Plain Jane

 Goat Milk Soap Base

plus Lavender & Geranium Essential Oil. 

 Looks like I've crossed over

 to the White Side!

 Have a Happy New Year

Everyone!

Arabian Sandalwood

I wanted to make a manly soap and wanted to try some of the new silver sparkle mica. Its not sparkling much here because I've used a combination of glycerin and goat milk soaps. This soap is fragranced with Arabian Sandalwood and the colour and fragrance reminds me of a Body Shop soap I used to buy for my Dad. Thanks for looking!



Blue Angels

 Playing around with some  new Pearly Blue Mica and the Milky Way Angel Mold.

They are all done with the mold filled about 3/4 with Goat Milk soap base and then topped up the rest of the way with Clear Glycerin soap thats been coloured with the mica. Do each soap one at a time to the Glycerin soap will sink through. Thanks for looking!

Soap Packaging

These star shaped soaps are packaged in a cello bag with a square of decorative scrapbook paper slid in as a backdrop. The paper is cut 3 1/4 by 3 1/4 inches.

The pink snowmen are in the same sized bag, 3 1/5 by 8 1/2, and the paper is cut  3 inches by 5 inches. This is a great way to add some interest &  colour to these soaps which are already pretty colourful on their own.

Gem Drops!

Here are a few quick and unedited shots of the Gem Drops. The picture above is of a bale, hard to see I know. The bales range in price from $49 to $79 and a lot of them are reversable. There is actually only one $79 bale and you will see why at the bottom of the post.

There are a lot of Gem Drops in natural stone, Rose Quartz, Black Agate and White Agate.

And then some other colours as well. The Gems range from $42 to $89. To get started you need a Bale and a Gem. You can add any Gem to any Bale.

 Heres is the $79 Bale, it holds both a Jewel Pop and a Gem Drop. The Gem Drop I have on here is $45.00. I also comes in white or grey.

I wish I hadn't cut off the bottom of the keys. They are $89 and both are reversable with a clear stone on the back. There's really cute boxes to go with this jewelry as well.I'll try and post more/better pictures by the weekend. If you made it to the bottom of this post thanks for looking!  Hopefully there will be catalogs one day!

Purple & White Snowflakes

Here are step by step instructions on how I made the snowflake soaps for the November newsletter.

I used the Milky Way Snowflake (3 cavity) mold for these soaps. Supplies:

Purple coloured glycerin soap base

Goat Milk soap base

Fragrance

pinch of white mica

Spray bottle of rubbing alcohol

Melt 4 squares each of the Purple and White soaps in separate containers. Add 1/4 tsp of fragrance to the purple soap along with a pinch of white mica, gently stir. Divide the goat milk soap between the three snowflake cavities and then do the same with the purple glycerin. Work quickly, pour the goat milk (white) soap into the snowflakes and then pour the purple in top right away, this will allow the purple to sink through. Let this sit, it will take at least 5 minutes. The goat milk soap will get a skin on it that will support the last layer. Melt 5 squares of the purple soap. When the goat milk soap has skinned up enough that you can blow on the soap and it doesn't move you are ready to pour the purple soap, this will be the last layer. Spray the soaps in the mold with rubbing alcohol and pour the melted purple soap to fill the molds up the rest of the way. Let harden at room temperature and then pop them out. You can experiment with different molds and colours, have fun!

A few notes: Don't overheat the soap. If you are using a microwave its tricky to melt small amounts of soap like this without overheating. Use 15 to 30 second bursts and keep an eye on it. You don't want it boiling or even steaming. You can easily double this if you have more molds. If you want both purple layers to be more vibrant, omit the white mica.

Linked to Kristen's Blog Party

Sunflower Soap

From the October newsletter, forgot to post it here!

