Finished Tropicana Liquid Soap

Here is the finished liquid soap. I used a green colourant and added Tropicana fragrance oil, it smells really fresh and fruity hehe. It smells a lot like lemon, which is why I chose green. Very summery but sadly summer's almost over. Not too sad though because I love autumn ^_^

I'm so proud and happy with the clarity, I poured some into this lotion bottle to use in the shower because I just can't wait to try it. It's in a lotion bottle because it's too thick for the foamer bottle hehe. Getting it that thick without a thickener took a lot of patience but it was worth it. The rest is sequestering and should hopefully get even clearer.

I've already tried some on my hands and they feel so soft now, I'm quite surprised it seems a lot milder than my bar soaps. Which makes me ponder on the thought that it really matters which oils you use and not so much how much you superfat. I will be remembering that when I formulate a new bar soap recipe. More shea and olive maybe? I really wish sunflower oil soaps weren't so prone to rancidity because I'm starting to really love that little oil.

On another note I spent some time today making some vegan chickpea curry, I used this recipe from the Vegetarian Society. There are lots of other recipes around though with a few variations , I decided to leave out the almonds because I'm not a fan of nuts. Had some for dinner today and it was beautiful! If you like spice but not too hot and fresh flavours I suggest you try this. I made the whole 12 portions and am freezing the other 11. I think I will make this a regular because it was just so tasty ^_^

More coming next week, hope you had a good weekend! Take care all :) xxx

Et Voila! *happy success dance*

Just a small update today, thought I would share my immense happiness at finally getting my liquid soap clear. As I write this it's happily diluting in the crockpot, a beautiful deep amber. The picture above is my clarity test. For the oils I used castor, coconut and sunflower, can't wait to try it tomorrow, I might even do a lather test vid ^_^ Take care all :) xxx

Kitchen Update

Here is the kitchen update, I wanted a fondant fancy/cupcake theme for my kitchen and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. It's already my favourite room in the flat hehe.

About stearic streaks: I wanted to clarify the stearic streaks I mentioned in my video. Palm oil contains stearic acid and this settles to the bottom of your oil. This can cause the streaks you see in my soap (purely aesthetic) and/or acceleration when making your soap. Because I was making an unscented batch of soap the acceleration didn't matter so much to me. However it is best to melt down your palm oil and stir it before using it otherwise you will have not much stearic acid at the top and too much at the bottom. For example your first batch will be much softer than your last batch.

So there will be a liquid soap update soon and hopefully bubble bars sometime next week. Take care :) xxx

Shopping, Sims and Oblivion

My order has been shipped, was nothing fancy just some coconut and castor oils for my liquid soap but I did also order some surfactants. Thinking of giving bubble bars a go, might be fun ^_^ I didn't order any fragrance oils because I've got a few that I still need to use up. Tropicana being one of them, it's not my favourite because it's overpowered by a melon scent and I was hoping for more of a tropical fruit medley but it's not unpleasant.

On another note, Sims Social has just been released and it's quite addictive. I'm usually not a facebook games fan, preferring mmos over any other type of game, but this has been quite fun. The thing that I think is appealing about it would be that you just play for about 10 minutes every now and then throughout the day. Meaning it's very easy to keep the game going with little effort. The reason I didn't enjoy any previous Sims games is because they got tired very quickly, I felt that my little sims were just too high maintenance.

Another game I've been playing attempting to play is Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. I wanted to play this after seeing the trailer for Skyrim, then saw Oblivion and was really excited to try it. I need something to play to fill in the gap before Star Wars comes out hehe. So I played for about half an hour and just felt so terrible, I think this is the motion sickness I've heard other people talk about. It felt like my head was filled with cotton wool..ewww. I think this is because I'm used to mainly moving in games with my WASD keys, in this game you move forward with your W key and swing yourself around with the mouse. It was just so uncomfortable for me. So I don't know if I'll be able to play Oblivion or not, if anyone reading this knows of a mod where I can use the WASD keys for total movement (long shot) do let me know :)

Anyway I'll be updating soon, take care :) xxx

Long time no see, eh?

It's been over a month since I updated, it has been a very long, busy, warm month but now the flat is starting to shape up into my sweet little home. The kitchen is almost finished and I'll be uploading a video of it soon to my youtube channel. The living room is coming along slowly but surely, this week it's had a break so I could finally clean out the closets. My clothes have been in bags for this entire time hehe.

I think my soap withdrawal is reaching a frenzied peak so tomorrow I think I'll order some nice supplies, yay! I'm thinking of continuing my work on liquid soap for the meantime, to perfect it and work out the kinks with the clarity.

Check back soon for soap and decorating updates, take care in the meanwhile :) xxx