u/bearyforager

I've been making and testing cold process soap recipes lately, because I'm planning on gifting soap and other homemade consumables to friends and family during the holidays. However, I really like the benefits of fluid hot process soap more: lower fragrance/essential oil requirements, being able to control exactly which fats become the super fat, additives like aloe not being chemically altered by the lye, etc.

But it looks so lumpy and uggo in recipes I see online, and I want sleek looking bar! :(

I have researched a few things to try, just wondering if there is anything else I haven't considered? *I know yogurt and other dairy products help it remain smooth, but I don't want any dairy in my soap.

1. Sodium lactate

2. Sugar

3. Added, post-cook aqueous liquids

4. Higher ratio of unsaturated to saturated oils.

5. Add the super fat post-cook.

6. Higher water/lye ratio than 2:1

I'm going to be making tiny recipe tests using combinations of these and whatever ya'll can suggest. I'll post results if anyone is interested!

Happy soaping! 🧼

Kind of a weird question, so let me explain further. For context, I am losing my tech job in October due to layoffs. This allows me the opportunity to save up until then and pivot out of tech, starting my own business. Having been "forced" to adopt AI at work and living through the consequences of it, I refuse to use AI for my business and personal projects in any way. As such, I'm going to be hiring digital artists for things like website graphics, marketing materials, and social media ad graphics.

However, I want to do it not only well, but in a way that benefits the artists I'm working with in more ways than just paying well (which I plan on doing of course lol). So, I have a lot of questions about how to accomplish that. I'd like to hear from artists that have worked for brands and businesses before specifically, but anyone is free to chime in!

1. Say you get hired to create art/copy for a brand. Aside from paying you well, is there anything else that a company can do that will help you get more work from other clients, like featuring @ing you and your and your other works in social media posts? Maybe including your name and social links in a product description on a Shopify page? Or do things like that not help?

2. Say you work with a business on a one-off project and they then want to keep working with you. How do you prefer to manage payments and track ongoing work/requests/etc with them? I used to use Upwork as a freelancer myself and kind of hated the whole thing, except for the way it tracks your work and handles client communication. Are there other platforms like that that I should learn and be able to offer to people I want to work with as an option?

3. What is the preferred payment method? Paypal, Venmo, something like that? I feel like everyone hates having to cash real checks, but I'll offer it if a lot of responses agree that I should.

4. Is there a specific type of contract that is standard for licensing rights when doing work for hire? Are there any types that you feel are worse for the artist than others? Is there an industry standard template contract I can use as a baseline?

5. Are there any good websites to find artists looking to sell their skills? I find sites like Upwork and Fiverr have awful search tools on the hiring side. Maybe even just art portfolio websites?

If there's anything else you'd like to add yourself, feel free! I look forward to learning from ya'll.

I stumbled across a couple "favorite notes" posts recently, and it seems like everyone hates what I like. 🤣 Below are some of my favorite notes/materials that everyone seems to hate. What are yours?

