Creative Chaos: Making Embeds for Cold Process Soap

Full line-up of embeds

I have made a batch of glycerin soap and while I will use it for drizzles and things like that I don't like to use it in large quantities in my cold process soap. Most of your commercially available glycerin soap bases still have more chemicals that I prefer to use in my soap. Also I find most of them to also be drying in comparison to cold process (hereafter referred to as CP) due to the use of alcohol of some kind being used to dissolve the cooked soap. (For more info on Glycerin soap making see my post at http://cabinofbows.blogspot.com/2013/09/homemade-melt-pour.html)

The footballs - about 1" long

I decided fairly early on that if I was going to do embeds that I would use CP to make them and then add them to the soap. Since I have quite a few soaps that I want to add to my line-up either for holidays or permanently that I want to use embeds for I decided to make a batch of soap just for this purpose.

To start with, I worked up a recipe that will work with all of my current recipes. This was not complicated but it did involve estimating how much soap to make in order to get

Rubber Ducks

all of the embeds that are currently on my list finished. For some of my soaps I may have to make multiple runs due to not having as many molds as I would like in particular designs.

I also needed molds for some of the soaps that are either not readily available or are out of my current price range. This particular project will be covered in a separate post.

For my recipe I decided to use only three of my most commonly used oils to minimize confusion for me when filling out my ingredient labels. In my case that means olive oil, coconut oil, and grapeseed oil. I do use other oils and butters, but almost all of my recipes include these three.

Flip Flops and "Ice Cubes"

I started by making my full batch. I measured everything out and mixed it without adding any colorant or fragrance. Next I separated the batch into smaller containers for individual coloring based on how much I would need fill the molds available. Except for the batch for the "malted milk balls" I left all of the embeds unscented. This made it much easier to deal with getting everything mixed.

Shells and Limes

I made lots of variety in this batch. Unfortunately not all of the embeds worked as well as I had hoped that they would. One of the ones that did not turn out was the lemon slices. Unfortunately I did not blend to a thick enough trace before filling my molds and the lemons did not survive the unmolding process. The lemons were not stiff enough to come out of the mold in one piece. The shells that I made from my homemade mold worked very well. I only lost one shell and it was a long thin one.

Hand rolled "malted milk balls"

The only multi-step embed that I needed to make was the "malted milk balls". These are for a cupcake soap that I want to make. I colored these with cocoa powder and scented them with a dark chocolate fragrance. I gave this soap 2 days in the mold before moving to the next step. After unmolding the soap, I used a long handled 1/4 tsp measuring spoon to portion out balls of soap that I hand rolled for uniformity. These did end up being a little different size wise, but not by much. After letting the finished soap balls sit for 24 hours I rolled them again to smooth them a little bit further. When I rolled them the first time the soap was still somewhat sticky so the balls looked rough. After all of the balls are rolled smooth and sit for a day or two I will hit them with some steam to make them nice and shiny.

I am linking with the following blogs:

http://back2basichealth.blogspot.com http://www.bystephanielynn.com

http://blackfoxhomestead.com/ http://www.iamannekehn.blogspot.com

http://www.hopeineveryseason.com http://ivyandelephants.blogspot.com

http://littlehomesteadonthehill.blogspot.com/ http://www.sewcando.com/

http://www.campwander.com/ http://www.savvysouthernstyle.net/

http://coloradolady.blogspot.com www.aboverubies.net

http://abidingwoman.com/ http://www.besimplybetter.com/

http://www.deeprootsathome.com/ http://proverbs14verse1.blogspot.com/

http://raisinghomemakers.com http://sandimyyellowdoor.blogspot.com/

http://www.52mantels.com/ http://www.the36thavenue.com/

http://www.create-with-joy.com http://teachingwhatisgood.com/