Fire and Ice

another one to check into is the car magnet signs

I think those are more the way to go and the direction I am leaning towards.

that would also give you the option of removing it if you wanted to.

The magnetic signs are great but you have to take them off and put them in the car because people will steal them just to steal them.

I had two made up for my kennel when I ran it and two days after putting them on my truck they were stolen by teens as a prank. I got them back a month later but I'd already had two more made up. That's thepain about magnetic signs!

Fire

I am shopping for 10+ cases and I was pleasantly surprised! Lone Star will let me know what is on the horizon. It may have something to do with shipping from Baytown on the IGI waxes. The C3, I just don't know. LS sells alot of wax. Robert @ Taylored will match Tx prices and he carries C3. Carole

My C-3 wax prices in Ohio have increased by $ 10.00 per 50lb box. No they don't order a million pounds of it but they order four to six pallets at a time. Most of it is freight charge increases but it is also costing the farmers more to harvest the soy crop. But my supplier is also local so I don't pay shipping but I have increased my candle prices for 2008.

Fire

I really, really like them!

Fire

I really like the colors and I'll bet the scent is to die for! WTG

Fire

Very pretty soaps. I like the colrs. It will be interesting to see how the colors mature with time. The scent would not be one for me as I am violently alergic to anything rose scented but you sopa does the F/O proud. Was there any aceleration in the trace?

Fire

Those are wonderful soaps! I really, really like them! They show wonderful creativity!

So what is wrong with them?

Fire

Hey, my fave lard soap is:

35-40% lard

15% Coconut

I then fill in the rest with different oils based on what I want. (Palm kernel & castor for some extra bubble-age, Olive oil/shea/cocoa butter for moisturizing, etc) I have changed up the different "filler" oils but always keep the coconut percentage and lard percentage about the same. HTH you some! :highfive:

p.s. I just noticed you are a fellow Ohioan! Whereabouts?

I will save you recipe! Thank you so much for offering it!

I live 25 miles south of Canton Ohio, near Atwood Lake, outside of Somerdale, Ohio. I spend most of my time in Dover and New Philadephia and that's where I do most of my shows although the biggest show I do is about three miles from me at the Atwood Lake Park and Marinia.

Fire

Thank you all for your help and advice. Thanks for letting me know I can find a shortcut for doing my own math at the soap calculator. That's certainly very good to know. Still, because I am a newbie, to have to learn it for myself the way Barbara showed IS probably best for right now!

This soap look interesting but I plan to reformulate it because the Coconut oil is so very high and because I don't have Jojoba oil.

But I will play with it later, maybe in a month, after I have a dozen or so simple recipes inder my belt. I do, at some point want to try adding some Lard to a soap. I bought a pound of it at WalMart. I've read that it bring wonderful things to a soap. In fact, last night I read Crafty1's thread on going very high in lard in a recipe, on the Dish, and the results. Not that I'm going 75% as she did but these types of thread are where I learn!

Fire

Well this weekend it's going to drop into the single digets temperature wise with high winds so even though I have need of pouring candles, I can't due to needing to monitor the wood burners during high winds.

I ordered four wooden soap molds earlier this week and got my co-op oil order paid. Just need to hold on for paying the shipping. I hope the molds will arrive next week!

I have to figure out what my whole account is doing because they are trying to cut their ordering in half and I'm not allowing it. They're just being cheap because things are slow!

I have a two day show in March that I need to get to work on.

Fire

Thank you so very, very much, Barbara! I'm horrible at math and praise the person who invented the calculator!

Fire:embarasse

So 18 divided by by 40 = 45%

12 divided by 40 = 30%

6 divided by 40 = 15%

4 dived by 40 = 10 %

Fire:lipsrseal

If you are using an Olive Oil that has a greenish color, that too will effect your colors. Polmace has no color but vergin and extra virgin olive oils are a medium to drark green in color. This is some color charts go into how to color for those oils. I have no idea if that your case or not but it's something to look into.

Fire:confused:

I was looking through the recipe section yesterday and saw several good recipes that I would like to try later howerver the posters got them out of books and posted them in ounces and not percentages so they can be easily run through a soap calculator. They also didn't list the size of the one they were posting.

Here is one of them:

Basil and Sun dried tomato soap:

14oz water

5.8 oz lye

18oz coconut oil

12oz olive oil

6oz palm oil

4oz jojoba oil

1oz per lb SW Tuscan Tomato & Basil

1oz Sun dried tomatos finely chopped

1oz Basil leaves finely chopped

The direction are basic and straight forward but I have no idea how big this batch of soap is not %s so I can try and convert back to run it through the soap calculator. I also plan to sub out at least the jojoba oil and cut back on the coconut and add castor and babassu oil or PKO flakes or sweet almond oil.

Any advice would help,

Fire

Thanks everyone. Got an email from him Wednesday evening saying I should have the USPS tracking number by the end of the day. Well here is it 12:24 a.m. and guess what..........no tracking number. I don't get it. I agree completely if it states on etsy that he has "1 available" then dang it, it should be available for them to go in, get it off the shelf and get it in the mail. I understand that with the problems they have had with the tornados that could very well cause a delay and he told me that it had, but assured me it would ship on Tuesday. Now it's Thursday and apparently it still hasn't been mailed. I had read so many nice things about his molds on this board I thought I would give him a try even though he had some negative feedback on esty about how slow he is to ship. I just hope the mold is worth it in the end. Thanks for letting me vent (my husband appreciates it too - that means I'm not bending his ear over this, lol).:wave:

Kim L

Well Gee, ya ordered it ON Christmas and it been less than a month! MOST of the mold maker were just crushed by huge amounts of orders during the holidays. The man had some very serious surgery as well as a tornado and he wants a moment to catch his breath to recover! At least he's communicated with you. Life happens and you need to just peel back and wait for your mold! Geeze! I guess it's a very good thing you didn't order from Soap Hutch! He's just getting his October and early November orders out to his clients! He's snowed under with orders!Quality takes time and nature came in and messed with Paul's timing! Sorry but it happens!:rolleyes2

Fire

I have a KD7000 which I ordered from the place you mentioned. I haven't set it up yet because I don't need to until I am ready to soap but I got the adaptor too.

