As a soapmaker, I have always cringed at the thought of having to rebatch soap. HELLO! IT WAS SUPPOSED TO WORK THE FIRST TIME!!! But, it happens. Usually, I end up chopping it up and giving it away to friends and family because I just can't bring myself to sell something that did not turn out anything like my vision. Once, I made it into soap balls and sold some, gave others away to kids at the farmer's markets.
I have recently found out that rebatching your soap does not have to be all bad. I was reading about rebatching adventures over at
Great Cakes Soapworks and I thought about my bowl of soap shreds and scraps and decided to give it a try.
Well, my first batch did not go well. I don't think I let it cook long enough or didn't add enough liquid. I might try rebatching the rebatch :)
My second try was much better! Here is my process...
First, add soaps shreds and small chunks to your crock pot. You can see, this is from lots of different batches. I added 8 oz of water for 2 lbs of soap because some of the shreds were of unknown origin.
I let it cook a really long time on low heat. I kept going in to stir. Eventually, it looked really moist and mostly uniform. I added a few white balls and pink chunks to give it a little something extra. I put those in and let them sit in the hot soap for a while. I didn't want them to dissolve into my mix, but I wanted them to absorb a little moisture and be incorporated well.
This is my soap in the mold. I used buttercream and snickerdoodle fo, which is why it is so brown. Because it was pretty liquid, this step was pretty easy. I used a big spoon to put it in the mold, I wanted to make sure I got it into the corners. Then, I tapped (slammed) my mold on the counter a few times (lots and lots) to really pack everything down.
He is the soap out of the mold the next day. You can see it have some discoloring to do, but I think that will help some of the chunks to stand out more. I'm going to let them sit for a bit to let the water evaporate. I really don't think I over did it though because these are pretty firm already. Then I'll clean them up and go from there.
I know they aren't the prettiest soaps ever and really, I should probably keep my scraps separate, but I found a use of all the scrap soap we end up with, but never know what to do with it. Stay tuned, these will probably go up on the website soon. I'm kind of thinking about selling them to raise money for another turtle nest.
What do you think?
I'll let you know how the rebatch of my rebatch goes.
