Almond Blossoms

I made another boo boo! See, I thought I was being very smart and organized.  I think of soap designs often, most of the time it looks like I am day dreaming, then my hubby will ask:  “Are you thinking of soap?”  and I say: “uhhhhh…” then he replies:  “YOU are thinking of soap!”

Well, part of that thinking goes to figuring out what fragrance to use, out of the ones I have bought.  If the soap is going to be blue, because it is an  ocean theme, for example, then I feel like using a coconut like scent. BUT, most coconut scents have vanilla, which will make the soap turn a brownish color,  which on blue will just look like mud.

So, back to me feeling smart.  I thought I would make a list of all my fragrances, and sort them by category, namely four:

• Fragrances that discolor
• Fragrances that accelerate trace
• Fragrances that neither discolor or accelerate trace
• Notes about fragrances I have used (such as, I hated the smell, the smell faded, etc.)

The idea is avoiding the double and triple work of googling the fragrances properties each time I make a batch of soap, and instead, just read through my fragrances list organized in above categories. Well, that would have worked perfectly if I had remember a little incident I had last year.

Let me tell you, last year I bought a big bottle of Cottom Blossom Fragrance.  I picked it because I thought it would smell like clean linens, which is my husband’s favorite smell.  It turned out smelling more floral than clean.  The first time I used it, I use a mostly liquids recipe, because I wanted to make swirls.  And I did them, and they were beautiful.  It was my first time making a swirled soap, I had so much fun and fascination.  Until I realized I had not added said fragrance. I was making a big batch too, enough to fill a shoe box size mold (which was indeed a shoe box).  So, I hurriedly added it to the mix and tried to incorporate it as best as I could.

It has been said that as a part of self defense mechanism, our minds tend to forget negative memories (which is probably why childhood and prior experiences always seem better than they really were).  Obviously, my mind forgot about this incident I just told you about.  How do I know?  Because I put that fragrance in the list of “Fragrances that do not discolor or accelerate”  The first part is accurate, I check the vanillin content.  The second part, totally wrong.  Don’t believe me?  See for yourself in the video below (you may need to fast forward to the part with the hand blender).