Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July to all my American friends and followers! I thought I would take advantage of some down time to update the good ol' blog!

Ok, let's see. The last post showed Champagne Summer and the latest batch of Smooches in the mold. Here are the cut pics. A little note, I'm struggling with my camera to take any decent pictures. I'm trying to remedy that situation but it is going to take a bit of time. :-)

Champagne Summer - a blend of champagne, ginger ale, raspberries, peaches, magnolias, lilacs, and lilies. It's so pretty! It's fruity, floral, and fizzy!

Smooches - scented in a dupe of Victoria's Secret Bombshell which has notes of grapes, passion fruit, peonies, orchids, and greenery.

I also made a couple of new soaps at the end of last week.

Ocean Wave - an ocean scent that is bordering on masculine. The fragrance has notes of sea moss, sea salt, and green vetiver. I don't pick up on any floral notes in this one.

Summer Melon - I LOVE THIS ONE!!! I am just in love with the scent and with the design. It is scented in a blend of cantaloupe, watermelon, apple, and grapefruit. It is so fruity and beautiful! The neon colors are so fun!

I've also been working on some new wax designs. This is my favorite because I'm nutty about Cotton Candy. I calling it I Heart Cotton Candy. ;-)

Here are a couple of other things I've been playing around with. I made Cotton Candy Smileys and Cotton Candy Berry Birthday Cake.

Coming up this Sunday I will be listing the returning favorites Rainbow Soap and Green Clover & Aloe. New soaps listing will be Rootbeer Float and Sideshow.

Happy 4th of July everyone! Now let's go blow stuff up! :-)

I'm Back!

Hi all! I'm back! I took a bit of a forced break and now I'm back and just so refreshed and energized. Sometimes forced breaks are great things! It has been about 4 weeks now since I started getting some back pain. It took a while to figure out that my back pain was caused by kidney stones. Once we were able to figure that out, I started drinking massive amounts of water and began taking an all natural supplement to help get rid of them. This past Sunday was the first time that I have felt like my normal self. It's been a great week! I'm high on life again. :-)

It took a while to catch up on orders, bevel waiting soaps, organize my soap room, get some scented wax brittles made for this Sunday's listings, and get all my soaping gear washed up and ready to go. I knew I was feeling better because I have been daydreaming about what my next batches would be. I knew pink and purple had to be involved. Here are the first two soaps made!

Remake of Smooches on the left and a new fragrance blend called Champagne Summer on the right.

Smooches is now pink and white (instead of various shades of pink) and is scented in a dupe of VS Bombshell. It is a soft and beautiful blend of grapes, passion fruit, peonies, orchids, and greenery. It is a customer favorite.

Champagne Summer is a pink, purple, and blue soap embedded with soap balls and has a scent blend of three of my favorite fragrances. They blended together wonderfully. The scent blend combines notes of champagne, ginger ale, raspberries, peaches, magnolias, lilies, and lilacs. I just love it! I really enjoyed the champagne/ginger ale scent in my Love & Bubbles soap, but I LOVE it as a blend.

I get asked quite often about how I make my soap balls look so smooth and round. I already have a couple of videos on YouTube showing my process but I've changed it up a bit so decided to do a new video on how I make them. You can watch that video here if you are interested. Also on my channel you will find the making videos for Smooches and Champagne Summer.

Before I went on my little forced and uncomfortable vaca, :-), I had also made several batches of soaps that I never posted about here. I remade Green Clover & Aloe and I also made a Rootbeer Float scented soap. It's super dark but really delicious smelling! I don't have any pictures of those yet.

Sideshow was a fun soap to make and I named it that because it's wild and wacky. Well, not really but it has a fun design combining a couple different techniques. The fragrance is supposed to be a fruit loops scent but I heard it smelled more of Skittles. I definitely got that scent OOB (out of bottle) but once soaped, it's basically a lime-based soap. It's still nice, but not quite what I was expecting. It also happened to accelerate and discolor when it wasn't supposed to to that either. So yeah...go figure. :-) The design reminds me of something out of a Dr. Suess book.

I also made my biggest Rainbow batch yet! It is equal to 4 regular loaves. I nearly have it all beveled and resting on the soap shelf. That job takes a while! Oh! The comparison loaf in the picture is a batch of Old Fashioned Iced Tea soap. I forgot about that one!

So there you have it! That is what has been going on in my world over the last month. I have some special holiday items being listed this Sunday in the celebration of Independence Day! I've kept them hush hush in hopes that it will be a bit of surprise! I'm so excited to share them with you on Sunday!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Kaleidosoap and More

At the end of the last post, I showed a picture of my newest batch of Kaleidosoap just out of the mold. It is such a fun soap! The colors turned out just as I'd hoped.





