would be ready in time.

 I made two separate batches of a simple spoon swirl that smells like delicious Pink Berry Mimosas. Of course with all that white I ended up with clumps of the colorant you use to make white. I even mixed it into the hot oils like I did for the Christmas soaps that worked so well. Sigh. I'm getting used to the fact that there is no such thing as a perfect batch so as long as it's safe and does its job I'm okay with it.

 Speaking of imperfect soap, yesterday I used up all my leftover lye, oils and butters while I am waiting for fresh supplies on a big loaf of my favorite coffee soap. It's full of coffee butter, coffee essential oil and soy milk. It even got a splash of caramel latte fragrance oil that I got as a sample.

Everything was going along just fine until I realized I left out the white swirl that makes it so pretty. Grrr.....and THEN I remembered I was supposed to have used coffee grounds instead of the fresh stuff to avoid it bleeding into the batter. Oh, well. Nothing's perfect around here. All that plastic you see around it are books I am using to hold the mold up as it wants to bow under the weight of the the batter. I solved that problem for good by ordering my first 2 pound wooden mold and liner from Brambleberry using my birthday gift certificate from the Grands. Thanks kids!