Tuesday, 12 July 2016

Unmolding of my Genesis soap! Yayyy.

Hey there!

How have you been?
So I unmolded my soap 24hours after I made them.
A couple of things though...

¤ The mold is silicon so it's supposed to be easy to unmold...errrrr...it was a little hard. I almost ruined the soap while trying to force it to unmold. 😐

¤ Also, the mold is small in width. It's 12 inches aaaalright! But...it's very slim. Left me feeling some type of way! 😕

¤ I didn't know the measurement of the cutter wasn't exact. So I just went on cutting. The result???
I cut 13 soaps....some were 1 inch in width while some were a little below 1 inch. How will I gain experience if I don't make mistakes, ehn?

¤ The soaps came out beautiful. I was worried the white part won't show at all because I added the white mica to a little portion of the soap batter. But I was pleasantly surprised.

I'll definitely be soaping more. Most of the soaps have been ordered though. Owners waiting for it to cure, so yeah...I'm happy 💃💃💃...Thanks guys!🙌🙌🙌

Mistakes I Made/Lessons Learnt:

☆ I wore my protective suit too early. I started sweating profusely so i removed them when I realised I didn't need them yet...then I forgot to wear the safety goggles when I needed it.

Lesson:
- Measure the oils and butter before wearing the protective suit.
- Only wear your safety goggles, gloves and suit when you want to make the lye water and from there on till you're done soaping.

☆ I used up all the oils to make the soap, so when it was now time to mix the clays, powders with oil to add colour to the soap, I had no oil to use. I had to use little water instead. It just made me disorganized an' stuff! 😩😩😩

Lesson:
- Prepare! Prepare!! Prepare!!! Always prepare the colours in oil before you begin soaping. Set aside. Use when slight trace is reached. (Ask what this means in the comment section. Yes! I'm forcing you to comment on my blog!😆)

☆ Was so distracted when my daughter suddenly woke up and wanted to breastfeed. I wasn't even half way finished. This distraction made me rush things and I was good...until I had to clear everything I used and make sure I don't touch anything that has been near the lye water. So I panicked with the clearing up and dumped my weight and expensive infrared thermometer into a bucket I was going to use to wash all the kitchen utensilsI used. I poured hot water into the bucket before I remembered they were there sef 😢😢😢

Lesson:
- Make soap only when daughter is NOT at home. Even when she is sleeping, she can wake up and daddy might be busy too! 😐
- Buy kitchen towels and tissue to wipe everything else that's not kitchen utensil. 😔

Anyways, those are the mistakes I can remember. Please note...
Theses mistakes take nothing away from the quality of the soap, they just made soaping difficult for me. Thank you. 😑

Finally...the big reveal! Check out the pictures of my soap after I had unmolded and cut below.

Please don't forget to leave a comment or ask any question. If you would also like to buy one of these little champs, send me an e-mail sisiarab@yahoo.com

Cheers 🍷

Sunday, 10 July 2016

Genesis: Anti Aging soap.

Hey there.

For those who know me, you know I'm always trying something new...looking for the next thing to thrill me. Well...I just found my next thrill in soaping. Since March, i had been watching tutorials upon tutorials on soaping and reading every book I could find on it. It was fascinating...it IS fascinating.

Cut long story short...after 4months of buying everything I needed to start little by little, I'm happy to say I made my first soap yesterday! Yayyy!!!

All the books I read advised to use basic recipes with little ingredients to practise for my first soaping expenditure and not experiment with expensive oils and butters...but my strong head will not allow me to listen. I wanted to make an anti aging soap...and nothing (not even my inexperience) was going to stop me. Lol.

So I gathered my safety equipment, ingredient, brought the living room standing fan to the kitchen because I was feeling hot already (from nerves) and decided to start. Here are a few pictures from my pre-soaping phase. 😊




What? I'm about to start a new hobby, and you think I won't take a selfie?? Please, its 2016. If its possible to take a selfie while I slept, I would. Hmmm...that's a great idea. Any entrepreneur out there...I just gave you a dope idea. #ThankMeLater.

Also...it's not ridiculous how I wore a full "Anti-Ebola" protective suit. Not taking any chances with the Sodium hydroxide. *straight face*

Anyway, after I sent the selfie to my sister (yes, immediately I took them)...I start measuring the oils. Already sweating like a Christmas chicken abi ileya ram, I decided to remove the nose mask and goggles.
In the process of measuring, I realised that the gram equivalent of what I needed is not what I bought from the organic store because they sold them to me based on millilitre. Shucks!!!! I had to recalculate my percentages and figures to give me a perfect soap.

Okay let me step back  a bit. I'm sure some of you are wondering how to make soap. It's easy. Mix together sodium hydroxide and water with oils. The moment it comes in contact with each other, Saponification begins! I'm sure you guys who did well in Wayek (WAEC)...know what I'm taking about. Lol. But if you are like me that got F9 in Chemistry...just know, if Ican make soap...so can you! #Gbam 👊

So these were the ingredients I used.

☆ Sodium Hydroxide
☆ Water
☆ Argan oil
☆ Castor oil
☆ Sweet Almond oil
☆ Olive oil
☆ Coconut oil
☆ Hibiscus oil
☆ Lavendar essential oil
☆ Rosemary essential oil
☆ Activated Charcoal
☆ Organic Shea butter (ask me for back story of this later)
☆ Cocoa butter

Process:

♡ I melted the Organic Shea butter and Cocoa butter usng a double boiler. This prevents me from scortching the nutrients from the butters...so I melt them slowly.

Tip: You can always improvise if the double boiler isnt available by putting a smaller pot with the butters balanced on top of a bigger pot filled a little with water 😉

♡ Weighed out all my oils and recalculated the amount of Sodium hydroxide and water I'll be needing for a truly luxurious soap.

♡ Then I made my lye water....which simply means Water in which Sodium Hydroxide has been added to.

♡ When the temperature of the oil and the lye water were below 100degrees, I slowly poured the lye water into the oils.

NB: I used a refridgerated water. This helps to reduce the time it takes for the lye water to come down to 100 degrees.

♡ I didn't even need to use my stick blender on the mixure because it reached trace almost immediately. I quickly added the essential oils and Activated Charcoal and poured in a mold.

Voila!

Back Story: By the time I was adding the NaOh to water...I realised that I forgot to wear back my goggles when I removed it earlier when I was sweating. I just poured Sodium hydroxide into water without eye protection! !! Wow, Sb! Just wow! Smh.

Anyways, thanks for reading. Will bring you more pictures when I unmold and cut the soap tomorrow.

Cheers 🍸