Vanilla Hazelnut Rebatch

Yesterday I rebatched the Vanilla Hazelnut with PKO soap I made a couple weeks ago.  I hadn't put in enough fragrance, and I had forgotten the ground hazelnuts and oatmeal.  And since I'm out of lye, I didn't have any other soapy thing to do--except work on my Good Manufacturing Practices documents.  And I wanted to make soap.

Since this was a spur-of-the-moment decision, I didn't have a pint of whipping cream on hand to use.  So I used a pint of Creamy Select Vanilla.  I'm lactose intolerant and can't drink a lot of milk.  So I use a milk substitute: Creamy Select.  I'ts made from milk, but has the lactose replaced with dextrose.

Friday night I made some up some extra thick Creamy Select (using twice as much powder as usual), mixed it with the grated soap, and set it aside to soften the soap.  Saturday morning I put it all in the crock pot to melt down.

The soap melted down nicely and when it was ready I added more Vanilla Hazelnut fragrance and some ground hazelnuts and oatmeal.  Then I poured it into my mold.

This morning I unmolded the soap.  I was very happy that there are no air pockets in this loap.  But it was still very soft--too soft to use the mitre box to cut it as I usually do.  I was impatient and cut a few slices anyway.  I didn't cut them very well without the miterbox.

I squished the slices I'd cut into soap patties and used my cookie stamps to decorate the tops.  The soap was so sticky that it was sticking to the ceramic cookie stamps, and the designs looked horrible.

Then I remembered something I saw in a Soap Queen TV video on youtube.  In one of the videos, Anne Marie mentioned using cyclomethicone as a mold release when using plastic molds with cold process soap, because cyclomethicone would not saponify as oil would.    I decided to try it on my stamps.

I poured a little cyclomethicone into a small dish and dabbed it onto the teapot stamp using a pastry brush. Then I pressed the stamp into a soap pattie.  Oh my goodness.  It worked so well!  The detail was awesome.  I quickly tried the heart-and-flowers stamp, which is more detailed than the teapot stamp.  It turned out awesome, too.  I've never before seen this much detail when I used this stamp.

I was having so much fun I ended up squishing half the loaf into soap patties!  But I'll leave the other half to harden up and then I'll use the mitre box to cut them into nice slices.

Creamy Violets Rebatch

I rebatched the Creamy Violets soap over the weekend, and I have to say I'm pleased with the results.

I think I might have tried rebatching once several years ago, and I wasn't happy with the results--so I never did it again.  But I was really unhappy with this soap and I wanted to do something with it.  Rebatching seemed like it might be the answer.

While browsing around YouTube last week I came across a video where EssentialSoaps rebatches with goats milk (here).  There are lots of rebatching videos on YouTube, but I found this one particularly helpful.  Maybe I just saw it at the right time--I don't know. 

The first thing I needed to do was grate up all that soap--a 5-lb batch.  Yes, I used my food processor.  It still took forever!  Then I poured a pint of whipping cream over the soap gratings and allowed it to soak in over night.

Sunday morning I divided the soap up into two crock pots:  one a 7 quart pot and the other a 3 or 4 quart pot.  I thought I'd add more purple ultramarine to the soap in the big pot and titanium dioxide to the soap in the smaller pot.  That way I could still have the two colors and, hopefully, there would be more contrast between the layers than in the original soap.

Then I turned both crock pots on to High and let them sit for a while.  The soap in the small pot melted faster (well, there was less soap, right?) so after it melted I left in on Low while the soap in the bigger pot continued to melt.

It really didn't take very long for the soap to melt down--between 1/2 and 1 hour.  I was surprised at how well it melted--practically no lumps.

When it got to this consistency, I added the fragrance oil and stirred like crazy.  I even used the stick blender on it--something I never would have thought to try without the EssentialSoaps video.  Then I layered the two colors in the mold, textured the top, sprinkled a little glitter on top, and left to visit some friends.

When I got home 5 or 6 hous later my whole house smelled like Violets!   I took the soap out of the mold.  It was still pretty sticky--I probably should have left it 'til the next morning.  But I couldn't wait!

I'm really happy with the way the textured tops turned out.  You can see that the colors are still not really purple nor really white.  But there is more contrast than before.

But of course, you have to cut the soap to see the layers.  And look at that!  They turned out really well.  Because the soap was so sticky, the surface of each bar is a little rough--which you can see in the photo.  But other than that, I thought they looked really good!

Here's an up-close-and-personal shot of one soap slice.  You can see one lump on the left side of that slice.  But I was really amazed that there weren't more lumps!  OK, maybe the bottom "purple" layer should have been thicker so the "white" layer would sit a little higher, but  what the heck!  It still looks good--if I do say so myself.

And if you look closely enough, you can see some of the glitter.

The dragons just LOVE to play on the soap.  And they really like the Violet fragrance.

So I'm going to have to do this rebatching thing again.  I have a couple FOs I absolutely love, but they don't hold up in CP soap because of the lye.  I'll try rebatching them next. 

Um, I guess I better make a plain batch of soap to rebatch, huh?