March 2012 - Page 2 of 3 - ReveDreams.com

I am the mad scientist of soap

In honor of my sister’s birthday, my first video post! I mean, the post is a post, but there’s a video at the end. Visit Kate’s blog for book reviews, art, and miscellany. Happy birthday, baby sister!

I have been experimenting more with soapmaking. I got a gift card for Jo-Ann Fabrics from my grandmother for Christmas, and I went to their (horrible) website and (with a great deal of pain and effort) ordered some clear glycerin soap and a soap mold. I already had some purple glycerin soap I’d bought at a winery, which was supposed to be wine scented but is really artificial grape flavoring scented.

I had the brilliant idea that I would mix some non-glycerin soap with the clear glycerin to slightly tint and scent it, and after a little spree at TJMaxx, came away with some acai scented soap, which complemented the grape scent well. There was one problem: grossly different melting points. I was microwaving the glycerin, which works great, but the non-glycerin does not melt at temperatures the glycerin can reach without scorching. I did a lot of whisking, which introduced some foam but did not succeed in fully incorporating the soap bits. The foam rose to the top of the soap molds, which actually produced an interesting effect. I poured a bit, embedded some shapes that were half grape soap and half plain glycerin, and poured some more.

The first picture above is the top when the soap was in the mold, and the second is the bottom. You can see the embedded shape trapped some of the foam/soap bits, and the rest rose to the top. The bat soap is one of the two for which I had to melt some additional glycerin, which is why it is not completely covered in foam. I like that effect, actually. It’s kind of like the bat is flying through fog, or you’re seeing it in the clouds.

To make the shapes, incidentally, I sliced the soaps with a wire cheese slicer and then cut with cookie cutters.

That first run made four soaps, a triceratops soap that turned out like the bat soap and now resides at my boyfriend’s apartment, and a heart soap that didn’t unmold that well and was melted down for round 2: the foamination.

I thought it would be cool to intentionally get the foamy effect of the first set of soaps, and so I combined glycerin and non-glycerin soap with some water, put it in the top of a double boiler, added salt to the bottom of the double boiler so it would boil hotter, and whisked thoroughly. It didn’t get completely smooth, but it got very thick and foamy.

These came out quite soft and I was not convinced they would hold up to use without crumbling. I wrapped them in paper towels for a few days to try to dry them out a bit before testing the two square soaps with handwashing. Verdict? Unsurprisingly, the foamy soap produced better lather. It also held up solidly, though it kind of looks like it has the mange. The square is slightly large for my hands’ comfort, but fine (I might prefer a smaller footprint with a thicker soap). I’ll keep using them and see what happens when I reach the embedded shapes.

Clean-up was in two rounds, and round two contained a surprise. It’s not exactly vulcanization of rubber, but it was a happy accident. See for yourself (and don’t mind how subdued I sound in this video):

Bathmat

My boyfriend’s bathroom is quite small, so there is no avoiding getting the main floor area wet when you shower. He needed a bath mat, or maybe I did, since I was the one objecting to wet socks. His shower curtain is striped with bright orange, green, red, and yellow, so I thought I’d make him a terrycloth bath mat with those colors.

My stash contained mostly neutral terrycloth, except for a striped hand towel I had hoped to turn into a baby bib, but which had discoloration in the middle I hadn’t been able to remove. Perfect: I just cut strips off the edge and threw out the center. A trip to Jo-Ann didn’t turn up any terrycloth remnants, so I went to a thrift store and got a white cotton towel that I cut into fourths and dyed with my on-hand RIT.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any yellow or red; I was hoping the lighter orange would be more yellow, but no. Oh well. I didn’t end up using the fuchsia/wine piece since it was so far from the colors in his shower curtain. I pieced the rest together into a thick double-sided bath mat. The colors faded a bit when I washed the mat (I washed the individual pieces before making the mat, and then washed the mat about three times to make sure it won’t run in his laundry), and you can see that I didn’t bother with the “stir constantly” instruction on the RIT bottle, but I like that the colors aren’t completely uniform. I wasn’t sure how well I would like this while I was putting it together, but partially because post-sew washing puffed things up a bit and partially because it just looks better after taking a step back and contemplating it, I quite like it.

Containers

I’m pretty much obsessed with making containers for all the electronic gadgets that come into my life. My cell phone doesn’t have one, but essentially everything else does.

My little USB modem got a case out of leftover fabric from some capris I made years ago, and a (purely decorative) button out of my grandmother’s button box. It’s a simple pouch with a snap-closed flap. I like how it makes me think of a mushroom.

My previous camera had a pouch with a flap that came up a narrow side and over the top, and a pocket between the flap and the main pouch that would hold two spare AA batteries. The fabric was purchased as a remnant. Unfortunately it was AWOL when I went to take the photos for this entry.

My current camera has a pouch with no flap – there is an elastic loop that keeps everything together. I used ribbon to hide the cut edge so I wouldn’t have to turn it under; this fabric was from the Sew-Op and I wanted to use the barely-large-enough piece I had.

My laptop has the same laptop sleeve that my previous laptop had. The fabric was clearance upholstery fabric and the ribbon was from my stash. It’s starting to show a lot of wear, though – my embroidery around the edges of the ribbon is coming out in places. I have pulled out the appropriate floss and will hopefully make some repairs in the near future.