Hobby & Craft Forums

Hi there, can anbody give me some advice on the best way to add fragrance oils to my cold process soap. Most of the fragrance oils so far have cause the batch to go 'grainy' and the soap has been greasy (patches of oil on the outside) when I take it out of the mould. The last one was green tea, I have just unmoulded it and it has sliced well and looks smooth, pH is OK but it still looks very 'grainy' on top. The batch is always OK until I add the fragrance oil. Am I doing something wrong? (possibly will just use EO's in the future but that makes the hobby too expensive while I am still learning).

According to what I've read, your soap will turn grainy if your mixing temperature is too high or too low. I can't remember the exact temperatures but there is a certain temperature at which it's best to mix- I'll try to look this up for you later in my Anne Watson book if I get chance Sue! Hope this helps!

Actually that makes sense as I did mix the oils and lye at a bit hotter temperature that normal. I did try a recommendation on one of the sites I looked at, they suggested taking some of the oil out of the batch and mix it with the FO, then add at trace. Well, what a disaster, the batch leaked oil and lost all it fragrance, (looked like the Torri Canyon run aground on my kitchen table) (sorry! you are probably not old enough to remember that one as I am way on the wrong side of 55 LOL). ps. tried the whipped soap over the weekend and it looked like a pile of , think I need to practice a bit more

LOL, keep going Sue, you'll master it eventually. You certainly seem determined enough and thus got what it takes anyhow! And I was soooooooo looking forward to seeing that whipped soap too lol! Well they say practise makes perfect eh!