Ickle Update

I've been real quiet while I've been experimenting with my liquid soap mainly because there hasn't been much success hehe. Tomorrow I will be making another batch of liquid soap and a batch of body butters and hopefully posting with some photos.

My good friend came to see me and I gave her a bag with a selection of my products and she seems to be really pleased, yay! ^_^ Also someone who I had given some soaps to before has asked to buy my soaps which was totally out of the blue. I won't take any money but will give them the soaps they asked for as a gift. It was totally out of the blue and I'm so happy to know that someone thinks my soaps are worth paying for. I want to thank them and my friend for being so supportive on my soaping venture!

One last piece of news, this Saturday I will be having some custom soap molds made for me and I am so excited and can't wait. So hopefully quite a few updates over the next weeks, hope you're doing well too fellow soap lovers.

Frankenstein!

Woooohhh seeeee myyyy creaaaation! :-o Hehe I'm kidding, here's my new soap. I thought I'd try out the soap ball embeds. The balls are made from a batch that almost failed but I saved it and made balls from it ^_^ Click on the picture above to watch the youtube video of me cutting it. In the video I use my brand new soap cutter (read dough scraper) to slice my nice even slices. I'm so happy with it, it really makes a difference to the look of the soap. I hated my wonkey slices hehe. The embeds are scented with a creamy floral fragrance while the main part of the soap is a mixture of fragrances I put together. Overall it's a clean, refreshing unisex scent with a bit of spice that I adore and can't wait to make again.

I'm sorry I've been slow on the posting but I blame it on the mail as my supplies seemed to take forever to arrive. I'm still waiting on my potassium hydroxide at the moment but I'm sure that will arrive early next week and the posts can start rolling again, yay ^_^ So I'll say bye for now and I'll be back soon with more, enjoy the video :D

New Massage Bars

Busy weekend for me and haven't had time to do much soaping at all. I did get time to make these new massage bars though. I am really happy with my recipe now and think I'll be using these instead of my lotion at night time, for some really deep moisturising. I've added some olive oil this time. They are scented with an orchid fragrance, it has such a deep scent, it reminds me of hot summer. Of course there is my clumsy gold glitter as usual hehe ^_^ I am really pleased with the colour, I was playing around with it for ages not sure of where I was going with it and I ended up with this dusky rose colour.

I'm off to write down my batch notes so I don't forget how to get this gorgeous colour. Before I go a quick note on what's coming soon. I've got a gift of supplies heading it's way to me and some other new bits and bobs. So soon I will be doing a few posts on liquid soaps, I have a new bar soap idea I want to try out and I'll be trying some body butters and creams! Lots to do as soon as I get my parcels, can't wait ^_^

Cutting Video

Here is my first cutting video ^_^ I feel quite nervous putting it out there but I see so many and I wanted to try it too hehe. I really do need to get a better camera, I promise my kitchen isn't that yellow.

I did decide to make the bay rum soap and lotion and here is the soap. I didn't realise how much I would love this fragrance when I smelled the bottle but in the soap and lotion it's even better. In the video I just cut my soap but I do talk about my lotion too a little bit. I'm pleasantly surprised at my swirl, I didn't think it would reach that deep or that rich a colour. I did get a tiny bit of ash on the top :( but not too bad. I was prepared for this to seize up but I had a lot more time to work with than I anticipated. I could have done an in the pot swirl but now I'm glad I didn't because I've really impressed myself with this one hehe.

About the lotion, on the soap making forum I expressed my skepticism about pouring it into the bottle instead of piping. I'm glad I'm not stubborn enough to not test things because now I love pouring instead of piping. It was so much easier and faster, plus I didn't waste as much product. I actually got a fifth bottle out of my batch instead of the normal four! I would now definitely recommend pouring. The only thing you need to watch out for is your temperature, most preservatives don't handle temperatures above 50°C. In the video I mention Optiphen which can be used at or below 60°C.

