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!

Green Apple & Rose

One never knows when inspiration will hit. I was just laying in bed the other night, wiggly because I couldn't get to sleep, and then just boom there it was. I pictured this exact soap...color, shape, size...everything. Usually, I ponder the different parts of a soap for a while (sometimes a LONG while) before I come up with what I want to do. I had to make this soap immediately! So into the soap kitchen I went...well, I did wait until the next afternoon. :-)

This soap has a beautiful scent blend of tart and juicy granny smith apples, combined with delicate rose blossoms. I'm not much of a person for rose, but this fragrance totally works. There is something about the tartness of the apple that just makes it all come together.

This soap also features my new 'swirl in a swirl' method. A soap maker and friend watched the video and suggested I call it the Holly Swirl. I like the sound of that! The method consists of swirling two (or more of course) colors together and then using that swirl to swirl with another color. I love it! So fun! You know my brain is just running in overdrive now with all the new ideas that I have.






We received another heavy blanket of snow overnight and for some reason, the bright white beauty of it all always makes me want to make soap. I think it is because it makes my soaping area so nice and bright. I need to clean the house today but I may squeeze in some soap making first. :-D

Shame, Shame, Shame! :-)

Shame on me for neglecting my blog so much! I really do love my blog but it seems I've only had time for tidbits here and there, which makes Facebook and Twitter so much easier to post on. But I will try to be better I promise!

My most recent soap is my new batch of Rainbow soap. It is scented in a fresh, juicy pear scent. This is about my 6th batch of rainbow soap now. It is really quite a lot of work and so it is best to do it in a really big batch. I was still just a bit off on my batch size this time (I knew what I needed to do for it to be just right but got distracted, ha!) and so the bars are super huge again!











I have made several more soaps since I last posted. I've made a Lemongrass Avocado soap, a new one to my Nearly Natural line of soaps. I also remade Patchouli Rain. It is such a well loved fragrance. I should rename it as Patchouli can be a turn-off to some and this scent is just way more than patchouli. I don't have pictures of either of those two yet but I do have videos of those two if you want to see what they look like. My YouTube Channel

Here are some of the others:

A new batch of Princess Kisses - disks on the top instead of chunks - scented in a blend of fresh dew, exotic herbs, green grass, sparkling rain drops, and floral gardens - it's a very lovely tart scent and comparable to Herbal Essences shampoo





Fallen Leaves - a classy and acceptable year round scent blend of maple wood, new dawn blossoms, laurel, sweet clove, balsam, patchouli, and sandalwood -





Summer Love - a beautiful scent blend of raspberries, peaches, magnolias, lilies, cyclamen, and white musk -





Chocolate Oatmeal Cream - an unscented bar for my Nearly Natural line, loaded with cocoa butter, cream, colloidal oatmeal, with a cocoa powder swirl - also a remake -





J'Adore - compare to J'Adore by Dior - I've decided to keep this batch just for my daughter and I since we are big fans of this scent -





Beach by Bobbie Brown Type - A blend of sand, sea spray, salt, jasmine, and mandarin -





Finally, I made a few batches of Camo soap -





So there you have it! Some of these are already for sale at my Big Cartel and Etsy stores. Thank you so much for stopping by! I do hope you are having a wonderful day!

New Etsy Store

Hi everyone!

I wanted to let you all know that I have a new Etsy store! It has actually been up for about a month or so but it only had a few soaps listed. As of today, it has a full listing of my current soaps that are for sale. My main store will remain at Big Cartel, but I will try to keep Etsy updated the same.

Missouri River Soap on Etsy

Missouri River Soap on Big Cartel

The current soaps for sale are displayed on this video. Kaleidosoap is selling out quickly! Wild Mountain Honey and Lilacs In Bloom are both sold out, and I'm nearly sold out of several more.



In other news, Northern Missouri got hit by another considerably snow storm. This makes for 20 inches since last Thursday! Crazy talk! We had only had 6 inches TOTAL so far this year until these two snow storms hit. We're not used to this kind of snow and our poor city is struggling. Thankfully, we still have power and my husband has the ability to work from home and so we can look out on it and not be in it, except to play of course!

The view out of my front door this morning!



Orders are slightly delayed getting out as no mail service is running right now and we are being instructed to stay off of the roads.

I need to write a post about my new soaps but in the meantime I wanted to let you know about the new Etsy store. Thank you all!

Busy Busy!

I've been busy once again! Last week was all about transporting kids back and forth to the grandparent's house and cleaning and all that jazz. It was a great week but left little time for creating. I made these soaps just before things got hectic.




(Unfortunately, Blogger has changed the settings again and I haven't quite figured out how to choose to make the photo larger and centered.)

Captivated - a blend of sweet red raspberry syrup and newly bloomed lilacs. Now that the soap has had about 10 days to cure, I can now pick up on those individual notes but it still remains to be a more complex scent than those two notes. It is very Spring-like indeed. I did a mica swirl (as mastered and explained here by Emily of the Soap and Restless blog. I definitely have room to improve but I really like how it turned out.

I had made some plain colors for a Princess Kisses remake but I wasn't happy with the intensity of the colors so I made some soap balls with the soap instead. I added some cute little soap berries to the top of the remake of Pink Berry Mimosa.

I still had plenty of soap left so I rolled some more soap balls and mixed up some fun colors and made Polka Dot Paradise. It is scented in a white tea and apricot fragrance that is quite yummy and also very Spring-like.

I also gave banana soap a try. I made Banana Oatmeal Cream. It has an oatmeal, milk, and honey scent but it isn't the one that most of us are used to using. It has more of a baked bread scent. With the banana added, it seems very banana bread-like. It's yummy smelling! There is a bit of yellow colored soap in the middle and a bit on the top but it has blended in quite a bit. The soap has darkened a bit since this picture but really not a whole lot.



As always, you can find the videos on my YouTube channel.

A Couple of Weeks Ago

I made these soaps a couple of weeks ago and basically forgot to post about them. :-)

The first I did was a remake of Crushed. Instead of using melt and pour hearts, I used the little heart soaps I made from the leftover Kaleidosoap batter. I think I like the smaller hearts a lot better. I had made some multi-colored hearts and those were the most fun to use. This scent is a blend of sparkling oranges and lemons, with accents of fresh linen, violets, and jasmine. I added in some blood orange essential oil to take the orangeness up a notch.

Then I made a batch of Chocolate Oatmeal soap. There is no fragrance added to this one. This soap has brown sugar, colloidal oatmeal, double doses of cream and cocoa butter, and a cocoa powder swirl. I don't know about you, but I love to have a drizzle of chocolate syrup in my oatmeal every now and again. I eat oatmeal about once a year, and put chocolate in it about every other time. So yeah, it's been a couple of years but maybe tomorrow... :-) Sure does sound good after writing up this post!

As of tonight, all of my orders are caught up, all my soap dishes are washed, and my soaping room is organized again. Tomorrow is a day to play!

Super Bowl Super Soap Sale!