Black Canyon is making me want to pull out all of my hair.
I love this fragrance it's masculine and soft at the same time, and I really think it will be a great seller in soap (especially for the guys). It was requested by a customer to put this scent in soap (I prev only had it in candles), so I made a batch right away. I did a black, uncolored, and red. At first I thought, wow this is going to be awesome, until it came time to test it out.... so sad when you make your hubby use it only to find out that the black oxide didn't get mixed in all the way thus resulting in nasty black bubbles.
I immediately thought, OK I can re-batch this right? So I cut off all of the black, shredded up the plain and proceeded to re-batch. Did it turn out...of course not. Don't get me wrong, it's usable and no longer bubbles black, but man is it rough looking not to mention way to small.
So into the freebie pile, or the sample pile these go and on to try it again, because I really wanted to get this scent in soap. This time I opted to leave out any black, used just a little UM blue to give it some color, and did a swirl.
I was excited the next day when it looked like this. I thought yes, now this one will turn out!
Wrong...upon cutting, the fragrance or something affected the edges in a weird way and some of the bars were crumbly and yellowing, while others were fine. I'm thinking the lye/water amounts were off, but I'm just not positive what went wrong. It could have been the fragrance as I have used this soap recipe many times, or I could have had a brain fart moment and mis-measured something.
After a week, it has discolored pretty bad. I was able to save about half of the soap in this batch, but I have yet to test the pH levels for safety. Just in case I made a mistake and it wasn't just a bad reaction with the fragrance. It also has these funky flecks..so I am thinking that this batch is a throw away batch...we'll see what the pH testing shows. Sigh...am I ever going to get this fragrance to work right? After all these years of soaping...this is my most puzzling batch so far. It just went all wonky (yes, wonky is an official soaping term..LOL..)
On my list for the next batch of soap is to try this fragrance yet again, maybe I will do no color and leave it plain. I figure third times a charm, right?
Needless to say my week in soaping hasn't been the best. I attempted some more cupcakes too....nope..still need some more practice. Sorry folks I am not sharing my ugly little cupcakes, trust me, you do not want to see them.
Since all of my soap is ready for my shows in October, I have been taking this time to finish up Winter stuff, work on candles, get the displays ready for the shows, and play around with new ideas (because I just can't turn that part of my brain off). Thanks for reading my latest soap nightmare....next time It WILL turn out right!!