On the Curing Rack: Fruit Salsa Soap

March 8, 2012 by | 19 Comments

The Fruit Salsa soap project has been a lesson in patience for me! Some of you have been following this drama on my Facebook page.

First, I started out making half the soap by adding the fragrance and dividing it into five different colors:

Fruit Salsa soap embeds

The next day, I cut the soap into chunks, made the other half of the soap, added the chunks, and poured/spooned it into the mold.

Fruit Salsa soap in the mold

The following day, I attempted to trim the top so I could cut the soap into slices, but it was still soft.

Soap top partially trimmed

Finally, this morning I was able to finish trimming and cutting the soap!! It was still a little bit on the soft side, which surprises me considering how much I discounted the water… It’s a very workable fragrance, so obviously no problems with it setting up! Speaking of the fragrance, it’s one of those complex fruity-floral scents with fruity notes of mandarin orange, dewfruit, sweet pineapple, red apple, and plum. So those are the colors of the embeds (Not finding any results in my search for dewfruit, I imagine it to be green like a honeydew melon). The floral notes include rose, peony and white lily, all rounded out with sensual sandalwood and exotic musk.

Fruit Salsa Soap by Great Cakes Soapworks

Considering how long it has taken for this soap to set up, I am going to be generous with the cure time and estimate six weeks until it will be ready. That will be April 19th – just in time for the farmer’s market to start up again on the 21st!

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  5. @Holly – I’ve never done a soap that was half embeds before. If the fragrance had set up on me at all, it would have been a total bust! SOOOOO glad it worked!

  10. Thanks, Misty & Elle!!

    @Ishbel – Funny you should ask…the red and purple ones were a bit softer than the others that were made with micas. I thought perhaps I’d superfatted them more since I’d used oils from the pot to mix each colorant and they might have ended up with more oils. Now that I think of it, the purple one has some extra glycerin as well. Hopefully they will all cure the same in the end!

  11. Beautiful Amy!! Doesn’t sound like a Cynthie fragrance though 🙁 It is so pretty to look at but the timing of it would have frustrated me a bit!!

  12. @Cynthie – It would have been extremely difficult to video! However, every time I go downstairs, I think – WOW, that smells really awesome! You might like it…

  13. Wow, that’s a lot of embeds!! I might have to order one of those, it’s kind of hard to imagine how it smells, which of course makes it more tempting! I am curious about your embeds, what is the longest time you have let embeds sit, until you put them in your soap? I made some really good big curls to go into soap in a slab mold, about a week ago. Had enough soap left to make soap balls too, I’m just worried about how long I have to get them into some soap!!

  18. Hi Amy,
    I know it’s been awhile since you made the Fruity Salsa Embed Soaps. But I’m sure you can answer my question. Your embeds retained their shape in the log mold. I haven’t been so lucky. My embeds (also CP embeds) seem to “morph” into the log of soap and lose their sharpness and shape. Do you think it is because I insulate and CPOP? Are you keeping your embed logs from going through gel? And if so, how do you do that? Do you cover with Saran at all, or put the mold into the refrigerator rather than the oven?
    I’m getting ready to try my hand at it again since I have some embeds I made, but wanted to check with you first. Thank you in advance for any advice you may have to help me.
    Angela

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