To rebatch or not to rebatch?

Hello dears,

today I'd like to show you some rebatching experiments I've been doing. Some soapers hate rebatching, and some others love it and just make unscented white soap in order to rebatch it. Those against it, say that rebatching gives a lumpy soap and that the heat kills most of the vitamins and good stuff the oils give to the basic soap, whereas the "rebatchers" love to do so because the colours and scents stay much more than in regular CP soap, and also because it allows you much more flexibility for moulds and creativity.

Personally, I haven't decided yet. I mean, whether I choose rebatching or fresh CP depends on how I feel and what result I want to get. I love both methods and I want to improve both, because they both have great advantages that I want to be able to use at best.

So yesterday I found myself running out of lye, and I didn't want to go out buy it because I was waiting for some mail order to arrive and I didn't want the mail man to arrive and leave me a collection note. So anyway, I decided to do some rebatching experiments with a 20 days old batch of HP soap I made that i pretty looking, but doesn't bubble much and has no scent. The original batch was pink-red coloured and, as I said, unscented. Here it is:

I decided to rebatch it mainly to try some things out, and to try and give it some kind of scent.

What I did is I melted some of it on a crock pot with just a little cow's milk and, once melted, I addend some jasmine FO. Then I melted some more, this time with a red berries infused distilled water. I had this old red berries herbal tea, and wanted to give the soap a berries smell since I think it fits with the colour. I left the dried berries in, to give it some texture, and that's what I got:

The pink one underneath is the one I only added milk to, whereas the other purple one is the one with berries tea on it. I think the result is pretty amazing, they both smell great and the colour and texture seem fine. They have some white spots because I could melt the soap perfectly, but I don't think that's ugly, I just take it to be the feature of rebatched soap.

I have read somewhere that to get a very smooth rebatch it would be best to add the rebatched soap to a fresh CP batch. I'll try that next time - meaning as soon as can find some more lye. ;)

Stay tuned.