Chestnut & Clove

 

Here's a 2lb batch of soap made with the Chestnut & Clove fragrance using the recipe I used here.

The colour swirled on the top is a combination of some powdered clove and bronze mica, mixed in with about 3/4 of a cup of soap. I could have gone a little darker, next time I will try cappuccino mica. Anyway, the fragrance behaved nicely and seems to be holding up. Thanks for looking!

Edit: I've added a couple of photos below, one of this soap cut and one of another batch of this soap with a different swirl on top using Cappuccino Mica (the original soap was done with Bronze Mica).



Soy Wax Melts - No Cheating This Time

 I've gotten some soy wax flakes in the store so I've made some wax melts without using the pre scented beads- see this post. I've just tried a few small batches, so for 5 melts using the

Milky Way Tart Molds I melted  70 grams of wax. The recommended amount of scent to add is 10%, I may have went a little over. Its hard to weigh out 7 grams of scent and I do tend to get carried away in the scent department. The pumpkins are fragranced with Pumpkin Crunch Cake.

My sister donated some orange wax from the remnants of a soy candle. I included that in my weight. To melt I did 45 seconds in the microwave twice with a little rest in between, you don't want the container to get too hot, or the wax.



I had a silicone ice cube tray that I tried. These ones I did with a Pear and Apple Jack blend. Of the five melts I made, only two came out without the leaf breaking off. I'd say silicone works OK but be careful of the shape.

 The pumpkins have a little bloom on them which I'm pretty sure is from the excess fragrance

The soy wax is 2lbs for $7.99 and will make 65 to 70 wax tarts depending on the size. These would make great homemade Christmas Gifts. Thanks for stopping by!

Coconut Lime Verbena Soap

Last weekend I tried out a new to me (and to the store) fragrance in a batch of soap to see how it would behave. I am  happy to say there was no accelerated trace, seizing or ricing. I used a full seven teaspoons in a batch that was a about four pounds and could really notice the fragrance when I was cutting this last night. I fill two 3lb loaf molds a little over 1/2 way each. Since I didn't fill the molds to the top, I've cut the bars a little thicker. As you can see, most of the soap was coloured with a green oxide, I did remove "some" to colour with some yellow lake- that was after I had fragranced the whole batch. I stirred some poppy seeds into the yellow soap and sprinkled some on top. The recipe below is my usual from The Soapmaker's Companion. If you're trying a new scent, its good to use an old recipe :) BTW as per the title of this post, the scent I used was Coconut Lime Verbena.

Soap Essentials Bar II from The Soapmaker's Companion

201g sodium hydroxide
538g distilled water
595g olive oil
454g coconut  oil
396g palm oil (I only use sustainable palm)

Temps between 80 to 100F.

I have a few more new fragrances to try, the next one I'm planning to use is Chestnuts & Clove, so I'm thinking white with a little powdered clove in a swirl? Thanks for stopping by.




 

Chocolate Chip Cookie

 My latest order of fragrances included a sample of Chocolate Chip Cookie & I had been wanting to make a soap with a little bronze mica, so I thought the two would be a perfect pairing. The new fragrances (limited edition) are Chestnuts & Clove, Coconut Lime Verbena, Eggnog and Rice Flower & Shea, they are listed here on the site. My next order will include some Chocolate Chip Cooke for sure! To see how I made this soap click here.

 

Ornaments Bath Bombs

 

I used this recipe with out any colour to make some bath bombs in the Milky Way Ornaments mold. I brushed a little mica on after they had dried. I think they will be cute in gift baskets for Christmas, I just need to find the right size of cellophane bag for them. Has anyone else started thinking about what they're making for the Holidays?

Soy Wax Tart Melts & New Molds

We have some Milky Way Wax Tart molds at the store and on the web site so I decided to try a few of them out. I didn't have any suitable wax on hand so I melted some of our Beanpod Wax Beads.

 I used McIntosh Apple, Cinnamon Bun and Pumpkin Pie. The molds have eight cavities and one tube of the wax beads will fill five. The amount of beads seems to vary a little so I just divided the melted wax evenly to make five tarts. In my microwave two bursts of 45 seconds was enough to melt almost all of the beads and a few little swishes of the measuring cup I had them in finished the melting process. They harden in about an hour.

Aren't they cute? You could also make small bath bombs or bath melts in these molds.

The picture of the jars below isn't great but these little glass jars from Superstore each hold five wax tarts perfectly.

Here is a picture of the mold I did not try. I think this butterfly would be cute with a fruity scent like Lemon, Lime or Orange-Vanilla, yum!  Thanks for looking!

Blue & Green Dolphins - Playing with Colour

Here's a variation on an old post from 2010 using multiple pours of coloured soap. You need as many hands as you have colours because they are poured at the same time. For the variation, I filled my molds part way with some Goats Milk melt and pour and then added the colours, which in this case was only two. The shape of the mold helped the colours to stay separate, I really like the way these Dolphin soaps turned out.

 You can see in the background that I have a tray mold in a cookie sheet of cold water, that's for the leftover soap. I melted a full 2lbs of Goat Milk soap and a 1/4lb of each colour.

Here are some Dolphins having their close up.

 I poured the left over Goat Milk soap in to the tray mold and then the coloured soaps, one colour at each end.

These flowers are a bit of a fail. I had my sister help me and we did purple, pink and yellow soaps. Although the soap turned out pretty,  I was hoping for something more like the leaves we did in  this post. Thanks for looking, any questions let me know in the comments.