WSP FO Review #1 - Strawberry Picnic

One of my suppliers, Wholesale Supplies Plus, put out an email looking for soapers to review some of their scents. I replied to the email thinking I wouldn't be chosen amongst so many talented soapers...well lucky me was chosen and I was sent 15 different fragrances to review...so lets get started shall we...First up is Strawberry Picnic.

I gathered all of my supplies, cooled oils, lye water, color is TKB Trading Queen Kathryn and I didn't know what the vanilla content of the fragrance oil is and since it has a vanilla note in the scent I decided to use vanilla stabilizer to keep it from browning.

I am always nervous soaping new scents that I have no idea how they will behave, but I was very happy to have no acceleration, in fact I had plenty of time to attempt some design here.

I just spoon plopped and layered, and then swirled the top.

I usually oven process my soaps, but decided to leave these out at room temperature...which today is a beautiful 73 degrees inside.



Within a couple of hours I saw the beginings of gel. Gel is a phase soap can go through when the temperature heats up...either by being forced to gel in a heated oven, being insulated with towels...or it can heat up on its own depending on the fragrance. Some soapers put their soaps in the freezer to keep the gel phase at bay. I normally like to gel my soaps...funny the rare time I try to not gel...and it does it on its own...oh well, what is meant to be right?

It will be interesting to see how this comes out, it appears the vanilla stabilizer has added a yellow hue to the soap, but I think it compliments the red colored portion.

The yellow color mellowed out very very nice. I am very happy with how this scent behaved. The scent is a little on the light side, but quite yummy smelling. I will be making a lotion in this scent this weekend.