1. Patchouli. The patchouli hate makes me feel like I'm defending a friend that's being bullied. 😭 I understand the scent association with hippies and masking BO with patchouli oil, but there's a reason it's in basically everything. Warm without being spicy, earthy, green, herbal and woody, and there are so many different subtypes of patchouli materials to choose from. The material Clearwood is so lovely, crisp and refreshing that I have to stop myself from adding it to every fragrance I make. I want to be embalmed in patchouli oil when I die.
2. Ambroxan. I understand genetic-based scent sensitivities, so this one is very understandable. To me, ambroxan smells like how pure MSG tastes, but like the smell version. Savory, warm, almost woody, salty, like the lightly sweaty skin of a lover. It totally does dominate dry downs when used in too high a concentration, and some dry downs are just Ambroxan, but it's still a delicious smell to me.
3. Calone. I feel like some people get a scent of sulfur from this one, so I get the hate. It smells like fresh water from a creek in the spring to me, and when used in conjunction with ambroxan and musk, baby that's ocean spray. Dip me in a vat of that any day.
4. Rose. Rose haters HATE rose, so they must be experiencing it differently than I do. To me...one of the best smells in the world. Some synthetic rose materials do smell screechy and pull attention from other notes, sure, and the powdery aspect of some rose compositions/materials can become grating after a whole, but it's one of the first essential oils humans tried to distill for a reason! When used correctly, it's so complex and delicious and lasts forever for a natural material. One of my personal hobby projects lately was duping MFK's l'Homme À la rose so I can make my laundry smell like it because I'm extra and very serious about rose. 😂
5. You know what, speaking of: Florals, in general. Flowers smell good, damn it! They get so much hate, and I think part of it might be a scent association with deodorizing sprays like Febreeze and cleaning products that use a lot of synthetic floral materials. Not liking some florals is understandable (I'm looking at you, tuberose), but to discount the entire fragrance family, like I saw in a lot of comments, hurts me.
6. Lavender. First of all, how dare you? Sorry, that was harsh, let me try again. Who hurt you? Was it bathroom cleaning products? That's not lavender's fault! Sweet, floral, rosemary adjacent woodyness, complexity that somehow still pairs with many materials, therapeutic and antiseptic properties! She really is THAT girl, haters must just be jealous. 😤 There are cities in France that are so obsessed with the stuff that they make it their whole identity, come on.
7. Musks. Some musks are better than others, but some commenters just blanket-hate the whole genre of materials, and that makes me big mad. Have you ever smelled Helvetolide straight from the bottle? It's so mmm and lightly sweet and sheer and comforting. Galaxolide is pretty sharp and clean-chlorine adjacent, and it's used in like every laundry product, but it's in the grojman accord and therefore most perfumes for a reason: it good. Musk good.
8. Myrhhe. I never went to a church that used it, so I have no scent association with it other than, "wow that smells so nice, more please". I find all the resins to be complex in their own ways and hard to describe (except benzoin, that can be easily described as "sexy vanilla cinnamon") Even baby Jesus liked it!

Pierogi Fest is a summer tradition here in The Region, and while traditions can be lovely, they can also hold us back from embracing change. And common sense.

That being said, what were they thinking when they decided to have the buttered dumpling, stuffed cabbage, potato pancake and various stewed meats festival in the hottest, worst part of our summer? It doesn't make any sense. I can't imagine anyone thinking, "Oh boy, it's 100 degrees outside and I can taste the refinery in the air. You know what I could really go for? Some braised cabbages and meats and potatoes." But here we are, boiling alive together and eating winter foods like fools.

"But there are other foods from other cultures there," some may argue. I'm not talking about them. In fact, they can still show up at the same time every year and just call it something else. I just want to eat pierogis and stuffed cabbage in the cold like God intended. Everyone just drives to the fest, picks up food and runs home their air conditioning anyway, what is the logic here?

Imagine it with me...It's cold outside. You enter the festival grounds and suddenly, it's a little bit warmer due to the ambient heat of all the cooking food. Joy, with more coming. You get some kind of combo dinner plate containing stuffed cabbage, pierogi, a potato pancake and some sausage cooked in onions. Butter, fat, carbs, stewy goodness: what seasonal depression? You will survive another winter thanks to this. Maybe even a hot cocoa or cider, because it's cold outside and that just feels right, doesn't it? You sit down, you eat, and everything is in harmony because you aren't experiencing heat stroke.

Join me. Let's make a petition or call the governor or something, I don't know how to go about it...but change is possible!

Basically, I am a man that loves rose scents, The Noir from Le Labo being my favorite, but I am not paying all that money for a good rose since it's such an easy note to pull off. I feel like a spicy/dark rose would be best, paired with something like cardamom or carnation (eugenol and isoeugenol) would be awesome. The only notes I haaate are cumin (I'm looking at you with confusion, Rose 31) and fenugreek. I am just morally opposed to smelling like curry and diabetes.