As I think about this soap all I can do is smile. This was actually the second soap I made. It was to be scented. I didn’t want to use the “scent” but the hubby insisted. I knew from all of my research that it wouldn’t work or that I was going to run into some issues. He didn’t know and couldn’t understand. “Just try it”, was his attitude. So I did. The things we do for love.
The scent he wanted me to use was actually a cologne. The kind that is sprayed or dabbed onto the skin. It was a knock off of a popular men’s cologne. It smelled great. It’s a very masculine scent which suited him very well. Again, I tried to tell him that cologne wasn’t meant to go into cold process soap. He wanted something for himself and I understood.
For this batch of soap I used a different recipe. I wasn’t disappointed in the first one but I used up all the shea and cocoa butter. Therefore, I went on the hunt for a hard oil. Fortunately, we had some red palm oil in the kitchen cupboard. I came upon while searching for something else. I’m sure if had been looking for it I would have never found it. This oil was perfect because my hubby liked to cook with it. Therefore, it was fitting for it to go into his soap.
Before committing to this I looked into instances where others used red palm oil in soap. Most people didn’t use in cold process soap because of the color. So I created a recipe in the soap calculator and got going. Everything was fine and very much like my first attempt except the color due the the red palm oil. It was a orange color. Now it was time to add the cologne. SMH. The soap riced immediately. Since this was only my second time soaping, I had never seen ricing in person. I stick blended it more but it didn’t look any better. I remember thinking, “oh crap, oh crap, oh crap”!! I moved quickly and got it into the mold.
The soap turned out fine. However, the scent was weird. It smelled good but very different. He was satisfied but now understood why specific fragrance oils had to be bought for cold process soap.
After this experiment I sarted buying proper fragrance oils and colorants.