Recipe is from The Soapmakers Companion by Susan Miller Cavitch

454 grams Coconut Oil

398 grams Palm Oil

595 grams Sunflower Oil

201 grams Sodium Hydroxide

438 grams distilled water

100 grams pureed carrots

(original recipe has 538 grams of water without the carrots)

5 to 7 tsp of fragrance or essential oil

dried calendula (optional) not in original recipe

2tsp honey (optional) not in original recipe

I added all of the sodium hydroxide to the water and then threw the pureed carrots in to the sodium hydroxide solution once it had cooled. I worked at just under 100 degrees. The calendula petals were ground and warmed with the sunflower oil and the honey was added at trace. The soap was scented with a blend of  Creme Brulee and Pecan Pie fragrance oils.



Paisley Tray is Back!

The Paisley soap tray is back in stock. A few of these are spoken for but I ordered extra so hopefully I'll have them in stock a bit longer this time. The Op Art tray mold and the four cavity Bee & Honeycomb mold are back too. Yippee! Link to molds.

New Fall Fragrances!

 Caramel Apple. Caramels, apples & spice.

 Creme Brulee. Just like the dessert!

 Gingerbread. Gingerbread with fruity notes.

 Pecan Pie. Crunchy pecans with maple & vanilla.

 Pumpkin Cake. Pumpkin with hints of Coconut & Vanilla.

Pumpkin Pie Paradise BBW Type. Dupe of Bath & Body Works Pumpkin Pie.

Come in and give them a sniff. They're posted on the Fragrantmall site here.

Pumpkin Chai Soap

Fall 2012 Pumpkin Soap

Recipe

454 grams Coconut Oil

398 grams Palm Oil

595 grams Olive Oil

269 grams Distilled Water

100 grams Pumpkin Puree

169 grams Cream

206 grams Lye

1 Chai Tea Bag

3 tsp Chai Tea Fragransce

2 tsp Cardamom Essential Oil

1 tsp Cinnamon Essential Oil

Mix up your Sodium Hydroxide solution by adding the 206 grams of lye to the distilled water. Throw in the tea bag. While that is cooling, weigh out your other ingredients and melt your solid oils over low heat then add the olive oil. Stir the pumpkin puree and cream together in a measuring cup.

Let your sodium hydroxide solution cool to 90 degrees (F)& remove the tea bag. Gently warm the pumpkin/cream mixture to around the same temp and have your oils the same as well.

When everything is at or around 90 degrees, add the sodium hydroxide (the lye/chai tea mixture) solution to the oils and start stirring. Stir in the pumpkin/cream blend and continue or stir until traced. Once everything is mixed together you can also use a stick blender to reach trace.

Once traced, add the fragrance and essential oils. Mix them in really well. I have a lot of super-heaters in the recipe and it killed me to only use 1tsp of Cinnamon. Things looked like they were starting to separate a little but I just kept stirring and got all the fragrance and essential oils mixed in.

I poured the soap into tray molds because they aren't very deep and I wanted the soap to start cooling before it volcanoed on me. I left it uncovered and it gelled completely. Unmold after two days, cure for three weeks.

Vanilla Chai Tea With Cream Soap

 The night I sliced the soap there wasn't much colour difference on the sides.

The next night the Vanilla had started to discolour, the speckles should disappear as it darkens. The Chai scented soap on the left is discolouring as well. Hopefully it won't get as dark as the Vanilla.

Recipe (just over 2lbs) in grams
298 Olive Oil
227 Coconut
98  Palm
100 Cocoa Butter
169 Distilled Water
100 Cream or Half & Half
1 Chai Tea Bag
102 Lye
2 Tsp Vanilla Fragrance
2 Tsp Chai Tea Fragrance
12 inch long drawer organizer
light cardboard strip cut the length of the drawer organizer

You want the cardboard a few inches higher than the drawer organizer & I covered my cardboard with plastic wrap.
You'l also need someone to hold it in the centre of the mold while you pour the soap on either side.

