Round soap

I purchased Bramble Berry's round soap mold with a liner that is supposed to make it easy to remove.  I was $9 so why not.

I planned on making a small batch using 450 grams of oils.  My usual batch of 900 grams of oils yields 8-9 bars of soap.  I’m not counting the water/lye weight for these.  I figured the smaller batch would be a good test of the round mold and yield about 4 bars of round soap.

I measured out my oils, water and lye, then set out the essential oil of eucalyptus and some Chrome Green (teal) pigment mixed with a touch of olive oil.  I then mixed my soap.  Once emulsified I took a little less than a cup of soap out into my pyrex pitcher in order to mix the pigment with the soap.  Then I began the pour of my round soap.

I started pouring the colored soap, then some of the uncolored, then colored, then uncolored….etc. etc. until I finished pouring all the soap.  I wrapped the mold with my heating pad in a box so that it could stay in the vertical position.  

Then I went to clean up and discovered the EO was still measured out in its bowl in my mixing area.   Darn it!  I decide to pour it in to the mold and try to mix it into the soap. The soap was still liquid but I didn’t get it mixed in well enough.  Two days later I unmolded the soap; which stuck to the liner by the way and the liner created a little point on one side of the round soap. I noticed just the top of the soap had the eucalyptus smell and the half inch of soap was brown and very strong.

The rest of the soap is pretty but unscented. I sliced the EO part off figuring I can use pieces of it dissolved in my bath when I want to have a eucalyptus bath.  I’ll have to try this whole thing again and hopefully next time remember my EO!!!  I’ve never done that before!  Ugh!

I’m going to Lowes this weekend for some PVC pipes since I want to try out some plastic bag liners I purchased for round soaps.  I think the Brambleberry mold is not quite the same size as the PVC molds.  I’ll try it out and also try the bag out with the BB mold too.  I want round soaps!  If these bags work I know how I can custom make them myself therefore making them shorter or longer as needed.  I’ll post as I proceed.