Oh, I forgot to mention…
Bramble Berry has lye that comes in flake form as opposed to granular.  Seems to be better for preventing flyaway and static cling.

I get my soaping supplies mostly online.  There isn't any place local that sells oils and butters and fragrances.  Here are the suppliers that I have purchased from online.

Wholesale Supplies Plus in Ohio
sells nice silicone molds and fragrances for free shipping!
http://www.wholesalesuppliesplus.com/

OK, so here's how sundays soaps turned out. 

Peppermint: slid out of the Pringles mold OK with a little coaxing.  It had volcanoed a bit in the mold so was a little misshapen, but a round hockey puck shape.  The brick red oxide is so close in color to the burgandy oxide of the Sandalwood soap.  Reds are notoriously hard to get with natural colorants oxides.  If you use lab created colors like Food Drug and Cosmetic (FD&C) colorants you can get a truer red. 

Fennel: a semi nice ITP swirl, but the white could have been more intense to contrast more against the black, it did slide out of the mold a little better with the mineral oil coating that I did in the mold.  Still kind of a pain though.

Dream type: I pretty much had to tear apart the Nutter Butter cookie tray to get the soap out, not that it was difficult to unmold but because the plastic tray was so flimsy.  I don't think CP soaping is good for this type of mold.  The ridges were too detailed and my soap didn't really retain the nice ridge shapes.  Or maybe the soap was still too soft.  Also the soaps came out a little too thin in the mold.  I like my bars at least 1 inch thick and these were too thin, but OK for tester batches

Sweet Pea: the soap was a dream to unmold.  They popped out so easily and they are so cute!  Silicone molds are great.  The ultramarine pink oxide was too weak, I didn't really get a good pink color sort of a light beige with a hint of pink.

Interesting to note.  I am not a great fan of the sandalwood fragrance, but if I sniff it with the grapefruit soap its wonderful.  So next time I'll need to cut the sandalwood with a citrus or something.  I think the sandalwood alone is a bit too woodsy for me. 

As far as the qualities of the soap themselves will have to wait 4 weeks of drying/curing time until they are ready to be used. 

Today, I took yesterday's soaps out of the oven to unmold.

*The Grapefruit unmolded easily but there was lye water surrounding the soap, and it was really soft.  I'm not sure if I just didn't mix the batter enough or what.  I threw the soap into a slow cooker and rebatched.  (So, technically I actually did 8 batches this weekend.)  I let the soap warm up and melt back down and cooked it all for about an hour so all the lye gets saponified with the oils.  It's never gets as liquid as the first time.  It was like putting thick apple sauce into a mold.  I put the rebatch into oval shaped silicone molds, which I unmolded and trimmed up later in the day.

*The Sandalwood came out of the Staples plastic box with some coaxing. 

*The Olive type soap took a lot to get out of the mold, some time in the freezer to try to shrink the soap, sliding a knife down the sides, and lots of pushing on the bottom.  Finally came out of the mold. 

These soaps are now curing.

Green: Olive Type, Red: Sandalwood, Orange: Grapefruit rebatch

I made 4 new batches today as well, again experimenting with different colors, fragrances, base recipes, and molds.

1. Dream type (like GAP scent) Fragrance Oil (FO) with blue oxide in a Nutter Butter cookie tray

2. Peppermint Essential Oil (EO) with brick red oxide in a Pringles Can

3. Sweet Pea FO with ultramarine pink oxide in silicone star molds

4. Fennel EO with a black oxide and titanium dioxide in the pot (ITP) swirl using the Staples plastic box which I coated with mineral oil, which doesn’t saponify.

They are insulating in the oven now. 

Peppermint is in the
Pringles can – round soaps!
Sweet Pea is in the star molds
Dream type is in the
Nutter Butter cookie tray, back right
Fennel is in the Staples plastic box, front right

Hopefully
I'll have photos of the unmolded, cut soaps soon.

I'll unmold and cut them tomorrow night.

I am obsessed with soapmaking.  I do Cold Processed soapmaking using a variety of oils and butters and lye and water to saponify into soap.

This past weekend I did a bunch of experimentation.  I made 7 batches of soap, each with a different color and fragrance and base recipe.  They were each 1lb batches. 

On saturday I made 3 batches,
* Sandalwood fragrance oil with burgundy oxide
* Grapefruit fragrance oil with yellow oxide
* Olive type fragrance oil with hydrated chrome green oxide.  

I used small plastic boxes from Staples as molds.  The grapefruit one I used a Nutter Butter cookie tray as the mold.  I put them into the oven to insulate them overnight. 

In November of 2009 I learned from a friend of mine Cold Process Soap Making.  I did some Melt and Pour soapmaking for wedding favors in 2005, but Cold Process is a whole other animal.  I use various oils and butters and mix it with lye and water to saponify and make soap.  All soaps have been through the lye process, you can't make soap without using lye.  Lye is caustic, have you seen Fight Club?  But treated with respect and with proper precautions it can be safely used in the home to make soap.  Anyway, since November I have been experimenting with variety of colors, swirling techniques, and fragrances.  My first batch was 4lb, made about 16 good size chunky soaps.  I have since downgraded to 2lbs batches so that i don't have so many soaps.

Recently I was told by people on a soap makers forum that the recipe maybe overly cleansing and not enough conditioning; too stripping and not enough moisturizing.  I thought it was OK, but then I am used to commercial soaps which in general are drying to the skin. 

So I am taking this weekend to focus my experimentation on the base soap recipe.  Although I am still using color and fragrance I'm keeping them pretty simple.  I am also experimenting with different molds.  I have purchased log and slab soap molds, but I am experimenting with some unexpected molds.  Pringles can, Nutter Butters cookie tray, plastic storage containers.  I am downsizing my batches even more to 1lb, so I'm not stuck with a bunch of the same kind of soap in this soap base experimentation phase. 

So far I am only experimenting with vegetable fats, but in the future I think I might try some lard or tallow.  I hear they make great soap.   Sort of historical too, people used to use the animal fat from the animals on their farms, and lye made from ash to make soap.