Mystery Box reveal

Well, I finally had time to play with what was in the mystery box. The dyes, scent and cocoa butter and the sphere mold in the last picture.

 I'll obviously need more practice and there's more than one way to do this but I'm happy with how the first try turned out :). I painted the inside of the molds and poured the warm soap into them. Had a mild panic attack when the pigments bled and I could see colour in the bottom of the soap but it subsided as they cooled. The dragonflies are supposed to be purple with pale yellow wings! Need to do more research/experimenting in that department! Maybe colouring the soap mix is the thing to do.

The soaps on ropes should be nice and hard by Christmas and I can hand paint them with the pigments before then and give as gifts, except the defective one! I'll have to trial the painted soap to see if they run and how much. As they are approved cosmetic pigments they are deemed safe but a soap which colours the bathwater may cause a ruckus with one mother I know so uncoloured soaps will be the solution there. The ones below are cocoa butter soaps and those next to the mold,  are ordinary olive and rice bran oil soaps - before trimming.

All these are scented to some degree with cinnamon leaf oil as it has anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties. There's probably not enough to be an effective germ solution when washing but I was more concerned with the soap itself going off as, unlike commercial soap, there are no preservatives in this. Cinnamon is also an inhalant for colds and more appealing than tea tree or eucalyptus so it will serve multiple purposes in the soap.



I'll continue to experiment with my soapmaking with scents, colours and molds but the standard will always be Rhonda's recipe on the DTE blog . I have used soap made from Rhonda's recipe for washing dishes, making laundry wash and washing myself, including my hair, and it has never failed me. Sometimes basic is best even if variations are good for a change :)!

Cheers,
Robyn xo