Hi, this is Teri from Tree Marie Soapworks. today I'm going to be showing you
how I made this bar. It's a confetti soap and I used it from some of my soap
leftover from my previous batch and I'm going to show you how I did that. Stay
tuned to the end of my video and I'm going to talk a little bit about some
pros to why I calculate my colorants and my batter so precisely. At the end of the
video, as a thank you to you, I am going to let you pick my next batch. I have
a few options. You can just vote on which one you would like me to make next.
I love learning about soap making and if you're interested in learning along with
me just please give me a "like" and subscribe and let's get started. When
you're making confetti soap it's best if you use the scraps of soap that's not
very old and still very moist. You want your soap to be very similar to the new
recipe you're making and not too dried out. I got the scraps from the previous
batch which was the marbling swirl which was the technique number 18 video, and
basically, these scraps are two days old. I made my soap and then I cut it. And
then I cut up the scraps and made the soap for this one. First I need to find
out the weight of the confetti I'm adding. So I have to cut everything up
and then weigh it. I like the look of cubes in the soap you can use confetti
that is just grated, and that will look fine too, but I've always liked the cubed
look, so this is what I'm going for today. In order to figure out this batch I
first need to weigh all of my confetti and then I need to do a little math to
figure out what I need the weight of my next batch to be. To make a new recipe
with the adjusted amount of soap, I'm going to need to find out how much oils
are in this amount of confetti soap and to do that I need to figure out the
percentage of oils that are in my soap. So we're going to go over to soapcalc
and I'm going to show you what I did to figure this out.
Here I am in soap calc and this is just my normal 10 bar recipe, and this is my
palm free recipe. I have everything already in and this is a recipe like I
use for my confetti and it also has the same amount of
water as a percentage of oils and super fat. Okay, so I go to my next screen and
which would be if you would calculate recipe and hit the viewer print tab and
here's my recipe. To figure out our new recipe, I'm going to type in here so you
can have an idea of what I'm doing to figure this out. This is how to figure
your new recipe. Okay, so we're going to first take our oil weight divided by our
batter weight and that equals our oil percentage. Okay so for this recipe we
take our oil weight, and it's also up here, oil weight, and we divide it by our
batter weight. So that would be 33.5
divided by 46.59, and if you're doing grams, you would just
take this number divided by this number and you get your percentage. So this
equals 0.719 so that's your oil percentage. And now we need to figure out
what percentage of oil we have in our weighted confetti soap. So confetti weight
times oil percentage equals confetti oil
weight. Okay , so that would be, confetti weight is 6.8 ounces which
you could use grams here it works the same way
so times your percentage which is your .719 and that equals
your confetti oil weight, which is, 4.88 so I'm going to round
that to 4.9. Okay now that you have your amount of oil that's in
your confetti, you need to subtract that from this number to get the remaining
oil weight that you need, so we need to take our regular oil weight minus our
confetti oil weight and that equals our new batch oil weight. Okay so that would
be just 33.5 minus this confetti oil weight which is 4.9
and that equals our new batter weight. So that is 28.6
Okay, now that we have that, we need to go back to our other tab and
change this number to 28.6, and then we need to check this 'multiple tabs' box and
hit 'calculate recipe' and go to' viewer print recipe' and that gives you a new
tab, and this is your new recipe. Okay since we're here, I'm also going to show
you how to figure your sodium lactate and your activated charcoal, and we'll
start with the sodium lactate. We'll be using that at a rate of one teaspoon
per pound of oils. Okay, so that's a really simple one because we already
know how many pounds of oils we have, so we just use this number and this is how
many teaspoons we use. So I'm going to round this up to 1.8
teaspoons. Okay so for our activated charcoal, we'll do that next. I use a rate
of 1.5 teaspoons per pound of soap, and this is also one that we could, for this
recipe, since we're using it for the whole batch, we could just take this
number of pounds of soap, and multiply that by 1.5, but usually you can't do
that because you're not using it for your whole batch, so I'm going to show
you how to do this in the Elements Bath and Body's colorant calculator. So I go
to Elements Bath and Body's colorant calculator, and to find that you just go
to elementsbathandbody.com and you go to 'Explorer' and you go under the
'Learning Center' you go to 'calculators' and the colorant calculator is the last
calculator you'll find on here. The first part of it does per pound of soap
and the last part of it does per pound of oils. In each of these, there's if
