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.