I am for the most part quite happy with my soap recipes, the fragrances are those I like and the texture is good. I have for the moment settled the problem of moulds in satisfactory economical recycling fashion. In the garage left over from when we used to make chutneys and flavoured oils, were 5 wooden boxes used to present a bottle of oil in. When lined with heavy duty rubber sheet (which I also had lying around the garage) these make a good standard mould for the soap to come out in bars ready for slicing.
If demand takes off I shall either buy commercial moulds or make longer wooden ones. I have even reconciled myself to the fact that every bar is different. These are hand made soaps and people are not looking for standardisation in size and shape.
What is bothering me still is the colour. I like the colours of natural plant dyes but some that I have used do not match the fragrance. Lavender (top left hand corner) is fine, the Apricot Skin Softener is the colour it is because it contains turmeric which has benefits to the skin including reducing the signs of ageing (no wonder it is my favourite!).
No, the one that really bothers me is the Verbena. At the moment it looks like cheap cheddar:
It is likely that this orange colour will fade to a soft peach as the curing process takes place, but even so verbena (aloysia triphylla) is a green plant with delicate white flowers that smells strongly of lemon:
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To my mind the soap needs to be green or pale yellow. It is a shame that the Gardeners soap came out like this as this is much more suitable for Verbena.
So I have made another batch of the Gardener's Soap (contains pumice, tea tree, pine and lime oils) and tripled the amount of spirulina used to colour it. Hopefully this will give me a much darker green, freeing up the pale green for the Verbena.
The other colour problem is for the Lemon and Lime which is meant to be a fresh zesty soap suitable for the morning shower. When I was making it, the yellow of the beeswax looked so strong that I left it uncoloured, however it has developed into a beautiful cream colour
This is fine and attractive but it doesn't say Lemon and Lime to me (although I've had lemon flavoured ice cream in Italy that was very similar). I've decided to keep this natural cream colour for Honey and Oatmeal (fragranced with a hint of vanilla) and am still working on what combination of natural colours will work to produce a pale muted lime.
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