Cold Process Soap with embeds

1. Intro to Embed Class: Hi, I'm Amber of am happy soap. In today's class, I'm going to show you how to make a soap using embeds. I will show you two different techniques. One to make a terrazzo style bar and one using soap shreds. It looks a little bit more like soap confetti. So here we go. Soap embeds with two techniques. 2. Making Embeds: Okay, I'm going to start just by making a batch of soap like normal. I'm going to set my lye water aside while I get my oils ready. This is coconut oil. This is palm oil. I'm going to go melt these in the microwave. So remember if you are working with palm oil, like if you are using the recipe that I'm giving you today, you do need to melt your palm oil. It is at least a 165 degrees Fahrenheit. If you work with it a little bit too cool, you can get stearic spots which are fine and not harmful. But if you heat it up hot enough, that won't happen. I'm gonna go ahead and add my liquid oils to my melted coconut oil and palm oil. I do not always add a fragrance when I'm making a batch just for embeds. I don't really feel like the scent matters. If you don't use the same scent that you're going to use in your final bar. I don't usually notice the smell of the embeds too much. I'm going to use it today because I want my batter to thicken up a little bit because I wanted to keep my colors separate. But feel free to just not scent this batch if you're making it just for your embeds, but also if you're not planning to cut up the entire batch, you might want to send it so that you could use the other bars just for something else. But I am scenting mine today. So my lye is still cooling off. So I'm going to go ahead and stick blend in my clay to this. This is just kaolin clay. It is not necessary in the recipe. I just really like the texture that it gives my bars that also can help with your scent retention if you're having a hard time getting your scent to stick. So I always add it to every batch. I add one tablespoon per pound of oil. I'm just going to go ahead and stick blend this clay to all the clumps are gone. So before I mix in my lye, I'm going to get everything else ready. So I have my molds ready, I have my fragrance oil measured and ready. And I'm going to get all these colors ready that I'm going to use. Okay, my lye has cooled enough. I'm gonna go ahead and stir it into my oils. Okay. I want four different colors of embeds, so I'm going to just split my batter into four containers to color it. Okay, a little bit about the colors I'm using today. This is called preppy blue. From Mad Micas This green, I wanted a sage green. This is just dead sea clay or French green clay. I feel like it wasn't quite sage enough without adding a little bit. Many times when I use green clay. I end up adding just a touch of Kermit green to it just to get a little bit more green. And my pink I'm using today is just rose clay, straight rose clay. And I really love a dark piece when I'm doing embed soap. So this is wicked. It's called Wicked from Mad Micas. is it ends up really dark gray. Sometimes block if I use enough. I'm gonna go ahead and hand stir in my fragrance. I'm using a scent called Citrus Jubilee. It is from Muddy Soap Co. It's not a super strong scent. So it will go with whatever I'm going to put these embeds in. But I've used really random soap before as well for embeds. And I don't really notice the smell in the final bar, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. I want these colors to more or less stay separate like not super mixed together. And we are going to be cutting these all apart so it doesn't matter too much. I just don't want them to really mix together. So I am going to just pour them right on top of each other. But along this side of my mold, just one at a time. I'm gonna go ahead and leave the top of this soap totally flat without texture because I'm just going to cut it all up anyway. So I'm just going to leave it and I'm going cover it for 24 hours. 3. Cutting Embeds: Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and unmold these embeds. okay I like to use my multi-bar cutter right at first and then I switch to a knife. I'm going to just cut, cut like usual. And then I'm going to cut them in half again with my cutter. Okay, I am going to switch to a knife. I want all these embeds to be mostly just the color that they are. So I'm going to cut these colors apart and then cut them up into just much tinier little chunks. You can do your embeds any size or shape that you like. It's pretty forgiving once they get into a bar of soap. So I like them to be either a little bit triangular or square. Like to mix it up a little bit. Like this one that's two different colors that actually will end up looking really cool in your bar. So even if you're just using older bars of soap to use as your embeds That's really great too. Okay, I'm going to cut up this whole batch until I have a nice big bowl of embeds to add to my next batch of soap. 4. Making Soap Base: Okay, Now that all of my embeds are ready, I'm gonna go ahead and make a batch of soap to put them in. So I am going to do a 4 poundbatch. I cut up that whole batch of soap except for maybe two bars. So this is plenty for a 4 pound batch to make it nice and full of embeds. So I'm going to do just a regular 4 pound batch of soap. Making a soap with embeds, you can sometimes get a little bit extra batter. So I usually like to have a little tiny mold just in case I need to use any of the extra batter. 5. Adding Embeds: When I'm making a soap with embeds, I usually shoot for a light to medium trace. If your trace is too thin, you could risk your embeds all sinking to the bottom. But if it's too thick, sometimes I get some air bubbles around the embeds. So go for kind of in the middle. Not super thick, but not too runny. Stirring in my scent. I'm going to cover for 24 hours. And then I'll come back and show you the cut. 6. Cut Of Terrazzo Soap: Okay, We can go ahead and and un-mold. And I'll show you what it looks like inside. I hope you try it. 7. Making soap with Soap Shreds: I'm going to show you one more quick way to add soap embeds to a bar of soap. The soap I call this soap confetti. Every bar of soap that I make, I bevel the edges off like this. Just my personal preference, how I like to sell my bars. You don't have to. So I just save all of those little shreds in a bowl and then I can add them to my soap batter. I will usually break them up. You can do it with your stick blender. You could add them long and stick blend them. It will make them pretty small, which I don't prefer. So I usually just break them or I will take a knife and just cut them into little chunks like this. Then once I have a good mix of color that I like, I will go ahead and show you how I add them to my soap batter. My soap batter is all ready. I'll add my scent. Also going to pour off about half of this batter. You do not need to do that step. Just this bar has the bottom half I put embeds in and the top half I leave plain. But you can do yours however you want. I'm going to set this one aside and add my little soap scraps to this half. I'm going to go ahead and cover these Again -- these bars end up looking like this. I hope you try this way too. 8. Class Project: Thank you so much for watching my class. I hope that you learned something today and try one or both of these techniques and make some soap with embeds or soap scraps. And I would love if you would share what you made.