you're using a specific amount of batter, like say you're using eight ounces of
batter, you want to color. You would use this one. But we are just using a
percentage so we are using this one, okay? So we need to know this 'total weight of
soap,' so we have to go back to our recipe and here we have our total weight of
soap is 39.77, so we'll enter that here. Okay and we're
using a 100% of our batter so we put a 100 there and for our
amount of recomended per pound of soap we have 1.5. And you just hit
'calculate." And so your number right here is 3.728 and I
would probably just round that to 3.75 so either you can use three
teaspoons plus 3/4 of teaspoon or you can use a tablespoon, which is three
teaspoons. So one tablespoon and 3/4 of a teaspoon. So you go back here and you
just put 3.75 teaspoons or however you want to do it. Ok, so hopefully this helps
you, and we'll get back to the tutorial. I'm using distilled water ice cubes for
a third to a half of my water weight and then I just top off the remaining water
weight with distilled water that's cold from the fridge. Next, I measure my sodium
hydroxide and you notice that my sodium hydroxide is in bead form and there's
also another kind of sodium hydroxide that is in flake form. I find that to
decide which one you want to use, it kind of depends on where you live. Because if
you live in a place that's very dry, you kind of want to use the flakes because
the little beads tend to fly around if there's like statically an action if the
air is really dry. And here in Indiana, I rarely have that
problem, maybe in the middle of winter sometimes, but usually more dry places
like, say, Colorado or somewhere like that you would maybe have better luck using
the flakes. At this point I also measure my sodium lactate, and sodium lactate is
totally not necessary. You don't have to use it, and I just use it in mine because
it does make a little bit of a harder bar and it also helps yourself release
from the mold easier. Next, I measure my coconut oil, and I get that melting. And
while that's melting, I measure my liquid oils, and I start with my, avocado oil,
then my castor oil, and then my olive oil. I use a little squeeze bottle in between
to top off the ingredients so I don't go over, because I don't want to have to
take any out because at this point they're mixed.
I got this essential oil combination from a book by Benjamin Aaron and it's an
ebook, and it's called Essential Oil Blends for Handcrafted Soap.
Ben so graciously allowed me to share this with you so make sure and show them some love
by going to Ben and Amanda's site. It's called Lovin' Soap. (https://www.lovinsoap.com/)
They have a ton of resources there and a lot of ebooks. And also they are the ones that run the
Facebook group called Saponification Nation. So between the two of them, I've
learned so much. And the essential oil combination is called 'Breath," and it uses
a mixture of 20% of each of these essential oils:
It's eucalyptus, rosemary, lavender, peppermint, and lemon.
This combination is very good if you want to have plenty of time to work.
It doesn't cause acceleration, in fact, it kind of slows down trace. At this point I
added my liquid oils to my melted coconut oil, and then I measured in my
cocoa butter pastilles. Next, I melt this in the microwave until it's just barely
melted. Next, I'm adding smooth coconut carbon and this is from Elements Bath
and Body, and it's also called activated charcoal. It's a little out of the
ordinary for me to add my activated charcoal directly to my oils, but the
reason I can do this for one is that I'm only using one color for my batter.
Another reason is this is an awful lot to mix on my plexiglass with my palette
knife, but if I were using this much titanium dioxide, you can bet I would mix
this ahead of time, because there would be a ton of specks if I do this the
exact same way and just add it to my oils. Another reason is the particle size
of activated charcoal is very small and it's very poufy; it's not clumpy. So it's
an easy one to mix in but, if I was mixing in like, I said titanium dioxide,
that would be very clumpy, and you always see those streaks from when people cut
their soap in their titanium dioxide isn't mixed in.
Next, I add my essential oil combination to these oils and I just make sure that
everything's blended in. Okay, now that the
temperatures of my lye water and my oils have cooled down between 85 and 95
degrees Fahrenheit, I add my sodium lactate to my lye water. And then I just
strained that into my oil solution. Then I stick blend until medium trace.
I need my batter to be about at a medium trace because I need my confetti to just
stay suspended in that batter, because if it's that too thin of a trace it would
sink to the bottom. Remember that I'm using an essential oil combination that
just really slows it down, so I had to do extra stick blending here than I
normally would have to do, to get it to medium trace. Once it's at medium trace I
pour about half of my batter into the mold. After I poured that, I poured a
little extra into another pitcher. That will be my top. Next, I poured my
remaining batter into my confetti. And just stir that but try not to introduce
any air bubbles, because this soap is kind of notorious for air bubbles.
