Carrot Soaps - CUT

These soaps turned out really well! I can't wait to use them. The pictures show the soap being a little darker towards the bottom but it's just shadows. I don't know how we can have such heavy, dark clouds but no moisture at all. :(

Bay Rum Cream

Carrots & Cream

Carrots & Cream Remake And A Batch Of Bay Rum

I have long been out of Carrots & Cream and have discovered that I'm not okay with that situation. It is such a gentle soap and the air is so dry which makes skin so much more sensitive. It was not a good one to be out of. I chose to make a big batch and split it in two. The orange soap is plain and just has carrots and cream added.

The other half of the batch (the brown one) has a masculine bay rum scent. I made it for my husband in particular. I figured I could work with the orange from the carrots as long as I was at it. The main body of the soap is the same as the plain. For the topping, I added some copper color to a bit of soap and swirled it around a bit. I sprinkled just a smidge of gold to the top for a little sparkle. I had to add a little sparkle in there somehow!

I Didn't Expect That....

...these would turn out so cute! I think I'm in love! Now to just decide if I want to try to do it again....



The swirled ones aren't too bad either.

It Was Worth A Try

I had just enough supplies to make one batch of soap so I decided to try something experimental. I was attempting to follow this tutorial by Amanda. I was going along fabulously but then my soap thickened up too much on me. I used full water and used a slower tracing recipe, but I knew there was a pretty darned good chance that it would happen. I played around the best I could before the soap wouldn't even come out of the squeeze bottles. I used up the last little bit of my mediterranean fig fragrance oil and the soap will be perfectly fun for me to use so it's all good. :)



Now it's time to head into the real kitchen in this house and whip up some Rice Krispy Treats and Ina's Mac and Cheese.

A Life Deliberate Soap Co.

A Life Deliberate Soap Co is a bath and body business based in Michigan. I'm honored to say that the owner, Lori, has become a friend of mine. She makes several fabulous products that I splurge on often but there is one product that I can't live without. I tried once and it didn't go well. :) The product I am in absolute love with is the Gourmet Body Mousse. I didn't order it at first but instead some soaps and the dead sea mud scrub but she stuck in a sample of the body mousse and I quickly become addicted. She formulates the most dreamy scent called Chocolate Covered Raspberries. I am goofy for that scent. It is a specialty scent and not always available. I have tried several other scents as well, including Chocolate Covered Strawberries, Wild Strawberries, Summers Night, and Unscented.
Scents aside, it's the way the mousse moisturizes that keeps me coming back for more and more. For me, it is the ideal moisturizer. It's thick but light, slides on nice and smooth but it isn't greasy, and it seals and protects my skin for hours and hours afterwards. I have used many lotions, thick and thin, natural and drugstore, and this is the only one that is the complete package for me. I've given it as gifts and have gotten the same reviews back about this glorious product. The oils used are very luxurious and include red raspberry oil (sounds dreamy on it's own!), macadamia nut oil, and avocado butter.



Not only is the mousse top-notch, but Lori whips up some amazing cold process soaps as well. I've tried many of them and as soon as she debuts a new scent, I usually have to have it. Now as a soap maker, I have rows and rows of my own soap ready and waiting to be used, but there is just something wonderful about splurging on a luxuriously made soap that isn't made by me. :)

I have yet to try all the different products offered by A Life Deliberate, but I can highly recommend the body mousse, (I get the unscented for my daughter), the deep conditioning cream, and the goat milk and aloe body butter, the soaps, and the scrubs.

I'm a bit of a product junkie and have ordered from many Etsy shops and other online retailers but I keep coming back to A Life Deliberate Soap Co, time and time again. Go get ya some!

A Life Deliberate Soap Co

Sunday Soapings - CUT

It appears I could go a bit stronger on my colorants but otherwise I'm pleased with how these turned out. The rosemary mint scent definitely overwhelms the others but as a result our basement/family room smells awesome!



I got my first gray using grape pop mica. I've heard of it happening but I hadn't experienced it until now. I'm thinking that it has something to do with the particular fragrance oil because otherwise I get a very bright and pretty purple.


Once again we had a dreary old afternoon while I was trying to take pictures so the colors are off a little and a bit dark but ya know, whatever!

Sunday Soapings - Just Poured

I had that wild hair to go make soap again today and I'm so happy I did. I made three successful batches. Also, I was going to clean when I came back upstairs from my soaping zone and found that my hubby had cleaned the bathrooms and done the other cleaning too. WIN-WIN! :)


Chamomile Lavender Cream: For those that know me, they know that I love this combo. I've made it many times with different recipes and different milks. My favorite milk right now is heavy whipping cream and so that is what I used in it today. I didn't use any colorant or any other additives other than the light sprinkling on glitter on top. Even if it is all natural, how can I not add glitter?


