The April 15 Experiment

Here are some pictures of my April 15 Experiment. Never let it be said that I'm afraid to let people see my failures. Hey, failures can be fun too. :) Ok, "fun" might be an exaggeration. Adventurous. =)

 

The freshly unmolded blocks of soap. Note the yellow liquid that's soaked into the paper under the soap. I stacked the soaps on the white shipping paper on top of some old newspaper to protect the surface beneath, since initial pH testing seemed to show that the liquid was quite high pH, i.e., separated lye.

 

A closeup of one of the blocks of soap. You can see, if you look closely, the swirl marks from the popsicle stick -- it was so thick that it left pretty obvious "ditches" in places.

 

Nonetheless, the coloring came out kind of cool, even if it wasn't the fine swirl that I had envisioned. In a couple of the bars you can see the blobs of white mica that was supposed to have been a thin vein running through the batch, if only it hadn't been as thick as porridge!

 

I really like the colors. The layered effect is almost as cool as the swirl I had planned. I'll definite have to try this again sometime.

 

Oh well. Lessons learned: 1. Make a small batch the first time you try something new. 2. Try only one new thing at first. 3. Don't soap at five AM on four hours of sleep. =)

 

If only it didn't smell so good, I wouldn't be quite as miffed about having to toss it. Since at least some of the lye separated out (I poured off probably at least half a cup of liquid when unmolding the blocks of soap), and there are rather a lot of little air pockets that I cut into that leaked liquid (some of the bars even dripped a little), which indicates there could be more little pockets inside the bars, still holding liquid lye, I'm going to toss it. Yikes. Expensive experiment. Ah well. Live and learn. I suppose it's good to have this happen every now and again to keep you humble. I just wish it would have happened with a slightly cheaper batch of soap. 8)

cheers,
--sabrina