I also learned in the Dish that when you are weighing supplies on your scales, not to be running a microwave nearby because it will make the scale go wonky. I don't know if it's true or not but it makes sense to me.

Fire

Soo's calculator- aka Soap Calc is my favorite to this day.

I have Soapmaker Pro- never use it.

A~ I can call you tomorrow evening and walk you thru setting up a recipe.

It is much easier that way, and you'll have a better understand of it.

Oh I LOVE to hear from you anytime, Mystical! Just give me a time so I can be sure I'm not on line! LOL!

Fire

Well I went over and figured it out. This calculator is MUCH easier.

Shortning & Shea 2# batch

Distilled Water~344.73 grams

Lye~127.2grams

Shortning~362.9 grams

Coconut~145.1 grams

PKO Flakes~136.1 grams

Castor oil~ 108.9 grams

RBO~ 90.7 grams

Shea~ 63.5 grams

Hardness 39

Cleaning 20

Condition 55

Bubbly lath 31

Creamy Lath 30

Iodine 67

INS 141

Fire

Thanks~ I remembered Eugenia giving the link to it in her tutorial! I'm headed over to have a play on it and see what I come up with.

I'll post my findings after I've run it through so that you can double check and make sure I did it right.

Thanks again,

Fire

I decided on the recipe I will be making for my first soap and went over to MMS to learn to use the lye calculator.

I put in the title and such but didn't know what to put for premade lye sulution as I'm not using premade lye solution. I also couldn't find a area where I could type in the batch size.

Then I noticed that they do not have Crisco so I entered soybean oil.

The recipe I want to use is Shortning & shae bar by Michell B.

I will be making a 2lb batch

Veg shortning 40%

Coconut oil 16%

PKO Flakes 15%

Casstor oil 12%

Rice Bran Oil 10%

Shea butter 7%

I will be using distilled water with no discount

Where on the front page do you typ in the batch amount?

I set it to read in grams because that's how I will need to measure out the lye and there is no room for error when mesuring in grams.

Is there an easier lye calculator to read for beginner? I want to get started playing with a lye calculator now so that by the time my oils, butter and molds arrive, I won't be wasting time trying to learn on a day I want to start soaping.

Thanks for advice,

Fire

I ordered a TOG mold through etsy on December 25th. I emailed twice to see when he thought it would ship. Finally received an answer on Saturday that it would ship on Tuesday and I would receive a tracking number from USPS on Tuesday. Well, here it is Wednesday and nothing. Can anyone recommend another company that has molds that compare to the TOG molds. I had planned on order a couple more if I liked it, but not at this rate. I could understand if he had to build each mold as it is order but according to the site they are available at the time the order is placed. TIA

There is the possiblity that both phone and electric are still out from the tornados. If he does have some service, it m ight be sporatic as well. Tornadoes can take several weeks to clean up from and get untilities restored. The mail and UPS could also be having some problems in his area as well.

As far as molds, I gave a huge list of many of the main suppliers of molds except for Upland molds, although they will be back in business late next month. Soap Hutch is back up and it's a two to three month waiting period on his molds. The list is on the first page of this thread.

I made mp soap once. I got the goats milk base from WSP. I noticed that the bar of soap seemed soft and was gone 1,2,3 (5 oz bar lasted about a week). Is that the nature of mp soap. Is there any type that is hard and lasts longer.

thanks for any info.

Eve

I have used this base and thought it was wonderful. Mine was hard and lasted three weeks in the shower for a five oz bar. I didn't add anything but F/O. My testers loved this base but they quickly heeded advice about water and M/P soap.

The other thing is keep the soap out of water at all times while not in use in the shower.

Fire

Even though I have not made my first soap yet I have a small piece of great advice.

Start at the very last page of this forum and read to the front. Keep a notebook next to you and jot down information as you find it. Write down you questions and start reading to find the answers. In doing this, you discover a wealth of information about the arena of soap making. There is a great deal to know and all the information is here but you should be willing to invest the time to find it. This also help to learn who people are in this forum!

Learn how to do a search in this forum.

Yes, the people in this forum are wonderful and experienced in the wonderful craft of soap making, but you also can learn more for yourself by reseaching a topic.

Fire

I'm not sure if you can get it by the roll but I get mine by the sheet at http://handmade-paper.us/

The sheets I get are 25"x37" and I cut them down myself. I use them to wrap individual bars of soap and can get 15 pieces out of a sheet. These are the sheets I get http://handmade-paper.us/page/CPO/PROD/tis/34-15-02

The ones I get are listed at $2.00 a sheet but I contacted Susan for bulk pricing.

Here's what she gave me:

$1.60/sheet for 50 or more

$1.45/sheet for 100 or more

They will also custom cut them for you for a fee.

Yup~ I love their papers and I have their site bookmark. Good to know they do bulk sales!

Fire

It took some major finagiling to get on yesterday, I could get on the main page but had trouble getting into the forums.

Today, I can't even access to main page.

I noticed someone post over there that they were having problem yesterday as well.

Anybody else having problems?:tiptoe:

Fire

My soy wax went up $10.00 per 50lb box and it's still climbing!

I raised my prices by $2.00 per candle but tax is included. the price increase started Jan 1, 2008. I'm very lucky I don't pay shipping or I'd be out of business!

Fire