Rosemary Mint - this one also has cream and has a combo of rosemary and peppermint essential oils. This is a very popular combo and to me, smells just like an Andes mint. YUM! I colored it with a tiny amount of chromium green oxide and it also has a sprinkling of glitter. I chose to pour my soaps at a fairly thin trace today as I wasn't in the mood for whips and fluff. (Weird right?)


Blackberry Cream - This one is scented with Black Raspberry Vanilla but I just made a batch with that scent and I'm just plain tired of calling it black raspberry. I'd much rather have a blackberry anyway. :) It also has cream and is colored with just a smidge of grape pop mica.



I'm very pleased with today's batches and it's always so nice for them to be successful. I think I can make one more batch of soap before I'm out of some important ingredients. So I'm off to Brambleberry.... it's time to order more glitter! :D

Birthday Soap - CUT!

Birthday Soap!

Being that it's my birthday and that I've been having soaping withdrawals...I took a little "me" time this afternoon and made a batch of soap. I just made a small batch to test out some pink colorant. I'm shooting for a hot pink and I think I'll get it. :) I scented this with Mediterranean Fig and added plenty of shimmering pink glitter to the top.

Quiet

It's going to be quiet around here for awhile. This is a very busy and enjoyable time of year for my family and I don't have the time to focus on soapmaking. We have four birthdays and the holidays between now and the end of the year. I have plenty of soap to use up including my pretty, Princess Kisses batch. My life is full and blessed and these last two months will be spent soaking it all in. I look forward to visiting again!

Princess Kisses - Cut

I'm just so excited about this batch. It's pretty, smells great, and is my favorite recipe so I know I'm going to love using it!

Princess Kisses - A Remake

I can't even tell you how badly I needed to make a pretty soap! I think my whole soapmaking hobby relied upon making something I could be super pleased with. So I went with a fragrance oil that I could depend on and used up my castile colors for the topping. This soap is actually a remake design-wise. I changed up the fragrance oil and used Black Raspberry Vanilla from WSP instead of White Tea and Ginger. I just love working with BRV from WSP. It is a mellow FO and shows no temper whatsoever. :) It does the heart good to make a well-behaved and pretty soap. :D

A Look Back

I've come a long way since my first batches of hot process!

 

 

 

It Got Worse! And A Tomato Soap

HAHAHAHA! I have gotten some good laughs from this soap. I went to take pictures of my tomato soap and saw that my ugly soap had gotten uglier. :)



This is my tomato soap that I did at the same time as the pumpkin soap. It was a crazy experimental soap but I think I'm going to like it. I kind of geared it towards something I can use as a facial bar. I think it looks like pumpkin pie! Note to self: Use tomato paste in next year's pumpkin soap!

What a Disaster!

Well, I'm even surprised with how badly this soap turned out. It is so bad. I don't know if I should attempt to rebatch it or not.

Gonna send that FO to the corner!

I worked with an extraordinarily naughty fragrance oil yesterday. I wanted to give it a major time-out. I used WSP's Mid-Summers Night. I removed some soap to remain unscented and then added the fragrance oil. First off the oil is an amber color so that threw off my whole plan from there. Then the moment the fragrance oil hit the soap it immediately began ricing and curdling the soap. I tried stick blending for a bit and that helped some. I decided to run the soap through a sieve so that I could break down the lumps. That worked until the soap was super thick. So then I whisked the remaining soap and got in a good workout! I had intended to color some of the soap blue and some of the soap green. So I divided the soap and colored it as planned. It wasn't the color I wanted due to the amber-ness of the fragrance oil but I decided to just go with it. At this point the soap was so thick that it had a grainy, curdled texture to it amongst the soap-on-a-stick. I knew a swirl was out so I glopped in some blue and some green and some blue again. Then I had the plain, unscented soap yet to use so I poured it on top and worked it in some. I dolloped the remaining soap and attempted to do a little swirl on top but that did not work due to how thin the unscented soap was. So anyhoo---this one really makes me laugh and it should be interesting to see what it looks like unmolded.


I glittered one loaf and left the other plain as it is a very manly scent.


It definitely has a weird texture.


Also an update on the pumpkin cream pie soap. I ended up getting a partial gel in one loaf and not so much of one on the other. It also almost looks like the fragrance oil didn't blend in well. I am sure it's going to get much darker still.

Pumpkin Cream Pie Soap

I am in total love with the color of this soap! I only wish it would stay. I did debate using vanilla stabilizer but decided I'd rather it just turn brown than add any unnecessary ingredients. I did make the animal soaps unscented so the color should stay nice and pretty on those. I added a smidge of tangerine pop to help the orange along and I used Pumpkin Pie FO from WSP. It also has a fair amount of pumpkin and cream mixed in. Fall is here!



