Coconut Soap

Coconut scented. 

I love the smell of coconut, real stuff or the fake sunscreen stuff. All great to me. I've read that coconut scent in CP soap is pretty tricky. It can morph to a plastic smell or just fade away to nothing. After reading reviews on Wholesale Supplies Plus for their Caribbean Coconut and Exotic Coconut I decided to just get some 2oz bottles and try it. I was really excited to smell them when they arrived and they did not disappoint. While they are both very different, they both smell coconutty. However, don't kid yourself, neither of these smell like REAL coconut. The only thing I have ever smelled that smelled like real coconut is, yeah, a coconut (or virgin coconut oil).

The Caribbean Coconut smells more sweet and reminds me of Bath and Body Works Coco Cabana. The Exotic is more mellow and while still sweet, almost drier or more musky? More grown up I suppose. I saw one review on Caribbean Coconut that says to use much more than the standard amount. It has 10% vanilla which means it will turn quite dark (Excellent article for judging how brown the percent of vanilla will make your soap: "Why Did My Soap Turn Brown" on the Soap Queen Blog).

The only colors I thought of with coconut were brown and white. Not very inventive, but assuming anything fragranced would turn brown anyway, I just embraced the simplicity.

Satin White from TKB Trading, and bronze mica from Bramble Berry. I figured I'd give the brown a head start with this mica. I watched a Cream Cheese Frosting soap discolor very unevenly and didn't want that for this one.

Layers is the name of the game these days. (I promise to switch it up soon!) So I did brown, thin white -without fragrance- then brown again. I was too eager and got some breaking through of the layers. This fragrance sped things up a little, but nothing horrific.

Yeahhhh! Foresight!! I saved some white for the top to do a little textured thing.

Well... My 'texture' looks more smeared, but at least it adds some visual interest on top. It was quite white at this point.

It looked like it started going into gel, the white got more transparent and the soap was warm. It weirdly never turned white again though. I got a few bubbles and some fragrance weep-age. I wondered if this was going to be a bust...

Nope! There are a couple glycerin rivers around the white area, but the fragrance didn't weep out anymore than shown above! Luckily no heat tunnels.

I did get some soda ash, but it almost helps the white look whiter, so... score? See that lovely arrow? It's pointing to a smudge on my camera lense that has been there for SO LONG. Look for it in other pictures... I somehow always forget to wipe the lense. I'm doing it tonight. I promise. Maybe.

So as for the coconut fragrance: It's still too soon to tell what it will cure up to be, but so far it doesn't smell very coconutty to me. It almost has a baked goods -even slightly spicy (cinnamon?)- smell to it. It's not bad at all, but not very coconutty. I love the smell of vanilla, but I have never smelled a faux vanilla that I like. Pretty much only the real deal smells good to me (opposite of coconut!). I can smell the fake slightly chemical vanilla coming through. It's only been curing for about a week though.