I need a soaping fix..

Still haven't made soap - its been 6 months and its K I L L I N G me....

The house is almost finished and therefore my new soaproom is *almost* finished (being painted now).....but then of course theres flooring and cupboards etc. and of course the rest of the house!!

But I have however had a go at liquid soap! Castille shampoo to be exact. (Pure olive oil shampoo). While I didn't really know what I was doing at the time, I had a blast, and eventually it turned out quite well.

I diluted it with a Lavender Hydrosol and it has the most heavenly scent every time I wash my hair, and it leaves it lovely and soft. I have tons of the stuff, so thank God it worked!!! LOL

That was at least a *bit* of a soap fix to keep me going for a (minute) while...

Can't seem to find too many other soapers that blog either? Are there any out there?

Maree

I did a soap rebatch, finally

Well I decided alot of my soaping leftovers/scraps were too small to hold and grate (didn't want to risk losing my knuckles.....hell, who am I kidding, I just didn't want to grate the damn stuff, too lazy....lol)

So I chopped it into small pieces. It was scraps from lots of batches I'd made in the last 12 months and I use only natural colorants, so the shreds were white, lemony, orangey, beigey sorta colors. I cooked it down in my crockpot with some oil and milk for and hour and a half and then scented it and poured it into my mold.

At this stage I thought, hmm, those colors and a few lumps, well, it sorta looked like lumpy vomit....lol

I know, I know, sounds disgusting - how could I wash myself with a bar of soap that looks like lumpy vomit? Well, now that I've cut it into chunks (or perhaps I should use another word here...- don't think chunky, lumpy vomit soap...lol) it actually looks quite nice and smells nice, I'll bevel the edges and pretty it up a bit and et voila! not as bad as I thought!

Who'd have thought I could be so frugal? lol

Maree

Rebatching soap

It's so darn hot, and I just wanna make soap!!

Too hot to make cold processed soap but I have lots of scraps that I could grate up and make a hand-milled soap...mmm...got me thinking...

I have read that people in the US use a 'salad shooter', (at least I think thats what its called) to grate up their soap, I haven't seen one in Australia (but then, I don't get out much....lol) - so I'll have to do it by hand.....ugh I know I could use my food processor, but don't want to...

I did this once before, put my grated bits of soap into the crockpot for melting on low and I think I added a little goats milk, (look up "rebatching" on any good soaping website) its a good way to use up your scraps. It also lathers like crazy when you do this too and depending on your base soap shred colors of course, can give you a really nice natural looking, mottley sort of color...does that make sense? Does to me, don't know how else to word it

Now, just have to *make* myself grate up ALL my scraps......dear oh dear...

Will report back if (oops) I mean when I make my rebatched soap....

Maree