Peeling back the layers

I was sitting here this evening, relaxing, and suddenly got soapy withdrawal symptoms.  You know the kind of thing, I am fidgety, and I have to go and make some now! So, off I trotted to the kitchen, put on my pointy hat and weighed everything into my cauldron.

I wanted to do something a bit different. All my soaps to date have been  plain. Some have had a sprinkling of botanicals on the top, but that has been as far as I have allowed my creativity to go.

I had decided that I was going to fragrance my soap with lavender and patchouli, a combination I have not used before, and I wanted to colour it to match. After I weighed out the liquid oils, I decanted some into a small glass dish, added alkanet and warmed it a little to help the infusion. I let it sit while I melted the liquid and solid oils together, mixed the lye solution added the two together, and brought it to trace. After adding the essential oil blend and mixing well, I separated out some of the raw soap and added my alkanet infused oil to the main part of the soap batch then poured it into the prepared mould. When I thought it had set enough, I very slowly ladled the uncoloured soap on the top and put it to bed.

I will be surprised if this is a successfully layered soap. Everything I have read suggests that you make a half batch of soap, and then while this is setting you make your second half batch, but I like to bend the rules a bit, partly because I never bother to read instructions. I can't wait until tomorrow when I am able to unmould it and see how it looks. It is certain to be interesting. It will either look lovely (pink pigs overhead) or the top layer will have dripped down into the bottom layer and it will look a complete mess. All will be revealed.

Soap, soap and erm, soap.

The National Trust, Speke Hall, ordered soap and bath salts from me recently. In readiness, for the last couple of months I have been soaping like a demon to try to build up stocks.

I have, to date, made mainly Hot Process soap which is usable quicker than its Cold Process cousin. The drawback of Hot Process is that the batches are smaller and it is therefore more time consuming.  I am slowly moving to Cold Process, because I can make bigger batches, although it is unlikely that I will give up Hot Process completely.

There has been discussion on a forum I am a member of to try to get a consensus on whether one is better than the other. I certainly don't think that there is in the "feel" of the soap, although there is in the look of it. Both soap making methods certainly have their benefits.

As you can see from the picture, I am not using colour in my soap at the moment, and I am not adding botanicals. I have plans to possibly change this for soaps I sell at Craft Fairs to make them look a bit prettier, so watch this space.

This weekend, I will be making the bath salts for the order, Lavender with tiny heather flowers, and Geranium with pretty little rose buds. Not a relaxing weekend then!