It is scented in a bright and fruity scent combining notes of dark plum, ripe pears, juicy berries, bright cantaloupe, apricot nectar, and tropical coconut, with accents of lilac, lily, amber, and vanilla. It is a custom blend and it varies just a bit every time I make it. Just like the design is a mish mosh of colors, the scent is a mish mosh of scents and I enjoy varying it up just a bit each time I make it. There was so much interest in this soap that I decided to get another batch made right away so that they can be listed together.




Kaleidosoap is due to be listed on June 2nd.




These next two sure were fun to make and cut! I just oogle and sniff them all the time! :-)

Candied Watermelon Apricot - sweet watermelon candy combines with juicy, ripe apricot for soap that just screams summer!




Sweet Pineapple Herb - another summery scent blend of sweet and juicy pineapple with fresh, green cilantro. It seems an odd combination but it works so well!




I haven't had the time to make any soap in over a week but I am planning a soaping extravaganza on Friday! I can't wait!

Having Fun!

I love this whole soap making thing! Anytime I get to make soap is a fun time!

Unfortunately, we just rarely get any sun anymore so it has been a while since I've been able to do my picture set up and take product photos. Really ridonkulous! So these pics will just have to work for now.

The peachy one on the left is Savannah Peach Bellini. It is a delightful blend of sweet Georgia peaches and sparkling white wine. Really yummy scent! The soap balls look sorta like maraschino cherries I think!





This other one is Pink Lemonade. I planned to do a 'Holly Swirl' with the pink and yellow but the soap was getting thick and I had to scrap that idea. I should have made it pink really, but I may just change the name instead. :-D The scent is as the name says, tart and juicy lemonade accented with strawberries and raspberries. The sugar note is very prominent and so it isn't just a lemon scented soap.





I made a new batch of Crema y Cacao on Thursday as well as the colors to embed onto Princess Kisses. I have yet to unmold Crema and I desperately hope it is not a problem. I'm going to need a bigger mold or just do the Crema in a different shape altogether. The 18 bar mold just isn't big enough at this point. I want to work smarter not harder!

The three whitish loaves with the multi-color soap chunks on the top is the Princess Kisses batch that I made on Friday. I have made this soap so many times at this point and every time it makes me so happy. I love the scent and love the colors with the white on top.

The big loaf of soap is a remake of Kaleidosoap. I am so giddy about this one as the colors turned out just as I had imagined! The last batch was more intense like my Rainbow soap and I wanted Kaleidosoap to be brighter and more of a medium intensity. The scent is a custom blend and is fresh and fruity, combining notes of dark plum, ripe pears, juicy berries, bright cantaloupe, apricot nectar, and tropical coconut, with accents of lilac, lily, amber, and vanilla. I love it!





I'm very excited to go get some work done this afternoon! Thank you for stopping by and I do hope you have a wonderful Sunday!

That Is A Lot of Soap!

I have made a lot of soap in the last week or so! I hadn't made soap in about three weeks so I really needed to get caught up and get lots made.

The first I made was Spanish Garden soap. It's a lovely and unique blend of dark leafy greens, cherries, peaches, pineapples, coconuts, jasmine, violets, vanilla, and musk. I have made this several times before, some with a six color swirl, and I called it Fruitylicious. Here's the thing though, I've noticed that all batches after the very first has had a bit of a yellow hue to it. Odd that the first batch did not but all the rest did. So as any soap maker will do, I adjusted my thought on it and put a Spanish spin on it. I think the colors turned out quite nicely.





This one is Coconut Rose. It is a blend a mixed myself of ripe coconut and wild Denali mountain rose. I am so impressed with the scent once soaped. It almost has a touch of cinnamon to it oddly enough. I colored this with some rose clay and a bit of pink mica to help it along.





Now this one didn't quite turn out as I planned. Can you tell? :-) It is called Wake Up! and has a very refreshing essential oil blend of orange, grapefruit, lime, may chang, peppermint, spearmint, fir needle, and anise. I'm really impressed with the scent. It's very uplifting! I thought to add a bit of espresso powder and it sorta back-fired on me. Those 'freckles' as I prefer to call them, are totally fine. It's just a halo from the coffee color bleeding around it. It retrospect, I think I have read that moistened and drained coffee grounds tend to work the best to avoid this effect. I doubt you can see it from the picture but I also attempted to use a bit of paprika to color a portion and that really didn't pay off either. So yeah...smells great...will do a different design next time.





