Hi All! I had to wait until we had some sun around here to get some pictures. I'm also going to have to figure out something different for my pictures in this odd winter light.
Both soaps turned out very well. I did get a partial gel on them. Though very faint, it's still there. I remembered too late that I normally put my canned goat milk soaps into the freezer. We'll see if I remember next time. I did get air pockets in my chamomile lavender soap but I'm ok with that.
I'm kind of switching directions that I'm heading in for the new soaps that I will be making. I'm going to be using my green silicone molds again. I determined that I prefer the size of soap from these molds. I do still prefer working with my wood mold so it may pop up from time to time. I'm also going to be soaping predominately essential oils. I have used up most of my fragrances and I am going to try not to be sucked in by all the beautiful sounding fragrances at my favorite suppliers. I'm sure I'll cave every now and again. I do have some favorites ya know. :D I don't know why, but I've been wanting to go back and recreate some of my original soaps. To me they had so much character and meaning to me. So I'll be doing several remakes but will be tweaking them as my recipe has improved greatly!
Today I started with aloe and goat milk soap. I used canned goat milk which is one of my favorite milks to use. It is very concentrated and I only use it at about 25% of my liquid amount. It has a nice sugar content that adds great bubbles to my soap. I made two loaves, one unscented and the other I scented with a chamomile and lavender essential oil blend. I have tried several from different suppliers and I keep coming back to this one in particular. I have decided that it is my most favorite scent for soap. EVER. I did cave and added some color (green and purple) to it and some glitter but I wish I'd left it plain. Next time!
Hi All! It's been a while! I hope you're enjoying your holiday season.
I thought I'd pop in here and give you all a little update on how things are going. I knew I wouldn't be making soap immediately following Thanksgiving but I didn't realize that it'd be this long and still waiting for the chance!
The moment we pulled into the garage after being gone all Thanksgiving week, we realized our youngest child had a fever. It all snowballed from there. Nearly three weeks later, we've all been sick with colds and a few of us even got a stomach bug. Needless to say, the last almost three weeks now haven't been the most pleasant and we are still fighting to clear it.
Last Friday, I finally mustered the gumption to make some orders. I just now need to do some organization and some clean-up to prepare for my supplies to arrive in the next few days.
So if all goes well. I should be posting some new soapmaking sometime in the next week! Stay tuned!
Ok, here it is! Merry & Bright all cut up and sitting pretty! I'm done with my holiday soaps! :) I am looking forward to using them and giving them as gifts here soon.
A little side note: I have no plans to be making any soap for a while as I need supplies and also will be quite busy the next few weeks with birthdays and Thanksgiving. i just wanted you to know that the posts here will be few and far between. Happy Thanksgiving!
Here's a peek at my final holiday soap - Merry & Bright. It has a beautiful scent blend of fir, pine, orange, and pineapple. It reminds me of two of my favorite pine candles from Yankee. It's very pine-y and just altogether festive. Though it's hard to see from the pictures, the base of the soap is blue with a while swirl. Inside is a layer of multi-colored soap gems and then the top (as you can plainly see!), has glittered soap gems. I'll try to cut this one later today!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE how Holly Jolly turned out! It looks exactly like I wanted it too. The fragrance too...oh my...perfect for this soap! :)
So when I unmolded my reindeer yesterday, I realized I had a Rudolph! Then it took until 9pm to realize that I had nine reindeer and one was Rudolph. Oh geez...sometimes I'm not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree! HA!
Another one down! This is my Holly Jolly soap. It's scented with a fresh holiday greenery scent and it's quite beautiful. There are red and green swirls inside and I sprinkled the top with these fun holly sprinkles I found. Fun stuff!
This soap is for my last holiday soap. It will have a glittered ball ornament theme. I will make soap balls out of these colors.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but my goal is to get all my holiday soaps made by the middle of next week. I want them all to be ready to give away by December 15th at least. So no dilly-daddling around here. This afternoon I knocked two of them off the list. I now have four done and two more to go.
This one is Winter's Walk - a fresh scent reminiscent of a chilly walk in the mountains following a fresh snowfall, when the sun is out and the snow is glistening on the pines. The fragrance notes I most notice are pine, eucalyptus, and mint. There are white 'snowballs' embedded throughout the soap. Lovely!
For the kiddies I made Reindeer Soap - it's an all natural soap with no added fragrance or color and embedded with the cutest reindeer rubber duckies! It does have the scent of pure cocoa butter which it gets naturally from yummy amounts I added to this soap. It should be extremely gentle for the kiddies.
Er...Sparkling Plum Soap. Yeah, well, I've been calling it Sparkling Dumb Soap since yesterday afternoon. I was so excited to cut this one and was so disappointed to find the yellow inside. The same soap in the topping isn't really yellow but it is definitely yellow inside. I was going for a brisk white, or at the very least a cream color. I also had troubles cutting this one, it was soft but crumbly. I let it rest a day longer and it cut much better. I found I still had the crumblies until I realized it was my beautiful purple knife causing the problem. :( So I'm back to my trusty, rustic wooden handled knife to do the work. We can always trust the oldie but goodies can't we? I had some other troubles with this soap but I won't go into that and you'll be grateful. :)
Bottom line: I'm ok with it. I'm not thrilled and still feel somewhat jilted by it, but I'm coming around and I truly can see the beauty in this soap. (Though I wish I would have let some other bars take the lead in at lease some of the pictures... :P)
I squeezed in another holiday soap batch this evening. This is a plum scented soap and I did an ITP swirl with white, maroon, and purple. The white looks yellow in the pictures but I really do think it's more on the white side. I'll have to wait and see it in the daylight tomorrow. I embedded purple soap balls throughout the soap as well as on the top. I had to give this one plenty of glitter. I NEEDED to glitter something. :)
I soaped this one yesterday afternoon and didn't take pictures or even look at the video. The fragrance accelerated and seemed to rice on me and I gave it the cold shoulder for the rest of the day. :)
Today I cut the soap and I was quite pleased with the results. This scent is so pretty and perfect for Fall. It's a sweet smell with notes of dried leaves. It's much more complex than that though.
Here it is in the mold, after it had rested in the mold overnight:
It cut very nicely and I'm really excited with how it turned out!
I was back in the soap kitchen today after a very long three week hiatus. It was fun but it was also work. I worked with some individual molds. I don't particularly enjoy using them but sometimes ya just gotta.
First I made a batch of grape soda scented soap in my grapes/vine mold. It's colored light purple. I also made three little grapes cows. I way over-estimated my batch so I was able to make 6 hearts as well. These soaps will be for my mom to give away as holiday gifts.
The other part of my soaping extravaganza was to do some fragrance testing. I want to make some holiday soaps and I just felt I should do some testing first. I want to prepare some embeds but if the fragrances totally go awry, I'd just rather not waste my time.
So I mixed up my 6 different fragrances in their batters and added them to the cupcake liners. I had plenty left over so was able to make little thin soaps in the flower molds as well. I sprinkled them with colored glitter to keep them straight as they all looked the same in the mold.
Sparkling Plum:
Christmas Wreath:
Bonfire Bliss:
Winter Wonderland:
Sparkling Poinsettias:
Cantaloupe Lily:
The Cantaloupe Lily is not a holiday scent but was a clearance item so I figured I ought to test it anyway. I must say, I loved all of the fragrances! That rarely happens. I'm really excited to watch them and see what happens in this next week before I can start soaping them.
