Orange Coffee soap

A long long while ago now I made an experimental soap blend using coffee grounds and orange essential oils.  Initially this soap smelled like Jaffa cakes.  It was quiet a nice scent.  However, I was disappointed when I took the well cured soap off the shelf today.  The scent had completely changed!  Instead of smelling like sweet cakes it now smelt strongly of coffee with a citrus twist.  Don't get me wrong, the new scent is not bad.  In fact it is nice on another level.  I just enjoyed the sweeter scent it had before the curing process was complete.

This highlights the true trouble with scenting soaps. No matter how the soap smells after you have taken it out of the mould a month down the line it is going to smell completely different.

Update on soapy soap

Time for an officialish update regarding the sale of soap products via eBay.  Unfortunately I will be unable to sell my soap products via eBay for the moment as eBay, in their infinite wisdom, has suspended the sales feature of my account.  This is not the result of poor customer satisfaction but rather the result of me not selling enough products in a sales month.  Therefore, anyone wishing to purchase natural products from me is free to contact me with a customised order.  For the moment my soap operation has scaled back to a hobbyist state in the mean time. So I will likely post experiments in the future. :)

I'm back in business!

I took a break from sales for a full-time job, nom I'm back with my latest creation: Vanilla and ginger soap.  Isn't it pretty. It has a lusciously vanillary scent with ginger undertones. It can be found here with other items

Orange smoothie soap

Hey hey, it's been awhile since I last posted. I have been on a break while I completed my issue rotation and moved house. It's been a busy fortnight.  My last post showed the first stage of my orange, milk soap experiment.  Here's the final product -

Isn't it pretty?? Having read my last post I realised I made a mistake - this is the mix of orange and milk soaps not orange and olive oil

I currently am selling this batch on eBay for those who are interested (I know shame on my for using eBay but I have no luck with bid lazy.)

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/190847383036?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Plain olive with orange soap swirls

Tried another experiment making swirls. The effect is pretty but because of the way it has mixed I garuntee that the other end of the orange is pure orange soap. It was to thick when I poured in the other colour and as a result only some mixed. Oh well, more variety then.:)

eBay postage scammers were here

So as you would have guessed from my constant plugging I have been trying to sell off soap on eBay. I have done well over all. The majority of my 6 customers have been honest. Unfortunately a couple have been far from honest which is a little depressing.

Basically I ended up being threatened and harassed for extra monies when two customers told me that they had received the items with postage due. At first I believed them and refunded the money like I should according to eBay's polices and then these pair had the nerve to tell me I had to send them more money to cover the cost of the supposed postage due, evidence of which they never showed me! One left it alone after I calmly informed her that I had acted with in eBay's buyer protection scheme and that if postage due was paid then she was liable for it because she accepted it (! If you ever receive anything with postage due on it, refuse to pay it at the post office and they will return it to the original sender to pay the fees!). All I got was a crappy 'follow-up feedback'. Nothing really to worry about with the glowing feedback before it.

The seconds person has not been so easy to shake. Even though I have refunded all three transaction she made over three days she was still harassing me. But the funny part was in one message she had claimed to already have paid to receive the items and in the next she claimed to be going down to the post office to collect them! Believe me I was quick to report her....

Anyway I am now trying bid lazy.com

Now I am getting fancy

This pretty effect was created buy mixing coffee soap blend with milk soap blend. Might do this again. I like the effect!


This was related to my last post. Because I have been hand blending my mix the past few days I decide to take advantage of the thinness of the mix when it was poured into the mould.

Hand blended soaps!

On the left I have a batch of coffee soap made with recycled filter coffee (kindly given by Starbucks, as I am not at home and they coffee I have access to is instant). On the right I have orange citrus blend sitting a professional bikky tray. These are intended for family so I don't need to worry about fancy loaf shapes since they are not for sale.


You wouldn't believe how much trouble these were. I bought a cheap hand blender to mix these. It burnt out on a failed batch yesterday so I had hand mix these. Took me 30mins and the blended soap mix was no where near as thick as normal when I ladled it out because hand blending is so much slower.

Of course the hand blender burn out cause it was cheap crap from asda who, while the delivery service was fantastic,substituted my important ingredient for a cheaper lower quality one that was not fit for my purposes. Unfortunately the ingredient they substituted was the lye which meant I lost two batches before I went and bought more

Soapy soap

Please check my eBay account for items I have for sale. I am currently selling two variety packs and a pair of coffee-scrub soaps. :)

Green tea and mint Coffe-scrub

Wouldn't believe this was the same batch!

Need to give it time to harden though. Still soft as cheese

Progress of the green tea and mint soap.

