Sunday, August 18, 2013

Saponification Sunday. Alkanet Love

This is how I do it. I fill a small glass with 1/2 cup of Sunflower oil (or sweet almond) and 2 heaping teaspoons of Alkanet root powder. I forget about it for 2-3 days on my counter top. Maybe a week. OK once for 10 days. Then I pour the concoction through a coffee filter attached to a wide mouth jar with a rubber band.

I forget about it a few more days. I then remove the filter with all the alkanet debri in it, discard it and weigh the bright reddish colored oil. If it weighs two oz, then I will deduct that amount of oil (be sure it's the same type of oil) from my recipe total. In other words if my recipe calls for 6 oz of Sunflower oil and I've ended up with 2 oz of alkanet infused oil, I will only add 4 oz of Sunflower oil to the rest of my oils in the recipe.

Then I will add the two oz of my alkanet infused oil into my soap batter after it has come to trace. I will stir the infused oil into the rest of the batter with a spoon so as to keep increased thickening to a minimum. Then I stir in (slowly) my essential oils.

When I am sure my mold is ready, I will hit the whole soap batter a couple of times with my hand mixer and pour into the mold.

Unless at the half way point I decide to color 4/5ths of my batter with the alkanet, add a little titanium dioxide to the remaining batter, swirl in a little of the alkanet infused soap batter which has now turned a wonderful blue-purple, tilt the mold sideways, prop it up with a pan lid and pour the swirled batter on top.

Which would give me this.


After a little time in the mold, the slant held and I came up with this

 
Another day and I was able to slice into bars.
 
 
Scented deeply with Patchouli, Rosemary, Lavender and Grapefruit EO's it is a winner. In my never to be humble soap making opinion.
 

7 comments:

  1. Beautifully done and what a lovely purple.Purple is one of my favorite colors to see in soap.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tierra. from you that means so much! Like Stepehn King telling me I scared him.

    Airing my dirty Laundry. And hearing from you, the anti Martha Stewart...makes me not feel so bad about my laundry pile being 10 feet tall. Thanks for checking in!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very cool, Donna! I love that swirl, and the tilted layers are neat. The alkanet made such a beautiful color.

    ReplyDelete
  4. beautiful! i bet it smells wonderful, too!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Donna,
    Can you let me know how to order your soap and the cost per bar? I'd like to order some for Christmas baskets. :)
    Laura

    ReplyDelete