Visits from the Soap Fairies

Even the most experienced soapers report visits from the soap fairies occasionally. And these are not the nice fairy godmothers who'd leave you with wonderful goodies, help you create the most wonderful soaps and generally make you feel good, but the nasty variety, the ones that spit in your soaping oils, poison your fragrances causing them to misbehave and drop your equipment on the floor.

I have had my fair share of visits, resulting in hissy fits, sudden hair loss ( due to pulling ) and frantic rescue attempts. Have a look at the following examples:

For this one, I used a recipe which I had used many times before, but I used a new fragrance oil. As soon as I added the FO, the soap turned a violent kind of sickly yellow and seized instantly. I just about managed to squash it into a mould, where it started separating after a little while! Oh boy, what a total mess. However, I can't just chuck "soap" out without at least trying to rescue it, and this FO smelled sooooo good!



Only thing to do was cutting it into chunks and melting it down and hoping for the best. I just added a little water and kept stirring the chunks until they were all dissolved and a very heavy gooey consistency.



The kind of ochre/yellow colour didn't change for the better, it just got deeper, the texture was somewhat rough but the delicious smell of the FO had survived! These poor little soapies were beyond ugly, but...... my thinking was, they could be shredded and the shreds added to a nice creamy soap along with calendula petals.



So yet another kitchen gadget found its way into the soaproom, lol, and I spent half an hour or so shredding the uglies into two different sizes. Now all I have to do is make a plain soap to add these to, lol! I'll update this post as soon as I have found some time to make a plain batch, I promise, and if I am taking too long, please feel free to kick my butt and nag nag nag.

Ok, on to another disastrous visit from the soap fairies. Again it was a tried and tested recipe, plus a FO which I hadn't tried before. The OOB smell was gorgeous and the FO was supposed to discolour to a lovely light yellow, so I planned a pretty, girly soap with pink curls on top. It moved quickly, but wasn't too bad, I managed to put lots of pink curlies on top of the soap batter in record time, and then the soap fairies waved their magic wands and the whole wretched thing started to separate, chunks of sort of soap floating in lakes of oils........... I was near tears



So out came the wooden spoon, and I very gently stirred it all together, trying not to destroy the pink soap curls, put it on a gentle heat on the stove and kept stirring until I had soap again........ with curly bits inside rather than on the top, lol. It was something of a miracle that this soap still turned out fairly decently, not the way it was meant to be, but not a total waste of ingredients and time either. And again, the wonderful scent survived being cooked!


If you have had a visit from the soap fairies, don't throw the messed up soap away immediately. Try saving it, using it in confetti soap, for example. When you have put so much effort, time and money into making it in the first place, its worth giving it that little bit more and rescuing it from a fate worse than death ( ie THE BIN ).