Saturday, November 10, 2012

Peachy - Liquid Soap

The other day I wrote down all the ideas that I had for my next soaps.  I wanted to do a liquid soap by rebatching and I wanted to do a peach coloured soap, among other  things.  The peach colour came from the colour I got from a Woad exhaust, a really nice pale peachy colour.  It's so strange how that works.

But anyway, I dyed a long silk scarf and got this colour, instead of the blue that I hoped for.  But I loved the colour and it reminded me of some elastic that I picked up the the Good Shepherd, purely because I loved the colour, not because I had any use for a lot of elastic.  I have no idea what I want to do with it.  Although it probably could be designed as a very funky-something-to-wear if I were a bit younger and could carry off some funky clothing.

But back to the soap.  I had one soap left of one of my favorites, the Madder soap with Neroli that I rather selfishly made just for myself.  The colour was long gone and the scent wasn't really noticeable any longer either, but it was white and hard.  I had loved the feel of it, the smell of it and I remember that the lather was really nice.  So I grated it into a pot and poured some fresh cream on top, as well as a bit of coconut milk and some water.  I heated it gently and stirred to melt the soap.  Then I thought: Wouldn't it be nice to have a bit of colour?  So I went to my stash shelf and picked op a jar of Rhubarb oil.  Pink liquid soap!   I've made a quite a few nice pink soaps using both Rhubarb oil and Rumex oil and I always really like the nice pinks I get.  So I poured it in and magic:  It turned this nice peachy orange.  I was delighted.

With that colour the scent just had to be Ylang Ylang, Sweet Orange and a bit of Sandalwood, for depth and a tiny dash of Cubea Litsea for a fresh top note.  I added a little bit of Natrium benzoate a a preservative and some glycerin to help to keep it from clumping up.  Now I just have to wait and see how it ages.

Since I don't have it in a pump, it won't really matter if it thickens a bit, but I would like to be able to make liquid soap that can survive in a pump without having to use KOH.  The kids have been asking for that and I've been meaning to do some experiments.  Although one of these day I'm sure that I will treat myself to 25 kg. of KOH and start to really experiment with liquid soap.  But in the meantime I'm perfectly happy to compromise and rebatch my leftovers to get some liquid soap.  It's so important to remember that it doesn't have to be perfect.  That's the beauty of making stuff oneself.  It's not only just fine if it is slightly imperfect, it's actually better.  It's more human.  It's more me.

2 comments:

  1. Interesting post,Ambra! I've been thinking lately about liquid soap that I would use for my girl, as holding her with one hand and the soap in the other,makes taking a shower pretty annoying and difficult. Not to mention the shower handle that I'm supposed to hold as well.
    I might try this procedure,but I'm wondering if you soap has stayed liquid with aging!?

    ReplyDelete

Sombre colours

I bought this fantastic linen yarn on a cone. It was quite fine and I usually like chunky yarns to knit.  But I love linen and this was a...