Recent soaps

It is such a beautiful spring day today, so I put all my houseplants out on our back porch to get some sun and fresh air. Then I decided it was as pretty a day as any to take advantage of the natural light and get some photos taken of some of my recent soaps. 

I was being "harassed" by a couple of dangerously close bumble bees the entire soapy photo session. By the end I was so nervous about being stung that I gave up trying to arrange cute photos with the plants and just quickly clicked the last few and got back inside. 

Edit: took this photo a day or two prior

I blogged a photo of this soap freshly poured into the mold a couple posts back, and I was tickled with how it turned out. It is scented in BB's Fresh Snow and colored with TD, neon blue from TKB, and a mix of lavender and blue for the purple. I tried a couple of different recipes for the first two batches of soap I made in the new slab mold, figuring I would have more time to swirl and end up with bars that were easier to unmold. As it turned out with this batch, my usual recipe works out perfectly, so no need for experimenting after all!

I recently got a wooden planer/beveler for cleaning up the soaps being made in my slab mold. I kind of wish now I would've gotten an acrylic one instead for easier clean up, but it is still a very well made tool. I saved a bit of cash on this one though, and because the seller is located so near to me in Knoxville, I actually got it in the mail the next day after purchasing it. I'm still a little amateur at this whole planing and beveling thing, as you should be able to see in most of these photos. 

This soap is still a bit too soft to "clean up," so forgive it's unpolished state at present!

I tried out my small silicone "tall" mold for this soap, and despite what I thought to be good insulating, it still didn't gel evenly and in my anxiousness I unmolded it far too soon resulting in some very rough edges. I'm in love with how the design turned out (um, this was supposed to be a tiger stripe pattern if that tells you how badly I missed the mark). This soap is Black Raspberry Vanilla, which I added at max usage rate due to a past experience with the same fragrance from another supplier completely fading on me. Not the case with this one though, and it smells quite strong! I added frozen cubes of heavy cream to my warm oils for this batch. It is colored with TD, activated charcoal, and electric bubblegum from BB.

Rainbow Sherbet, also with heavy cream. I tried to plane and bevel this one while it was still too soft, so I put the rest of the bars away to cure a bit longer before trying again. This foe from Nature's Garden is so well-behaved that it might have been a little too thin when I poured and swirled it. I had pictured more contrast with the colors I chose in my mind, but this is still one of my favorite scents so I am ok with how it looks.  Colored with a couple of different yellows combined, BB's tangerine wow and electric bubblegum, and TKB's neon green.

These are fragranced with cassia, clove and nutmeg essential oils which gave the soaps a slight yellow tint. I added poppy seeds because they just seem to belong in spicy type soaps to me, and colored with brick red oxide. I purposefully didn't photograph the textured tops because I still need to clean a bit of ash from them. I made this batch by request from my landlord for her daughter, and she bought five bars from me.

This is a goat's milk soap scented with one of my favorite NG foes, Old Fashioned Banana Pudding. I fragranced a little over half of the batch and swirled it together with the unscented portion to let the discoloring of the foe do the work for me. I also added a small sprinkling of poppy seeds. I won't lie, these soaps were pretty fugly before they were planed, which really helped to define the swirl design.

Last but not least, a "natural" soap fragranced with a refreshing duo of  peppermint and bergamot essential oils with added French green clay for a slight green hue that is barely noticeable in this photo. I used Otion Soap Blog's shampoo bar recipe high in castor oil for this batch. I've used the recipe a couple times before, and my honey loves it for his hair. 

And so ends my overloading you with photos. I suppose I just wanted to prove that I have actually still been making soaps! Thanks so much for reading/looking, and I'd love to hear any tips from soapers experienced with planing and beveling to help improve my heavy hand.

Soap on a rope

I'd been wanting to try making a cold process soap on a rope for a while and finally found that last little nudge of inspiration to get to work on these little guys. 

Had trouble finding good light for this photo.

I fragranced this soap with one of the many new foes (what my honey calls FO's) I acquired in my recent shopping sprees, Bonfire Bliss from Rustic Escentuals. I admit I was skeptical about buying this one and how it would actually smell, but I couldn't be any happier with it! It's such a great balance of sweet and earthy woods, and I really really love it. (It might just go down as one my favorites!) Since I was making these soaps with a few guy friends in mind, I thought it was a perfect fragrance. I also used apple cider beer to keep the man factor up for these.