White Tea

Yesterday I was working on using fragrance oils that accelerate. I used a white tea fragrance, that is supposed to cause light acceleration. This scent is beautiful! It's such a delicate feminine fragrance, it's floral with some fruity notes, I love it. I made two batches of this, the first one I messed up and I poured it back into the pot and put on the stove to cook it, it came out lovely but not what I was aiming for. So I made a second batch and worked a lot faster. I poured into my flower silicone molds and I was surprised at how hot they got. They started to sweat a little about an hour after pouring so I popped them in the freezer. Unmolded today and I'm happy with them :D

I think you might be wondering what is that orange stuff? Hehe that's the gold glitter I sprinkled inside the molds, when I popped the soaps out the glitter had stained the soaps orange :(

I think when I make these again I will put them in the fridge after I pour to keep the temperatures down. The photo is taken with the soaps half sitting in the mold because they're still a little damp, I want them to dry out a bit.

Apart from the minor sweating and they glitter gloom I think I did pretty well. I used to add the fragrance to the oils before the lye and had a few problems this way, with ricing and separation. This time I added at a really light trace and preferred this, I felt that I had more control over the fragrance. Also I didn't have to worry so much about tracing and lye mixing, because you deal with the lye and fragrance separately. By the time it comes to adding fragrance you know your lye is thoroughly mixed and you're happy with your trace. Then hand stir in the fragrance quickly and pour ^_^

I think I will be trying bay rum fragrance next, some friends have asked for a masculine scent for their lotion; I thought I'd do a bay rum soap and lotion bundle for them. So maybe some bay rum pictures next or maybe something else, I'm not sure yet :-P

Captivating Cupcakes :o

So I'm late with the posting of these but at least these are better photos than the last ones hehe :D I thought these were going to be a fail batch as I had a disaster moment with the bases but I really like them now. I had put the bases into the oven to gel and left them in too long. When I took them out they had a skin on the top, I scooped that off and underneath was a lovely gel-y middle. When I unmolded the soaps the bases had lots of tiny bubbles throughout them and I was so disappointed but looking at them now, they really do look like mini cupcakes with the bubbles, just like cake sponge. A little different to the usual smooth bases but it's growing on me. The whipped soap frosting isn't amazing hehe, but it does make each of them really individual. I have been practicing with the piping though, here's a photo:

Yep it does look like a walnut whip (politest way to put it) but it's kind of getting there... I used a sandwich bag like I use for my lotions for this. Still haven't got a good piping bag yet. I can't wait to get one though and really get creative with the frosting. I'm also on the lookout for some embed molds for my soaps. I sprinkled these with glitter too, I'm getting so trigger happy with my glitters hehe.

About the fragrance, these were scented with Captivate, hence the title ^_^ It's description: Captivate - Imagine the perfect blend of vanilla, amber, sandalwood and amyris with a cologne-like heart of light jasmine and soft musk . I think that it smells very nutty though, I don't think I'll be soaping with it again, also it made my purple bases brown :( It's definitely not an unpleasant scent, just not my favourite.

Anywho today I was busy soaping and when those are unmolded I'll get a picture right away this time :D and I'll post those tomorrow at some point, hopefully not as late as today. Oh dear it's getting light out now, toodle pip! ^_^

New Pear Palm Free

Yesterday I tried a new base recipe using no palm oil and here is the result. I might try to do a lather test clip with this one once it's cured a bit. I have of course already tried it hehe but my camerawoman isn't here today :P For this recipe I used coconut, olive, castor and peach kernel oils with some cocoa butter ^_^ I'm hoping this is going to be a nice conditioning bar and I hope I don't lose too many bubbles. It's scented with pear and it smells so fresh, very summery.

I tried to do some textured 'Lyn Tops', her blog and here's her tutorial vid. It was very kind of her to share this on the soapmaking forums. I have learned so much from everybody there so thank you to all of them ^_^ It's a great place to learn and share anything to do with soap making and bath/body products :D

I'm having a real hard time getting good pictures, by good pictures I mean that they actually look like what I'm photographing, at the moment due to having two quite bad cameras. I think I'll be investing in a better camera soon so please bare with me and the rubbish photos hehe. I put some tissue paper underneath and around the soap so I could get as true a colour of the soap as possible.

Today I'm kind of halfway through making some more cupcake soaps, and I will be posting pics of them tomorrow, hopefully they come out nice ^_^