The soap in the blue mold was an experiment. I'm not so sure about it!

Delightful Almond Cream

This was one of the most delightful batches to work with. It came together nicely, set up well, and cut well. This is essentially the same recipe as the Carrots & Cream soap. That soap has quickly become my very most favorite. It is so incredibly gentle. I now prefer cream for my milk choice in soap. (Shhh...in my coffee too but don't tell anybody.)

Almond Cream

This is one of those wild hair soaps. I had no intentions of making soap today but then I got a wild hair. :) Actually, I was twiddling my thumbs trying to figure out what I could do. Amazing but true. Anyhoo...I'm waiting on my pumpkin fragrance oil so I decided to dig into the fragrance oil drawer and see what I could come up with. I used a plain almond fo from WSP that was hiding in my drawer. It smells so good! It's very much like the scent of Zum Bar's almond soap. That was the first soap I ever purchased in the whole handmade soap genre. It is also the reason I chose to figure out how to make soap because I couldn't in my right mind keep spending that kind of money on soap. :P Looking back...yeah, not a great plan. But I did find a hobby that I enjoy!

Anyway... this soap is a slight variation on a new recipe that I've stumbled upon that I truly love. It is heavy on the olive oil with some PKO, Avocado, and Castor. I varied it to finish up some AKO that I had. I think I'm out of most of my odd oils now. They were nearing their shelf live expiration so it was time to get them outta here.


I added some real cream and the fragrance oil and then saved some soap back for the topping. I added apricot kernal powder to the main body of the soap. Then I lighted the saved soap for the topping. I love the look of thin soap poured from a distance and how it falls into the soap. It will be so fun to see how it turns out.

Quite Holiday-ish

This is the Bayberry soap. I didn't realize that Bayberry is such an intoxicating scent. It screams "holidays!" It is very pretty but even I am shocked to be working with something so holiday-ish. I need to get through Fall first. :)



I have decided that I really do prefer my loaf molds. It is so easy to over-do glitter (Can you imagine?!?!) with so much "top" on the slab mold soaps. I'm super duper excited to make up a pumpkin batch next. I've made pumpkin soap a couple of times before and it's fun to see how my vision of it changes each year. Look for it soon!

Much Better

Yay! A successful batch. It really does a body good. :) I decided to try my slab mold again and I hope I end up liking it better this time. I am still using up some oils so this batch has Olive, Palm, Coconut, Castor, Apricot Kernal, Macadamia Nut, and Avocado oils. It is scented with bayberry which is such a wonderful scent. I added in some red and green jojoba beads and sprinkled the top with glitter. It seems I'm getting a head start on the holiday season! I am also trying to process out some of my fragrance oils and this was about the last of them that I hadn't tried yet.




I've been doing a lot of reminiscing about my early soapmaking days and those batches were mostly essential oil batches. I'm wanting to phase back into mostly naturally-scented soaps. I will continue to use some of my favorite fragrance oils but I'll hesitate to buy any new fragrance oils for now. However...I couldn't resist getting a pumpkin pie fragrance oil and that one is on the way. I can't wait! I have to do something as Fall is my absolutely favorite season.

Seriously Out of Practice

I was so excited to make this batch but I was impatient and forgetful and I have a so-so batch to show for it. This is my Groovy Goat Milk Soap. I soaped it way too hot and ended up with super thick batter and I didn't have time to play with it at all. Then I got a partial gel because even though it was super hot, I still put the fan on it. :p I scented it with Hippy Christmas from NG but I must say that it just smells like 1980's granny perfume to me. It isn't totally unpleasant so at least I'll use it. I'm pretty sure my husband won't even venture to touch it. I'm thankful I only had 2 oz of the fo and used it all up. Bleh. Anyhoo- I guess I need batches like this to help me to remember why I keep my oil and lye cool, etc. Next time I'll have my head in the game!

The Reason I Haven't Been Soaping

I ordered a fleece animal pattern book just a few days after I found out my brother's wife was expecting their first child. I just wanted to make something fun for the new baby. The book also had a pattern for a sheep called Lulu. My sister-in-law collects sheep of all kinds and so I couldn't resist making one for her. I have been busy making fleece animals for a couple of weeks and the baby shower was yesterday. So now I can post pictures!

Lulu and Baby Bunny:


Baby Bunny:


Lulu before getting her make-up:


My kids all want animals too. My daughter chose the "mommy bunny" and named her Holly. :)


My oldest wants a panda and my middlest (we call him this and he giggles) wants a puppy. I don't have the fabric to get started on those so I'm hoping to make some soap this week. I'm thinking something holiday scented. Mmmm...