Tuesday, April 19, 2011

soap art day

DSC00445Our friend, Britta Doerffler, is a soap maker. She does the research and development part of the business designing new soaps--colors and fragrances. The kids were then free to do their own research and development. She  taught the kids about “melt & pour” soaps as well as “cold-process soaps”. They didn’t seem very cold to me. After mixing tap water and lye and some oils together the combination started steaming and we stuck a thermometer in it and found out that it was actually 195.4 degrees. Our melt & pour soaps are ready, but the cold-process soaps are wrapped up in towels to hold their heat for another 24 hours. Then we will unwrap them and cut them into bars and let them sit for a week or so before using them.  We’ll photograph all our soaps tomorrow because even as I write Courtney is back in the kitchen this evening making more “melt & pour” soap.

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All of the kids are asking to make more soap, but this is what we have so far and the house smells fabulous :)

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