Happy New Year!

Happy new year, hope you enjoyed your holidays. As soon as I could I got into the kitchen and got soaping my first milk soap- coconut milk. I wanted a very mild soap so this has a high level of olive oil with a little coconut and castor for bubbles. I also wanted a small amount of exfoliation so i added tea leaves to one of the layers. I have to say I'm very pleased with it and the scent of coconut from the milk is beautiful much more pleasant than a fragrance oil. I'm also pleased with the purple I got, I've never had much luck with purple previously and the swirls made me smile too ^_^ Next time I think I would make this soap with maybe lavender fragrance or essential oil, typical purple scent hehe.

Cupcakes and Cream!

This is what I've been up to for the past few days. Cold Process cupcake soaps and my first cream soap. Both I'm super happy with. My cupcakes are scented with essential oils and I'm going to be calling them 'Resolution'. They'll be going in the Christmas gift baskets along with 'Nippy' :D There are some calendula petals in the base (although in the photographs the soaps are still in their molds) and some petals sprinkled on the top with a dusting of gold glitter.

I designed my own simple recipe for my first cream soap and couldn't wait for the rotting period before trying a scoop to bathe with today. Oh! How lovely cream soap is! And it should get better after the rotting period (don't like that word hehe, seems to be a word similar to curing for the cream soap world). I got a very thick, creamy, foamy lather with it that was so soft on my skin. The whole batch is tinted with a tiny but of purple and scented with waterlily fragrance oil and lavender essential oil. Strange combination I know but I was using up leftovers and the result is quite a pretty fragrance.

Anywho that's all for now, hope you had a good weekend, take care all :) xxx

First attempt: Framed soap

Yesterday I was busy trying my hand at framed soap, and today I got to cut it. Above are the photos I took. I did do a cutting video but didn't like it because I had my arm in the way most of the time - silly billy. I named this soap Autumn Grace. The photos of it in the mold are just after pouring, so the colours are a little more vibrant. I tried to do a copper and green autumnal feel but my copper was more orangey than I'd have liked it to be. I'm still proud of my top swirl and it's scented with a Chanel no. 5 type which is heavenly. I'm pretty pleased with the frame, even though it's uneven I still think it's good for a first try ^_^

This soap is completely cold process, vegan and palm free. This palm-free recipe is what I'm keeping now, I am ridiculously pleased with it hehe. I smile every time I think about my lather. I did do a lather test video today which I'll try to edit and post tonight if I'm not too tired.

Take care all :) xx

Cherub

I finally got to use my new big mould. I made an unscented batch because I've never worked with such a large amount of soap before. Even though there's no fragrance I really enjoyed making this. It was going to be plain white/cream coloured but I added some pink and silver glitter at the last minute. I cut it as soon as I woke up this morning so no cutting video today but I took lots of pictures ^_^ I thought I'd name this Cherub and use this design in the future not sure which fragrance I'd use for this though. Any suggestions? :)

Custom Moulds!

Here they are, my new custom made moulds! Wow I am so happy hehe :D They took a long time to make, almost a whole day, the daylight was almost gone by the time they were finished. Although I think most of the time it was just us planning, calculating and perfecting them ^_^ A family friend made them for me and made them to my exact requirements, I feel so lucky to have someone so talented to do this for me. The large one holds a little over 6lbs and the small one holds a little over 2lbs. I asked for them to be a little over so that I'd have the exact amount of bars I wanted with the two end bars as extras. I'm planning on painting these moulds to really make them my own and have been working on some designs this evening. These are sort of prototypes if these work well I'll get 2 more made exactly the same, if not we'll tweak the design a little bit and have 2 different ones. I'm planning on making my first large batch of CP soap in the big mould tomorrow if I get the time. It will also be my first try at a beer soap ^_^


I know I promised liquid soap but I made my 3rd batch of it today and it has still turned out cloudy. I'm at the end of my tether with perfecting this liquid soap hehe. It soaps beautifully I just wish I could get the aesthetics right. I also promised body butters but I had some very unexpected news (good news) on Wednesday so things are quite far behind as priorities have all jumped places.

So hopefully beer soap and body butters tomorrow, liquid soap if I am uber efficient with my time hehe :-P

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

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 ^_^

Rebatching

Just thought I'd share a picture of my first successful rebatch. In the past I had an awful time rebatching, I added too much water. This time I wasn't so trigger happy with the water and I'm actually quite pleased with how this came out. I really like that some chunks of soap stayed white and the texture is very smooth inside. It's scented with a fragrance oil I was really excited about but it accelerated really quickly and I was so sad I decided to save it because it smells sooo good :D It's description on Gracefruit: "...top notes of black orchid and cinnamon, a heart of Mysore sandalwood and clove on a base of amber, Tahitian vanilla, and Egyptian musk." It's kind of luxurious and feminine, I love it.

This is what it looked like halfway through the rebatch, I think it probably was a little too dry on hindsight but it turned out good so no matter :D Looks like mashed potatoes hehe.

Honey for my Honey

Yesterday was a very busy day for me, five batches of soap! This batch is a special batch though :D My boyfriend requested spa bars, I made them for him before and now it's the only soap he'll use for his face ^_^ I used a honey scent for these, it's a very creamy, comforting fragrance. The salt I use for my spa bars is a marine salt from Israel, it's naturally evaporated by the sun and then washed in purified salt water. This recipe is a little different to my previous bars; these are made with a much higher superfat and less salt, to make them kinder on his skin and a little more bubbly. I wonder if he'll like these ones better?

Lather Testing!

So I said I'd try to show the lather from my new recipe and here it is. I'm really happy with my bubbles and lather so far. My mum (the awesome camerawoman :D) said she really likes it too. But we're both a bit worried that it feels just a little bit drying. I think it might be because it was only cut yesterday (impatient hehe) and that it will be better when it has finished curing. If it still feels as drying after the cure I'll be tweaking my recipe again. Would love to know what you think about the lather though, enough bubbles? I haven't tried adding sugar yet but I might consider it. I'll be back posting tonight or tomorrow with my new bath melt recipe, running out of melts to give away ^_^

Test Bars Cut

Soon after I woke this morning I went downstairs to see if my test batch was ready for cutting and it was ^_^ Here they are, can't wait to try them.

Tangerine Poppy Kitchen Soap

A few days ago I wanted to make a fresh smelling scrubby soap for the kitchen and I also wanted to try in the pot swirling. I'm very pleased with it, I didn't expect such a unique swirl, it reminds me of a catherine wheel firework. I used Tangerine FO and poppy seeds to exfoliate. I want to wait until this one has completely cured before I try it and I'm so excited. I added the poppy seeds a bit too early but it didn't seem to matter, they were meant to be added at trace. In case you want to try the same I used 8tsp of blue poppy seeds in a 2lb batch.

Whipped Soap

So today I made my first attempt at whipped soap to frost my Love Spell Cupcakes. I haven't decided on a piping set yet, so it's a little more messy than I would have liked but the experience was still fun with lots of giggles. I used the method found at . I used 50/50 Palm and Coconut Oil and no fragrance or colour. The bases are scented with Love Spell FO and coloured pink. I used poppy seeds as sprinkles. Overall I'm very pleased with the results, I thought it was going to go a lot worse. Can't wait for them to set ^_^