This is the green tea and mint soap on day one.  The colour is more coffee like then the coffee soap.  I thing this shows how much colouring is put in commercial green tea soap to make it green...  Worrying indeed!

Coffe-scrub soap is for sale one eBay.
I am also selling a Variety pack as well.

Green tea with mint and exfoliating coffee grounds

Today I unmolded batch two of the coffee soap. Picture a shows it taking up my window sill. I am always surprised by the colour it turns. Every batch is different. The cylindrical ones look a bit like bird shells. I quite like the effect.

Picture b is today's experiment: green tea and mint with coffee grounds. I swear the green tea blend look more coffee like then the coffee batch does. Can't wait to see how they turn out.

Coffee-scrub sold! Yay!

I made my first sale today! Woo! I did notice though that were a few others watching the item so I have relisted my coffee scrub soap on eBay for any one else who wants. I am selling them at cost at the moment. I may have to make more.

The lemon and ginger soap failed!!

This blog uses soaper jargon - here's a glossary.

Cold process: one form of soap making

Lye: the active ingredient to the soap making process - also know as caustic soda.

Saponification: the technical term for how oil and caustic soda form soap

Trace: the point at which the soap mixture ceases to separate.

Seize: a sudden onset of the trace point.

Discounting: reduce the amount of liquid in the recipe - not for the inexperienced!!

This batch was an experiment. I started by discounting the liquid. This should have been fine. But the appearance and texture of this batch indicates three things went wrong - the batch maintained an uneven temperature, the batch failed to mix sufficiently and the batch used a little too much lye.

First thing I noticed in the outside was the traces of soda ash. This is harmless. Soda ash appear, from what I have read, when the soap super heats inconsistently. This is because I don't insulate my soap (I rarely need to). The orange spots and the internal colour differentiations are signs that the soap mixture was not mixed properly when it went into the moulds. However, I had achieved a proper level of 'trace' so the oil was properly emulsified with the liquids. What I suspect happened is my mixture is it ' seized' in the mixing process. I have never had a mixture seize before. I now know it from the description. It is what happens when a soap mix forms a sudden heavy 'trace'. I think this has happened because I used a mixed liquid base and discounted the water. This has meant that the soap has pockets where it is oil rich and pockets where it is lye rich. This can be solved by re batching the soap but there is a third problem with this batch.

I made a classic mistake when I was mixing this lot. I measured too much lye. The 'superfat' level is only 1-2% which means the resultant soap is in this case too crumbly to hold together. Superfat is a term used to describe the percentage of oils level un-saponified during the cold process.The irony is I have made a block of soap with 0% superfat and it turned out perfect. But then every recipe acts different.

Lemon and ginger soap

This photo was taken 12 hours after I plopped the soap mixture into the moulds. I like the colour it as turned. The problem with using natural colorants is that you can't always get the exact colour you want and the colour is always tied to a specific natural source. So coffee soap will always be brown and orange juice will always make it orange so you can't really have bright blueberry coloured orange scented soap without getting a weird mixed scent (which might be nice but not necessarily the desired effect).

This soap is no where near ready to come out of the mould. By this point the coffee soap was. It's still slightly too soft to hold the shape. I am not sure whether its because of the difference in liquid base or because I discounted the liquid base to much. It should be fine but as it was the first time I tried discounting its hard to know until I unmould and try one.

Lemon and ginger soap

Today's batch - lemon and ginger soap! Made with olive oil, lemon and ginger. Wonder what colour it will turn... I wasn't expecting it to be such a dark brownish yellow. It is likely to lighten in colour though given the fact that the soap colours become more white opaque as they sophonify.

This is another one I an eager to try.

Coffe scrub!

Last night I tried my new Coffee Scrub soap.  I was very please with how it turned out over all, I must say.  I could feel my skin thanking me for using it.  The coffee grounds were a nice addition too.  It felt like they were massaging my skin as i used the soap.  I was surprised because I have never tried a soap with this kind particles in it.

My one concern with the bar is, you feel like just rubbing away until the bars all gone...

However, I have far to many and too little space, so I am trying to get rid of a few so i have listed on ebay!

Sandlewood scented soap

This soap was made to order - sandalwood is not a scent I would use. It is a really nice scent but one 10ml bottle cost £2.85 from Fresh skin UK, an inexpensive company. From other retailers I have seen the price vary from £3-5. The colour of this first stage is indicative of the later creamy colour it will become. These ones already have solidified but I can't seem to get them out of the moulds yet. I seem to have issues with this when I use metal moulds. It think I will have to wait for the normal 48-72 hour period to claim them from the mould, when they soap is dryer.