Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

Adorable!

Next try will be swirl soap. ☺

ha haha hahahahahahahaha! i'm just killing myself here today laughing. i had possibly the most disasterous soap escapade today LOL.
i decided to scale down a prep and JUST make enough to make the 2 sheep molds i have. and i would do the faces black and the bodies natural colour. big plans. sounds easy doesn't it?! well, first off it wasn't enough volume for my zizz stick to stay submerged. thank goodness for DEEP stainless steel bowls. i only got it a little on the floor.....LOL. and my black oxide is WONDERFUL. but holy crap, a LITTLE bit goes FOREVER....and it is NOT water soluble, i have no clue what those people on that website were talking about. i finally got it into some oil and THEN it went black really inky awful depths of a black hole black!

we'll see how they look tomorrow but i have a definite feeling that it is not going to be good...well, it'll be funny. i imagine something like a what a very plush white sheep would look like if it ran head first at full tilt into a black painted wall.....we shall see. the soap was thick, but apparently not thick enough to withstand the second colour going over the top....so the second mold i tried by tipping the mold so the face would be on the bottom and promptly poured unset warm trace soap solution all over the counter. got that cleaned up, tipped the mold back and all the black ran out....lol. then my farrier texted and said she was on her way....and i'm thinking i haven't even got halters on the 2000 pound spring fevers outside. NO STRESS! LOL

on a good note, my swirl (surface swirl only) soap seems to be okay.....i'll post a pic on the "unmolding" tomorrow....

but we shall see just how bad the sheep look tomorrow ha ha

okay....here's the sheep.....yep, the black migrated a little bit.....um......guess i get to work on that some.

LOL I love them just like they are! They remind me of the Looney Tunes cartoons, where Wile E. (or Foghorn, or Sylvester, etc.) would have a package blow up and blacken their face. Those molds are just adorable.

Oh they are toooo cute , love the one on the right!!!

This is something I am hoping to try soon. I was wondering how to get colours, does the lye neutralize the food colouring so it doesn't stain skin?

mardi: food colouring actually does work okay, and you don't even see it in the bubbles even when using the soap...BUT (ha! there's always a but)....since you are using lye, the pH is very very high (like 10) at the beginning and the green and the blue food colouring actually change colour in the high pH. on the first page you can see where i made purple-it was red and blue food colouring but stayed pink....it wasn't until the pH actually dropped a lot after the "setting" overnight that it went purple. the colours are very muted with food colouring unless you use a LOT. it's not expensive, but i've already had to buy new food coloring and i've only made 3 or 4 batches. the green is quite disappointing...i have a batch of green bars (they're in a photo above too-with the tree on them) that are JUST now starting to green up after being on the counter curing for at least 10 days....since i'm not sure even how well the food colouring is going to come up i decided to look for "real" colours...stable at high pH...so i switched to oxide colours. they're supposed to be more stable in high pH....and food coloring will bleed if you mix colours, while the oxides don't. i was shocked at how far a little bit of colour goes. so an ounce of oxide is about 2.00 at my local soap making store (and i'm sure you could find it cheaper with a bit of looking-maybe at pottery stores or something) i think an ounce will colour about 30 pounds or more of soap! these 2 sheep were only 0.25 pounds...so....it will go a long long way.

and there are natural colorants too....like elderberry (also pH sensitive-different at 10 than 7), tumeric, curry....there are some websites that use quite a few spices as colorants. i haven't tried that (yet).

www i thought exactly the same thing! first thing my hubby asked was "can you put little random black dots on the ends of the "wool" in places?". LOL. i'm sure i could...somehow....i think i need a much thicker trace, and then "paint" the mold...lol. but yes, POOF! the one on the right reminds me of the sleep country sheep for some reason. i need to get a couple more of these molds....it's a HUGE soap, a little awkward to use...we are currently using one in the bathroom here at home and the pattern is actually quite deep, after 2 weeks i can still see that it's a sheep! pretty happy with them. i was impatient with them though and pulled them out of the molds after only setting for 10 hours....next time i'll wait till the next day.

AND i'm also thinking about making some of my own molds. this could be a slippery slope pun totally intended. lol.

Any soap on a rope Kathy ?

not yet ross, but there could be in the future! lol.