Blue Clay Beads

As with the Green clay beads, these Blue clay beads sink to the bottom in melt & pour soap. The soaps here are clear melt & pour with a bit of white mica and peppermint oil and some blue clay beads stirred in. Very simple. The effect is cool and icy. Thanks for looking!

Hot Chocolate Cones

I had the privilage to work on some home made Christmas gifts with some of my favorite friends (the small kind:). This is a recreation of one of the projects we did. For each package you need two cellophane cones. One cone holds a cup of hot chocolate mix. This is tied and trimmed at the top and placed inside the second cone. Then candies and marshmallows are added. Tie off the top of the second cone then decorate.

Seeing Stars

If you like ornate Christmas molds you can't beat the Milky Way Star Mold. It makes such pretty soaps, and bath bombs too. The first picture here looks kind of orange but is pinker in real life. These were coloured with pink mica. The stars in the picture below were coloured with cappucino mica. For both soaps the mica was added to clear melt & pour and then a layer of goats milk was added on top (which ended up being the bottom the way they are now ha!). Thanks for looking.

Paper Bags & Clothes Pegs

Here's an idea for attaching gift tags or a little note to gift bags. These are regular sized clothes pins. I applied double sided sticky strip to one side and then decorated them with patterned paper or glitter. If you scroll down to the next post you will see them on some bags.
In the next photo you will see the flat bags that I am making in to gift card holders. The bags are 5 inches by 7.5 inches and I folded them over at 2.25 inches. The patterned paper for the front of the bag was cut just shy of 5 inches wide and 4 inches tall. The paper for the folded flap is the same width and 2.5 inches tall. This was shortened a bit when I trimmed it with a scalloped punch. I used a My Minds Eye Xmas paper pack so was able to mix and match all the different papers. You can see the finished bags below. If you are in Campbell River you can get this paper pack at She Runs with Scissors:)

Paper Gift Bags

If you don't want to decorate your bag, a sparkley clothes pin and a tag, which could be Birthday, Thankyou, or have no message at all, still dresses up the package. This plain bag has a single bar of soap inside. This would be a great way to add value to your products at a Craft Sale.

The bags with the patterned paper will hold a gift card and some chocolate for some of my favorite little people for Christmas.

Orange Chocolate Truffle Soap

Another soap inspired by a yummy candle. This one is Orange Chocolate Truffle with the orange layer scented with orange essential oil and the brown layer scented with the orange oil plus some chocolate fragrance. See how the line between the colours isn't perfectly straight? I should have waited longer between the pours. When you pour the first layer on a slant just waiting for the soap to set up enough to take the weight of the second layer isn't enough. It also has to be firm enough not to bow out when you set the mold flat. Could have been worse, but next time I will watch for that......

Xmas Soaps

These soaps are coloured with Cappucino mica (surprise, or should I say no surprise given my obsession with this mica) and fragranced with a blend of chocolate and peppermint. Some coloured micas were rubbed on to the trees and the candy canes had just a hint of mica rubbed on to them as well. I just used my finger tip. The mice were left naked, but they don't seem to mind, they know how cute they are:). Here's a little tip from the scrapbooking world to help your mica stay on the soap. Give it a light spray with some hair spray. Just a little though, you don't want sticky soap.

Cookie Cutter Soaps, No Scraps

My sister's method for making cookie cutter soaps saves you from having to remelt the soap scraps. Here are her instructions from an old newsletter:

This is a great option if want to make a few seasonal soaps to decorate your bathroom or include in gift baskets. You will need some waxed paper, cookie cutters and your melt and pour soap. The idea is to melt a small amount of soap initially, slowly pour a small puddle of melted soap on to the waxed paper that is just a little bigger than your mold and set the mold into it and allow it to set until firm. Then you just have to melt enough soap to fill the cookie cutters up, spritz the soap that is in the bottom of the cookie cutter with a little rubbing alcohol to make the layers adhere and pour in your soap. Since initially I was just melting enough soap to make a few puddles on the waxed paper, I used a small container and microwaved the soap in 10 second increments. Small amounts melt very quickly and you never want to over heat melt & pour soap. Once your soap has set just push it out. The excess soap will break away.

Cut Glass Butterfly

Trying out another new mold. Used two shades of blue plus a bit of green. I tilted the mold a little in opposing directions for each pour. An extra brick of soap is great for propping up one side of your mold.

Guest Size Swirls Mold

I used the Guest Swirls Mold to make some chocolates. I wish I had weighed the chocolate before I melted it because it was the perfect amount to fill the eight cavities of the mold. I was more focused on using up some leftover candied ginger I had from a baking project. So I cut the ginger up into about 1/4 inch pieces, melted the chocolate and filled each cavity about 2/3 full and then stuck a few pieces of the ginger in each one. Then I tapped the mold on the counter a few times, added more chocolate to each one and tapped a few more times to get rid of any air bubbles lurking below the surface. These look good, and its almost time for my midnight snack.