I used Bramble Berry's silicone cube mold for the individual cube shapes. This was my first time to use this mold for cold process soaping, so I decided to play it safe and go with the recommended recipe from the Soap Queen blog, including a 5% superfat instead of my usual 7%, and also a 15% liquid discount. Unfortunately I actually did forget to add my beloved sodium lactate to this batch, but it still popped right out of the mold after only 24 hours. I'd read so much about the difficulties of unmolding from this particular mold, so I was very pleased with my luck.

This was my first attempt at sticking rope in soap, but my little brain---without doing any research---decided it would work out best tying a knot on the end of the rope I planned to put into the soap....

I used craft jute cord.

......And also to work with a slightly thick trace.

I was disappointed the soap didn't keep this lovely golden color.
p.s. I sprayed the tops with alcohol, and covered the mold with a cardboard box and towel
to prevent ash. It gelled about 90%, with only a very little bit of ash on some of the peaks.

So I stick-blended my batch a bit longer than usual, to a medium/thick trace, only to find by the time I was ready to pour into the mold that when I tipped the pitcher up.....the batter didn't even move! Not sure if this was from the fragrance (RE isn't great about cp testing or posting reviews on all their foes), the beer, or my stick blending. As you can see above, I ended up making quite a mess trying to slop it all into the mold, and an even bigger mess when putting the ropes in. (I ended up shoving them in with my gloved fingers!) I had an elaborate system of skewers and tape and cups planned to hold the ropes up out of a soapy mess, but ended up discarding that idea and just dealing with a little bit of soap smeared on the ropes. (If I try this again, I think I'll go with a thinner trace and my skewer scheme.)

The soaps are still discoloring from the foe, a bit unevenly, and did turn out a little "rustic" on top, but I am overall pretty happy with them. Also, they smell fantastic! Can hardly wait to give one a test run in the shower this weekend. (Yes, I am that far behind in blogging!)

Thanks for reading, I should have more posts and photos up soon!

My first real swirl

I am absolutely loving my new-ish 9-bar slab mold from Bramble Berry. I made my third batch in it today with one of my favorite fragrances, and finally got a swirl I am happy with. My first batch was too thick of trace, and my second a bit muddied. I really wish I would have gone for a bigger size of this mold now, I love it so much! I also bought the guest-size bar dividers, which make 18 smaller bars, but haven't used those yet.

Even though I haven't been very active on my blog or Facebook page lately, I have actually still been making soaps. I've been toying with the idea of selling when farmer's market season rolls around, but I am still undecided. In the meantime, I am working on requests for more of the soaps I handed out at Christmas (people really loved the Sugar Plum Fairy and Spicey Apples & Peaches, and also a few soaps made especially with a friend's birthday in mind. I hope to find the time to get some photos taken soon so I can share them with you all.

Thanks for sticking around!

Mostly natural soaps

I've seen a lot of very experienced and trusted soap makers write that no soap can be 100% all-natural because lye is a man made, lab-created, unnatural substance. I tend to agree with that principle because it just makes sense, and I don't want to make any claims about the ingredients of my soaps that might possibly be untrue. 

That being said, I thought I'd come back from my soaping hiatus by making a few "mostly natural" soaps. Here are my first two.

A shea butter and activated charcoal soap, with kaolin clay and tussah silk, and BB's Karma essential oil blend, a "nearly natural" (how fitting!) dupe of a Lush fragrance. This was one of those scents I really didn't care for in the bottle, but came through beautifully in the soap, soft and almost masculine. My honey disagrees though, and says it smells like old woman perfume, hehe.

Spearmint and anise, one of my favorite essential oil pairings, this soap smells divine!! This soap also includes activated charcoal, kaolin clay and tussah silk, along with French green clay and dried spearmint leaves (a little too much, I am afraid). I cheated and added a lovely shimmery mica when I didn't get the color I wanted from the green clay. 

I'm looking forward to making at least a couple more batches of "mostly natural" soap sometime in the near future, so stay tuned!

How do I work this thing again.....

