Cherry Soap

I had mentioned in this tutorial that pink soap with cherry fragrance was a best seller, so I thought I would snap a photo before I wrapped this soap up. I filled a 2lb soap tray and a few individual molds.

I think my flash went off, its a rainy Saturday here.



Make Your Own Flower Water

 

 

 

So what is a flower water? A flower water is similar to a hydrosol, they both are distilled waters that contain essential oils. With a hydrosol, the water collected in the bottom of the still during the distillation of plants (this is how most essential oils are made) is collected and sold as a hydrosol. This water contains some of the oil that is distilled from the plant or petals and the oil is all through the water. You don't have to shake the hydrosol to mix the oil in every time you use it.

 

 

With a flower water, essential oil is added to distilled water. Commercial flower waters often contain other ingredients to emulsify the oil and water but we're taking home made today so the only other ingredient will be muscle power.

 

 

I generally like to buy a 4 litre jug of distilled water and pour a little bit out of the jug to create some  empty space, you need about 3 or 4 inches of empty space at the top of the jug.  Add 3 teaspoons (15ml) of essential oil, put the cap on the jug, and shake really hard for a minute or two. Once it settles, the oil is going to float back up to the top, so you need to shake it again every day for a month. If you use an essential  oil that has a colour, you'll see less and less oil floating on top of the water as time goes by. Once your flower water is ready, you can use it the way you would a hydrosol. Some ideas are as a toner, a natural linen spray or in a handmade cream or lotion. Of course not all flower waters are floral. Peppermint, Grapefruit, Orange  and Rosemary also make great Flower Waters - its just a common name and will mean not a hydrosol. If you want to keep if floral,  Lavender, Geranium and Ylang Ylang are good economical choices and, Rose is really nice but pricey.  You can bottle your water up in little spray bottles for a great gift, you'll have lots, or make a few different kinds with friends and trade. I hope you try it!



Goat Milk & Coloured Glycerin Soap

I get a lot of people in the store asking how I make this soap. I usually have a few different fragrances and colours at the counter, this green with Green Apple fragrance has been really popular. So has purple with Dewberry or Blackberry, pink with Cherry or Cotton Candy and red with Strawberry. I may have posted this tutorial before but I'm going to add a page (it will be on the right side of the blog), so folks don't have to go digging for it.

Gardener's Exfoliating Soap with Coffee

Melt & Pour Soap with added coffee grounds is nothing new, but I came  across a really cute tutorial on Pinterest here that makes use of empty soda cans for the molds. Cans cut really easily  using sharp tipped scissors, you have to poke a hole in the can to start cutting. I cut mine about 1/2 way down. She also used scissors to cut the can away from the soap once it hardened. I kind of peeled the can away from the soap once it was hard but was left with the very bottom part of the can stuck on the soap. I had to put the soap in the fridge for a while then wiggle the last bit of the can off the bottom, I was to chicken to try cutting the leftover bit of can without gouging the soap.

These are all of the can bottoms that I had to pry off the soap. Below is an idea for wrapping the soaps using unbleached coffee filters.I bought the basket style filters and placed the side of the soap that was the bottom of the can (the side with the ridge around it) into the flat part of the filter and then just pleated the filter around the soap and taped it down, its really easy.

For five soaps I used 1lb of Goat Milk melt & pour, 3 tbsp of ground coffee and 1 tsp of coffee fragrance. The tutorial actually calls this Coffee Kitchen soap and calls for slightly different amounts. Check out her wrapping, its really pretty! Let me know if you try making  this soap!



Strawberry Soap a la Youtube

There is a You Tube video here that I watched last year for making melt and pour strawberry soaps.After finding this star ice cube tray in my cupboard, I bought it years ago at Ikea, I reliazed I had pretty much everything I needed to try this- everything being a heart shaped mold and a small star shaped mold.If you watch the vid you'll see my molds aren't the exact ones they use, but the soaps still turned out pretty cute. I hope you'll try them or one of the other hundreds of videos that are on You Tube for Melt & Pour soap.

The first two photos here show how I made the stems for the strawberries. Make some green stars and let them harden in the mold. Remove them from the mold and cut off one point making a V into the centre of the star.

Now fill a heart mold with some red coloured soap scented with Strawberry. I melted clear melt and pour with a little goats milk melt and pour and added red liquid colourant. I think in the video they used clear glycerin coloured with red. Wait until the red soap thickens up on top. You want to be able to blow on the soap and not have it move. Then spray both the soap in the mold and the stem with rubbing alcohol. I also dipped my stem into a little melted soap, then seat the stem onto the heart. Press in down ever so gently, you don't want to break through the red soap.

 Lastly add the white dots. I  left the soap in the mold for this because it hadn't hardened all the way through yet. The video says to melt some white soap and drop it on the the strawberries with a wooden scewer. I practiced on my plastic tablecloth but my no means mastered this. I found the soap kept clumping on the scewer so I had to keep wiping it off. If you get any dots on the soap you don't like you can pick them off with a toothpick. Make sure you spray the soap with alcohol again before adding the dots.

 All done! Thanks for stopping by!



Fun Find Part 2

 In addition to the patterned tape I found in the post below, I also purchased this package of cute erasers. What a big spender! These are perfect for embedding in soap because they're not too thick.

 I poured in a thin layer of pink coloured goats milk soap and let it harden a bit, you want it to be thick enough that you can blow on the soap and not have it move, then you know it can take the weight of the eraser. I then put a little clear melted soap on the back of an eraser and gently set it in the mold. I don't think erasers float but you never know :) Then I sprayed the soap and eraser in the mold with rubbing alcohol and  filled the mold the rest of the way with clear soap.

 Muffin tins , little tupperware, or silicone molds would be great for a project like this. These eraser packs would be worth buying and putting away for a future birthday or sleepover party project. It doesn't have to be February to love hearts!

Fun Find

 Superstore has some cute Valentine items that can be used for crafting or  packaging. Washi tape is very popular in the scrapbooking world right now but I have yet to see any in real life. There a loads of different patterns of Washi tape and I think it has more of a paper feel than the tape shown here. Still, I had  some fun with this tape, which is really just a patterned gift wrap tape, and I'll probably put it on a few other things too.

 The nice thing about this tape on the cellophane is that if I still have some of these soaps after Valentine's Day, it peels off easily. Maybe I'll find some with Easter Bunnies, just kidding :)