Salty Caramel Soap Kit

Eight only of this new kit. Includes a Soap Crafter 4 cavity mold, 1lb each of Goat Milk & Honey Soap, a bit of white mica & 30ml of Salty Caramel fragrance. If you prefer you can sub 1lb of Clear Glycerin for the Honey Soap and add your own colour. I think the Honey coloured soap works well with the Salty Caramel fragance - just sayin. The kit is $20.00

Ornate Deco Button

The Ornate Deco Button soaps are as cute as, well....a button! They come in at just under 2 oz each so a 2lb brick of soap will give you at least 10 soaps. I packaged these 2 to a bag in some glassine bags and stapled the bag closed with a bow. A gift tag completes the package. Can you see how in love with the Cappucino Mica I am? These soaps are made with goats milk melt & pour with a little glycerin added for shine and then coloured with the Cappucino Mica. This is way easier than cocoa powder. Brown soap with no lumps!

Pinwheels

These cute Pinwheel Soaps can be made with or without the popsicle stick. Just trim off the soap that goes into the stick section for a Pinwheel Cookie look. They fit perfectly in to the small cello bags and the corners of the bags are taped down with tiny pieces of tape.

Autum Leaves

Back in the day ,when I first started playing with melt & pour soap, I realized swirled soap was pretty much impossible to do with this kind of soap. Too thin when melted. So I settled for what I called a tye died look. This soap is inspired by the tye died soap I used to make.

For three leaves I melted about 3/4lb of clear soap. It was 16 squares. Then I fragranced the soap and divided it into separate containers. With the help of my sister, each mold was filled by pouring the different coloured soaps in at the same time. The two soaps in the soap dish used red, yellow, green and cappucino mica coloured soaps. The darkness of the mica coloured soaps seemed to overpower all of the other colours. For the next batch we did only three colours: red, green and yellow. The yellow had a little beige mica added to it. For this size of mold the three colour combo seems to work better. Get a soaping buddy and try it out! Or if you don't have a helper try the tye die look. Melt clear glycerin and goat milk soaps in separate containers. Fragrance if desired. Colour the clear soap but not the white soap. Now pour both soaps into your mold at the same time. For both of these methods try and pour into different parts of the mold. So for tye die pour the white at one end and the coloured at the other. Thats why three colours worked better for the leaves, even though we had four hands it was hard to find four spots in the mold to pour the soap. Have a good week everyone!

Easy Peasy Pineapples

Happy Friday! I wanted to make something really easy last night so I decided to revisit my Pineapple soap mold. This is one of the molds that are part of our 4lb plus a mold for $23 soap package this month. I filled the molds with some pineapple scented goats milk soap that I had coloured a pale yellow. To enhance the detail I brushed on some beige mica and then wiped of the excess with a slightly dampened cloth. That it! Fun Fact: The Pineapple is the international symbol for hospitality

Soapy Inspiration

Its time to start a little mass production of soap for the upcoming holidays. When I'm looking for new fragrance and coloring ideas I quite often look to popular candle fragrances. The Oatmeal and Cinnamon soap from the last newsletter was inspired by an Oatmeal Cookie candle. The other soaps here are also fragrances of candles I love. Pictured from left to right are Green Tea, Oatmeal Cinnamon, Cranberry Clove and Lavender.

Pumpkin Soap

If you want your pumpkin soap ready for Thanksgiving, now is the time to make it. Here are two recipes from past newsletters.

Without Pumpkinseed Oil:

201 grams lye

269 grams water

mix and let cool

595 grams olive oil

454 grams coconut oil

397 grams palm oil

melt together and let cool

100 grams canned pumpkin

169 grams of cream

warm gently to 100 degrees F

Now when everthing is at about 100 degrees put it all together and bring it to trace. Let it cure for 3 weeks. The next recipe uses different oils but you will make it the same way.

Recipe with Pumpkinseed Oil

338 grams water

206 grams lye

200 grams avocado Oil

300 grams olive Oil

100 grams pumpkinseed Oil

396 grams palm Oil

434 grams coconut Oil

100 grams canned pumpkin

100 grams cream

Use directions as posted above. Please be familiar will all safety aspects of making cold process soap before trying these recipes. Have fun!

Dollar Store Dinos

The soaps pictured here still need a little trimming but they turned out not too bad. The mold is from the Dollarama (Dollarama Brand on the packaging) and costs $2.00. Its actually for cupcakes and they have a few different designs of Dinos. You need to stabalize the mold because its a soft silicone. I used small jars but next time I'm going to put some rice in a shoe box. I think that will give more support .