I know it's been a while since anyone in the soaping world has heard from me, and I was honored that a few soapy ladies even checked in on me in my absence. Truth is, I've been just fine. :) 

After my last soaping day, the very day we filmed those amateur videos, and also the same day I finished up the last of my Christmas soaping, I decided to take a little break from soap making until after the holidays. My curing shelves were full, my supplies were low, and my soaping environment just wasn't ideal. I did still have plans for blog posts during my hiatus, but they never came to pass. I ended up being so busy working extra shifts at my real job, and then moving (yay, new soaping environment!), and then holidays, that I barely even had time to think about sitting down to write a blog post or even comment on my favorite blogs that I was still following throughout my little break.

The good news is, the holidays are over, I've lost interest in extra shifts, and my honey and I are finally settled down into our new place. And I'm ready for some soap making fun again! (I could really use the stress relief, let me tell ya!!) 

I am dreadfully low on oils and lye right now---a problem I plan to remedy tomorrow! So hopefully you'll see some brand new, freshly inspired soaps popping up on this blog or Facebook page very soon. In the meantime, take a look at.....

........my new soap supplies closet:

.....the beautiful colors in the fibers I got for soap felting:

(felting ugly soaps is my new favorite thing to do)

......and our new home :)

Also, here's another really poor quality video of me getting frustrated with my soap design. Specifically the color purple. And I don't mean the movie with Whoopi and Oprah, y'all.

 

....And a picture of how it all turned out really great in the end. :)

Thanks for not unsubscribing to me. I've missed you guys! 

My first soaping video!

On our last soaping day (and last holiday soaping day /sadface) we made videos of each of the three batches. Knowing that we were shooting video made me oddly nervous, and we both admitted to each other after it was all over that soaping wasn't as fun because of it. My honey said it made him feel left out when he wanted to help with the soaping. Aww. :( Haha, I know while the camera was rolling it felt like everything was going wrong from trace to colors, and I just knew all of the soaps were going to turn out horribly. But they didn't. Maybe other soap video makers can clue me in: Do you feel nervous each time you film a soap batch? Do you ever feel like you have to do things differently for the benefit of the camera? If you ever felt like that, did it get easier with time to just be yourself or any "game time" tips? 

....So who knows if we'll do any more, guess we'll see what kind of feedback we get.

Some things to note about this video:

• It's really long.
• I talk a lot. About everything. And then some. (Who would've guessed, for all the rambling I do here...)
• We are bad at editting.
• I said I was pouring over my spatula to prevent lye bubbles, but I meant air bubbles. (And it took me watching the video at least a dozen times to catch that....)

The soap I made in this video is fragranced with Santa's Spruce from BB, but I think I'm going to call it Sugar(ed?) Spruce. 

Here it is cut:

It gelled to a very very hard soap, and was almost difficult to cut, as you can see from the small jagged-type markings on the face of the bar. I still love this scent, it's very nice with just the right amount of sweet and evergreen. 

And just for funsies, here's a sneak peek at the soap made in the next video we are working on editting. ;)

Ooh, what could it be??

Thanks for taking the time to watch my super long video, I hope you all like it. I would love to get any advice or tips, likes or dislikes from you all, so feel free to comment here or on the video. 

Felted soap

I've tried felting some of my soaps two or three times in the past with less than stellar results. I'm not sure what the problem was then, maybe it was the type of roving I bought. I did a good bit of research, but it could still have been general cluelessness!

A recent blog post from Amanda at Lovin Soap (and a part of Bramble Berry's Givember too!) inspired me to finally try felting again, and I'm glad I did. It worked out a lot better for me this time. I bought some beautiful wool and handspun yarn from a nice lady at a craft market a few weeks ago. I remember specifically thinking that because she also was selling felted soaps, that her wool "definitely must work!" Hehe.

I made these a little over a week ago using some bars I'd made in single-cavity molds a few months back to test out fragrances, and also a couple of lemongrass soaps that were a bit rough around the edges. The two oval bars are Frankincense & Myrrh (BB) and Bella from Majestic Mountain Sage's Twilight-inspired collection.

The only difference in the way I felted was for my final stage (the rubbing part), I put the soap inside a knee-length panty hose, which really helped to tighten it all up and keep it together through all the rubbing action. 

When I went to Lovin Soap to grab a link for this post, I also noticed Amanda posted a second felted soap tutorial (using panty hose) but with added needle-felted designs. (I don't think I am quite ready for that yet!) You can check that out here.

I haven't tried these out in the shower yet, but I promise I'll let you all know if they fall to pieces!