I picked a line a little right of the center and I poured it because I wanted
my design to be kind of asymmetrical. So I just poured it there and let it spread
out however it wants to. And then after I was done with that, I just topped it off
with the remaining batter when I finished this up I covered it, and I put
it in a preheated oven, that's preheated to the lowest temperature then when I
put this in the oven, I turned the oven off, and I turned the oven light on. And I
have been starting to turn the oven light off at night before I go to bed.
And just let it come to room temperature in the oven and take it out in the
morning. And just leave it covered and I actually left this in the mold for
longer than I normally do because when I use embeds in soaps, sometimes you get
that little halo around the embed and also you get a little indentation where
the embed was. So I was trying to avoid this and I did by leaving it in the
hold for a little longer. I would say I did four days or so. Here I'm just
touching up some of the air pockets that were on the top. Next, I just used my
vegetable peeler and I just bevel off each of the long edges. Now since I'm
just cutting the soap and cleaning it, I'm going to tell you a little bit about
what I would have done differently, and with this patch I actually really was
happy with how it came out. The only thing I probably would have
done differently is just make sure and bang it down a little more because there
were some air bubbles in there, which is very typical when you make a confetti soap.
I love this process of making confetti soap and how it came out so I feel like
my final result looks like tumbled polished stones, and it just is gorgeous
to me. So you know how you have that little extra bit of soap left over
sometimes when you scrape it out of all your containers? I think, just use those
cut up, it looks so pretty especially when there's kind of some interest to
them, like some lines. So I might be making a lot more confetti soap. I'm also
going to remember this when I have extra fragrances that I need to use, or want to
use. I have so many fragrances and I need to get through them, and I just always
think, "I need to just make these into soap." So this would be a great way to,
"just make some of my fragrances into soap." Next, I'm going to tell you a little
bit about why I calculate my colors so precisely, and also my batter when I
split it off, I split it off precisely. Well, what happens when you add a random
amount of mica to your batter? You have to stick blend it in and stick blending
causes acceleration. Also if it's not pre-diluted it kind of absorbs water and
that makes it accelerate because it's taking some of that moisture to hydrate
it. And that's one reason why I premix my colorants. But I say you premix a certain
amount of colorants and you just do a random amount. well a lot of times you
make up too much colorant, which it causes waste, because you don't have
anything to do with that, or you have to find a way to store it, which usually
it's not enough to store but it's not enough
to make into something else so it's wasted. Other times you might put too
much of that into your soap and it could ruin your batch because you just have
too much colorant. Other times you don't make up enough and then you're out of
luck because you have to mix up some more. The main reason why I like to
calculate my colorants is because I have a record of what I did.
Same with my batter, if I used a certain percentage, I know that if I like it I
can repeat it, if I don't like it I can change my percentages until I get it
right. And then when I get it right I can just continue to do that.
So with the colorants, you know, say my color it was not dark enough, I know how
much I used, so I know what to do to make it darker. Now that Elements Bbath and
Body has the colorant calculator it's so easy. There's not a lot of math involved.
You can just put in your amounts and it'll give you the answer. You don't have
to setup proportions, you don't have to do math. So, what I'm saying is, if you
have a rate that you know you used you can increase it or decrease it, or if you
like it, you can keep it the same, but if you don't know what you used,
you have no starting point for next time when you want to change that color.
It's important to keep good notes and that way you can learn from yourself by
trial and error. I'm taking a poll to see which one of these designs you would
like me to do next. I will just leave the voting open until the end of Sunday, so I
can get started on it on Monday, so please just vote A, B, C, or D. Whichever
technique wins, I will be doing that technique but I will be changing up the
design a little bit and also changing up the colors. If you're finding these
videos helpful and you still want to learn more I have a soap making group
that I started on Facebook, and it is for asking questions and for sharing and we
troubleshoot and just encourage each other in soap making. So if you're
interested in that I have a link in my description of how to get to that group.
And then you just asked to join. And please ask to join under your personal
Facebook name, and not your business name. If you're looking for inspiration, on my
webpage I have my gallery and there are lots of soaps there to look at, and also
I have my shop there, so if you want to take a look. I really appreciate those of
you that placed orders last week! Thank you so much! :)
If you appreciate these videos, please give me a thumbs up. And if you're
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friends! Thank you so much for joining me, and have a great day! :)