I normally purchase fragrance oils from soap suppliers that indicate whether or not the fragrance will speed up trace or will work in general with cold process soap, but a wholesale customer of mine ordered two loaves of soap in a HONEY scent,
not Oatmeal Milk + Honey, so, I took a chance with a couple of fragrances I had. Let me explain.
I had Herbal Accent's Milk + Honey, Peak Candle's Wild Mountain Honey (so nice, but I would only recommend it for bath and body products and candles...you'll understand in a second), and Majestic Mountain Sage's Honey Harvest. I knew mixing the three fragrances was a red flag the minute I started. Yeah, I was flying by the seat of my pants on this one. Call me a wild card! I needed to get the soap done, I had some great fragrance oils, and I had all of my ingredients. Soooo, I thought...let's get
crackin'!
Well, I poured the lye/water mixture into the oil mixture and I mixed it to trace, lalalala..happy happy joy joy, then I began to slowly pour in my fragrance mixture. I held my breath, nervous. Nervous it might turn to clumpy porridge. It seemed to be working out fine. I stirred until it was fully incorporated and I moved it over to the lined molds and saw it starting to change, but not sure how. I hurried to the molds, started pouring and as I'm pouring MID POUR, the soap batter hardened. I am talking, stopped moving mid wave. Imagine an ocean wave halting completely - freeze frame! I have NEVER had this happen before. It turned into what felt like wax! I was about to throw the whole thing out until I just thought to myself,
hell,
just shove that wax down into the molds and call it a day.That I did. I shoved that waxy batter down deep with all of my weight and crossed my fingers hoping it got down deep enough to hold the shape of the mold. I was wondering if the soap would cure, if it was even soap at all! If it
was soap and it
did cure, would it be all crumbly and weird?
Is this what they call soap seize?
Shoot. I think I'll try to stick with fragrances that have been tried and true because it's hard to spend all that money and time on quality oil and butters and to throwing it out makes me cringe.
Update** So two days later I take out the honey wax soap out and it seems fine... Looks a bit like crumb cake. Not perfect, not perfect. I'll have to share photos next time I have access to my camera. Nice soap, too. Lathers, not harsh....smells good, too.
:) I guess you'd call it a successful seize.
Has anything like this ever happened to you before? If so, what happened to the final soap? Love to hear your experience...