New Clay Beads

The older I get the more I feel the need to exfoliate. These green clay beads tend to sink in the soap but still do the job. They also look kind of cool. I ordered some for my stash and some extra to put on the site. They are listed with the clays. I only have this colour for now which is actually a green - it looks blue here because of the colour of the soap. Maybe its more of a blue green. If they go over well I'll get some more colours.

A New Toy

The brownie pan pictured here is from Superstore and is a Presidents Choice brand. I picked it up for $9.99 thinking there was an oustide chance I would be able to use it for soap. Thinking there would be a major problem getting the soap out of the dividers, I procrastinated trying it for at least two weeks. Although the soap pictured here is no prize, it did come from the brownie pan and came out of the dividers very easily. The whole pan had to be placed in the freezer once the soap hardened ( for about 30 min) and then it popped out in one big slab. Then I just pushed each bar out through the dividers. Now since I was just trying this out, I'm not even sure exactly how much soap it holds but I will be trying it again and will post more info.

Paw Print Soaps

This was something I was working on for the August newsletter but we ran out of Paw Print molds so I didn't include it. We will have more if this mold in next month as well as some new designs. The packaging for this soap was inspired by Julee Tilman. Her blog is called Poetic Artistry http://www.poeticartistry.blogspot.com/. I was happy to see the I could stamp on our glassine bags. They are the same price as the tags I blogged about last month, $2.50 for 10. Scroll down to see the finished package. My glassine bag was too small for the soap!

Packaged Soap

Well thank goodness you can also stamp on brown paper bags since my soap was to big for the glassine bag I wanted to use. The Ribbon I used here was from Walmart and the stamps are all Stampin Up. This will probably go in a care packaging I am sending to a little neice and nephew so I'll make a girly looking one as well. What's nice about this is you don't have to take it apart to get the soap out, the bag just slides out the side.

Lavender Bath Bombs

Although I sometimes get tired of making Lavender bath bombs, I never get tired of using this mold. I usually brush the ridges with mica to add a little colour but this time I decided to try something different. It was "somewhat" successful. I mixed the bath bombs and coloured just a tiny bit which I tried to put in to the ridges of the mold the best I could. Then I packed the uncoloured mixture on top. I could still put a little mica on the ridges to make them more defined. You never know until you try......

Paper Flowers

Don't ya just love it when you find a new way to make something and you already have the stuff? Dawn McVey has a great video on You Tube that shows you how to make these cute paper flowers using a scalloped circle punch (which I just happen to have in my stash). This is why its great to have a stash. The ones with the repurposed book paper flowers are similar to the ones she demonstrated. The ones with the wrapping paper scraps are attached to our regular sized manilla luggage tags. The stamp on the tag is from Stampin Up.

Cookie Cutter Scraps

So after I made my cookie cutter hearts and flowers the other night, I had the leftovers to use up. This isn't like real cookies where you can reroll the dough and keep cutting. Too bad:(

So I chopped up all of the scraps and did the whole thing over again, minus the final white background layer. It was fun and the soaps turned out great- better than the picture actually. My only dilema is I ended up with.......wait for it.......more scraps!

I'm getting out my soap molds.

Cookie Cutter Soaps with Coloured Bits

Made some cookie cutter soaps last night. Used a silicone browie pan to get these two flowers plus two hearts. These will be in our August (already? where is summer going?) newsletter.
Hope everyone is having fun in the sun. I know I am!

More Tags

These tags come in two sizes. The coloured ones in pink, blue or green are 3 3/4 by 2 inches. The biege are 4 3/4 by 2 1/2 inches. They come undecorated but I've stuck a few flowers from chez Dollar Store on them to show how you can jazz them up with little effort or expense. Packages of 10 tags are $2.50. Buy 5 packages pay for 4.

Cards & Tags

With one 12 by 12 sheet of cardstock you can get two 6 by 6 inch cards. If you want 5 1/2 by 7 inch cards like the ones I've made here, you can only get one card out of a sheet. The good news is that you've got a nice piece left over thats perfect for making gift tags. So one 12 by 12 sheet of cardstock will give 4 nice sized gift tags if you are doing a 5 /12 by 7 inch card. Why am I making cards this size when I'm such a big fan of square cards? I have envelopes this size to use up.

Sorry the pictures aren't the best, I took them outside after work. Just couldn't stay inside, we've waited to long for nice weather to waste any of it:)

More Soaps with Calendula

Here are some of the same soaps from the previous post in a smaller size. I didn't fill the drawer organizers all the way so these ones are around 4 oz each. They are wrapped for a donation basket.