Thursday, October 6, 2011

The Ugly Truth





Well, this is the Ugly Soap.

I finally convinced myself that Ugly had been sitting on the counter for way too long and it was about time to do something about it.

The top of Ugly is a flaky combination of dry soap and dry oil.  Yuk!  I removed the flakes and rinsed off the oil before cutting it.





As you can see clearly on this picture that I attempted to create layers.  I made two separate batches of the same recipe and same oil weight, but for some reason the lower layer came to trace in a matter of minutes while the top layer somehow went through oil/water separation before it came to trace.





After the top layer eventually thickened, I gave up on the original plan of funnel swirl and went for a regular swirl with TD.  I left Ugly in my oven (at the lowest temperature setting) for about two hours and somehow my semi-solid top layer turned into liquid entirely and all the TD sank and settled at the bottom.





There was also a thick layer of oil floating on the top when I took Ugly out of the oven.  My fear was that the soap might end up being lye-heavy.  After unmolding and cutting it today, I'm sure that Ugly is definitely NOT lye-heavy.  It is extremely soft and not crumbly at all.  If you look carefully, you might be able to spot my glove prints on the soap.

Since there's no safety concerns anymore, I'll just leave them on the curing rack for a very long time before giving them out or using them as laundry soap.


So there you have it, my Ugly (but usable!) Soap.   :)







Disqus