This is my new Scrubby Soap. It's meant for gardeners and mechanics and all manner of general messes that need that extra scrub to take care of. I scented it in a wasabi-type scent and let me tell you...LOVE. Out of the bottle it smelled very much like that yummy ginger dipping sauce that you get at the Japanese steakhouse. But after I soaped it, it smells very much like tomato leaves. I may well have a new scent addiction with this one. I loved cleaning up these bars. There is something so satisfying to me about the gritty texture and sound when I run the bars across the planer and the veggie peeler along the sides to bevel. Yeah, I may be a bit odd, but I at least I love the process, ya know?





Coconut Pear is also another scent creation of mine. The design turned out very dessert-like and I love it! The scent is very sweet. To me, this smells like the shampoo I use which is Nexxus Therappe Luxurious Moisture Shampoo. It has a delightful tropical fruity scent and this soap smells just like it. To me, that is. Your experience may vary. ;-)





I love the cute soap shreds/curls on top. Those came from shredded a bit of a Chocolate Oatmeal Cream soap bar. I think it looks like toasted coconut.





This is a remake and I punched up the colors a bit from last time and I like it even more. This is a dupe of Victoria Secret's bombshell and I've had many requests to remake it.





Here we go with a HUGE customer favorite called Patchouli Rain. It is a unisex scent blend of fresh rain, earthy patchouli, lily of the valley, cyclamen, fresh ozone, and sweet citrus. I've said it before and will continue to say it, even if you do not like patchouli, don't turn your nose up at this scent. It is AMAZING! It is in my top five scents ever and it bumped something off to get up there. It's wonderful! The first time I made it, I made it with some darker colors and loved it though the lather was a bit blue-grey. The second time I made it, I thought to lighten the colors a bit. Well, the fragrance riced and the colors and mica lines didn't quite work out. It still sold out in less than a few days. I re-evaluated my recipe and jumped in their big and made a double batch. It turned out great!





Finally, we have my newest batch of Black Raspberry Vanilla. I stuck with my most favorite design for this scent but punched it up with the pink color as well. I like to incorporate a bit of apricot kernel powder into the base. It is lightly exfoliating and definitely my go-to choice for exfoliants.





So there you have it! I would say I am caught up, but I am not. I made three more batches last night! Only one was a remake and it had a different design so it barely counts! Today is my beyond wonderful husband's birthday. My creation of the day is a New York-Style cheesecake. I'm pretty sure I'm going to make some fresh strawberry sauce to go with it!

As always, you can find lots of videos at my YouTube channel. Don't forget to 'like' me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter. I will start listing these soaps in about four weeks. You can find a link to my stores over there to the right. :-)

Two New Ones

Happy Tuesday! I hope everyone is having a wonderful day!

I wanted to show you my two new soaps. The first is called Summer Vacation and it is a lovely blend that I mixed myself. I am trying to use up some of my samples and small amounts and so blended 5 different fragrances for this one. I mixed a Beach by Bobbie Brown type fragrance, with Aqua Type fragrance, a bit of Ocean Breeze, with some sweetgrass and another green ivy type scent. It smells so good! The Beach by Bobbie Brown is dominant which is great but there are those subtle sweet, fresh, green, scents backing it up. Love it!





This one here is called Crisp & Clean and it is another fresh scent blend, but it is a clean cotton and fresh air type of scent. Once again, I love this mix! I like clean cotton/laundry scents but they usually give me a headache. Although this one is still strong, it doesn't give me a headache and that's a super duper bonus! :-) The top has tiny blue jojoba beads mixed in. I love the little pop of color that they give.





I do not have a making of video for the Summer Vacation soap. That fragrance totally riced on me! What is up with the ricing fragrances? The soap gremlins are on the loose! I can't even tell you how many people are struggling right now with their batches ricing...I have been getting comment after comment and each person has had several different batches go awry. Anyway...I did whip it back into submission but I'd already turned off the camera in frustration. So no video on that one but I do have a making of video for Crisp & Clean. The cutting video for both is going up now. I've found it easier not to embed my videos here as it makes it difficult for my page to load. I will make a point of putting some sort of link over on the right somewhere...once I figure out how to do that. :-) In the meantime, click HERE to go to my YouTube channel.

My Tiger Stripe Attempt

This was not my best of batches. Let me just tell you that up front! I scented this batch in Black Raspberry Vanilla which is such an easy fragrance to work with. First off, I think I took advantage of an easy fragrance and compensated by over-blending my batter. It ended up being quite thick. From there, it felt a bit warm so I decided to put it on the heating pad and gel the loaf. Then I overheated it! HA! *sigh* It was just one of those batches. I'm still happy with the design, but the soap has a mottled texture that I am not used to having since I don't gel mostly and don't have to worry about overheating.

I present to you my Tiger Swirl for Amy's Soap Challenge - Week 1!




So as it turns out, I am very low on supplies, especially fun fragrances to work with, so I hope I'm still able to continue with the challenges.


Make sure to check out Amy's blog to see more entries!