Can this soap be saved??

Guest Author - Jodi Rubin

Source: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art9751.asp

See how I turned into Ok, so even a seasoned soap maker makes a mistake or two every once in a while.

I made this GREAT soap, scented with Brambleberry’s Rise and Shine Fragrance Oil, colored it with Yellow and Green Oxides, and added Lemongrass to it. It was wonderful, beautiful soap, but totally unusable. See, the part I forgot was to crush the Lemongrass before adding it to my soap. t was so scrubby that it hurt my skin to use, so I put it on a shelf, crying to myself, thinking I was going to lose my beautiful swirl to rebatch.

I let the soap sit for a long time, since I was so dreading the thought of ruining it with a rebatch. (I’ve never had very good luck “fixing” soap by rebatching.) Finally, a few weeks ago, I got a bright idea! Instead of rebacthing it, I was going to make it into a useable, and still pretty looking soap.

The first thing I did was prepare my twelve-pound slab mold. All it takes to do this is to cut a garbage bag in half and line the mold with it, yes; it does make for some wrinkles, but only on the ends. I either use those for me or I cut the wrinkles off and use them as sample bars or guest bars.

With my mold prepared, I got out my handy dandy veggie peeler. I KNEW that would come in handy some day! So, veggie peeler in one hand, soap bar in the other, I started peeling the soap as I would a carrot, over the mold. Every once in a while, I would stop to even out the curls inside the mold, making sure they were getting into the corners of the mold. When the mold was ¾ full, I left it and started to make my base soap.

Following basic soapmaking techniques, I made four pounds of soap, colored it with Titanium Dioxide at trace and then poured it over the curls. Then, since I choose to do ITMHP, I placed my mold in a warmed oven for two hours, turned the oven off and left the mold in over night. I did not add more fragrance, since the curled soap had a heavy fragrance to begin with. That’s all there was to it!Happy Soaping!!


Permission to reprint by Winsome Tapper, Soapmaking Editor, www.bellaonline.com/site/soapmaking