Clay Day

 

Making the clay soap is always a big mess. I have to prepare all the different colors separately and that creates a lot of clean up. 

You can't pour clay. You have to plop it. The clay makes it thicken quickly so there's no time for anything fancy. It doesn't stay in it's own lane like mica colors do so there's no sense in planning anything pretty. You just plop it in and bang, bang, bang on the mold to get it all down into it in a somewhat level way.  All that black is activated charcoal. I made a pitcher of it in hopes to help fill in the gaps. Air bubbles are bad. 

All that plopping goes for the top also. If you try to do anything fancy it will just turn to mud so I just gave it one squiggle with an old bamboo needle, stuck it in the incubator and called it a day. I had a lot of clean up to do before.....

....The Mister got up and noticed that I  HAD SET THE MICROWAVE ON FIRE. Flames and everything. I usually heat up my hard oils and butters slowly in a jar in a water filled crockpot but I forgot to plug the darn thing in. I was in a hurry because the lye solution was ready to go and I neglected to notice a tiny bit of foil on the edges of my coconut and palm oil containers. The sparks caught both oils on FIRE. What a mess-and the smell and the smoke. Terrible. Luckily, I had two more containers of the oils in the soap stash. They did NOT go in the microwave in their original containers. Lesson learned. 

The excitement's over so now I wait. I've got plenty to keep me busy during that long 24 hours. That loom is not going to thread itself.