Orange soap at last!

At last I have orange coloured soap! This time I used carotino oil as well as the calendula infused oil, copha, rice bran oil and a little castor oil and it turned out bright orange which is just the result I was trying to achieve.



Firstly there was a bit of drama when I pulled the calendula infused oil out of the cupboard only to find that it had gone mouldy but fortunately I had a little left over from the last batch so was able to use that. Perhaps I hadn't allowed the petals to dry out thoroughly before adding them to the oil when I was making the infusion.

 

 

When the oils were heating up the colour was looking promising. As I only made half of the amount I usually make, I found that the caustic soda cooled down really quickly and I had to put the saucepan of oil into cold water with ice cubes added in order to cool the oil down so that it was the same temperature as the caustic soda which was 50 degrees Celsius.

 

 

Then it was into the moulds with what looked like mashed pumpkin. :-)

 

 

This time I wanted to experiment a bit more with bubble wrap so lined an EasiYo yoghurt container with it.

 

 

I also lined the bottom with bubble wrap and then cut out a circle and pressed that into the top of the soap. I then wrapped the moulds up in towels and very impatiently waiting until the following morning to see how the soap had turned out.

 

 

I was very happy with the result and quite liked the quirky look of this piece of soap where the calendula petals must have clumped together.

 

 

 

The soap in the EasiYo container was quite moist so I peeled off the bubble wrap very carefully......

 

.....and then left it to dry out for a few hours before cutting it into slices with my very sharp Staysharp knife.

 

This was the end result.



I was interested to see how the soap slices felt in my hand because I find that some cakes of soap are hard to handle as I am getting older and my hands are getting stiffer. :-(

 

 

I had to take a photo to compare the orange coloured soap with the last batch of soap. I like it. What do you think?

 

One of the experienced soap makers on the Down to Earth Forum calculated the amounts of oil and caustic soda to use for this soap. I need to get my head around using the soap calculator one of these days. Here are the ingredients I used if you would like to try making this colourful soap:

 

175g Rice Bran Oil

175g Carotino Oil

150g Copha

250g Calendula infused Olive Oil

1T    Castor Oil

103g Caustic Soda

285g Water

 

As usual I followed the Rhonda's soap making instructions in this post on her Down to Earth blog. She has a detailed tutorial on her blog which would be helpful for any beginner.

 

If you haven't made your own soap then give it a try! It is a lot of fun as long as you heed the safety warnings and I am sure that before long you will find it becoming quite addictive. Let me know if you make some as I would love to see how it turns out.