Sweet n Charming Soaps: Soaping with wine

So far, the liquids that I've tried soaping with (aside from distilled water) include goat milk, beer, and tea. I've had mixed experiences with all of them. The goat milk worked out the best for the most part, and I like how the lather almost feels like lotion. In my opinion, though, if you want to do fancy designs and have consistent results, I'd stick with water.

Anyway, I had this Berrywine fragrance oil that I had purchased off of Brambleberry that I had yet to try. So to add one more liquid to my list, I tried making soap with wine. This time, I was smart enough to boil off the alcohol beforehand, haha. To avoid any mishaps, though, I decided not to try to do any fancy swirls. As long as I got the soap into the mold without air bubbles, I was good.

The wine behaved better than I anticipated. I didn't have much trouble in terms of trace acceleration. What I did have trouble with was: 1) the smell, and 2) the color. When I made soap with beer, the beer and lye mixture definitely stank. It was unpleasant but tolerable. The wine and lye mixture, however, smelled way worse! It was a smeller stink than the beer, but it seemed way stronger to me. I tried putting my pitcher under the oven fan so the fumes would get sucked up, but I really could not get over the smell. Thankfully it smells a bit better now after saponification, but I am hesitant about how the final bars will turn out.

Also, the wine and lye mixture changed color like crazy! As I was stirring the lye in, the wine changed color from merlot to dark green to dark blue and then to a gross dark brown. I have no idea why it did that, but it was interesting to watch. :) I wanted my soap to be a rich merlot color, but it was tricky with the wine. Without any added colorants, wine soap will cure into a mucky brown. I followed a recipe from my soaping book and added some titanium dioxide and then some merlot mica. The soap still looked brown as I poured it into the mold, but it started to redden more during saponification. Now, almost a week later, it's more of muted burgundy or dark rose color.

To prettify the soaps a bit, I decided to try painting mica on the tops right before cutting them. Although I had read about it, I had never attempted it myself. I had also read about drizzling a mica/oil mixture on top after you pour the soap in the mold, but I didn't want to try this method in case the soap didn't behave. I had a design in mind for painting mica on the top, but I was a little concerned that the mica wouldn't stick. So far, so good! Most of the mica is still on the soap, so I hope it stays that way. Here are a few pictures of the mica application:

Gold mica down the middle (sorry, I forgot to take a picture pre-mica)