Mix the lye into the water and set aside to cool. Get your oils ready. When the lye solution and the oils are at 100 degrees, warm the cream with the tea bag to about the same temp. Add the oils to the lye solution and start stirring, then add the cream. Bring to a trace and then split the batch. I took l pound of the soap and put it in a large measuring cup. To one half add the Vanilla fragrance and stir well. Get someone to hold the cardboard strip in the centre of the mold and pour the Vanilla scented soap to one side of the strip. The soap will push the cardboard strip over a bit, try not to let it move to much. Scent the rest of the soap with the Chai Tea fragrance and pour that on the other side of the coardboard. You will have a little soap left over that can go into an individual mold.

Carefully remove the cardboard. To swirl the top, take a wooden scewer and go back and forth across the top of the soap in whatever pattern you like. Be carfeful when you cover it, you don't want to mess up your swirled pattern. I covered mine with some more light cardboard that I had bent into an arc and then a light towel. Unmold after two days, you can slice it a couple of days after that. Cure for 3 weeks.

Soap A La Garbage

 My sister stayed at a resort once where the daily soup was called Soup A La Garbage, not that it was made with garbage but it was made with leftover bits of stuff, like this soap.

The Paisley mold makes pretty soaps from all your leftover soap scraps. Just weigh out 2lbs of melt and pour soap scraps and melt. I wasn't sure what  colour these soaps would turn out to be, I  had odd bits of various colours, but I think they both turned out pretty good. If you're not happy with the colour once its melted, you can add a liquid colourant or some mica to adjust it.

Breakaway Birds

There are still a few molds from the latest Milky Way order that I haven't tried out. These bird molds have four cavities with two of each of the designs pictured above. Each soap is 4oz so you can melt 1lb of soap and know thats enough to make four soaps. Like the Breakaway Hearts, you can also cut these into guest soaps and have six different designs. Thanks for looking!
Linked to Kristens Blog Party.

Our Garden Ornament

Well its not your traditional Garden Gnome, and I didn't actually create him, but this deer is pretty much a permanent fixture in our gardens (he moves around) this summer. Here he is standing in one of his favorite resting spots, actually, he's just stood up from a lie down. Thats right, he lays in this garden and another one closer to the road. Oh, and he likes to eat too, mostly buds and flowers. Sometimes when he's shy, he'll duck behind a shrub. He thinks if he can't see us we can't see him. You can't see in the picture but directly behind him are some tree lillies. They're about 4 feet tall and getting ready to bloom. I hope he can't reach them because I know from experience that he likes lillies!

Linked to Kristen's Blog Party.

3 Fish

Made with the Milky Way 3 Fish Mold. The Orange coloured glycerin soap has a little white mica added to it. I'm sure these would look great in a single (any colour) too. Cute mold!

Two Dolphins Mold

 Another mold I haven't had in ages. These Dolphins would also look cute in colours, you could even make them two different colours.

These make a great summertime soap and are scented with Ocean. These molds are on sale until July 31. Sale price is $8.99. The Dolphins is a 3 cavity mold. Thanks for looking!

Bee & Honeycomb Mold

I was really happy to  get this Bee & Honeycomb mold back in stock. These soaps were a little hard to photograph because I kept them so pale. The bees are filled with Honey soap base and I rubbed them with a little Honey Beige mica. For the background I used Clear soap base with a little Honey soap base melted with it, for just a hint of colour. These are fragranced with Oatmeal, Milk & Honey fragrance oil. Thanks for looking!

Lotus Flower Mold

 The Lotus Blossom mold is a 4 cavity mold that you can use for soaps or bath bombs. These layered soaps are smaller because I didn't fill the cavities up all the way.

I totally cut this one off when I snapped the picture, but I wanted to show that these soaps look really beautiful poured in one colour too.

Op Art

 The last of the new slab trays this one is called Op Art. The green is a lot brighter in real life so you see more contrast.

Supplies 1.5lb Goat Milk soap base .5lb Lime Green Glycerin Soap base, Green Apple fragrance.

These trays just make it too easy, great for knocking off a bunch of teacher gifts.

Paisley Tray

 Here are some better pictures of the Paisley Tray mold. Well not the mold itself but what the soap will look like. The picture I got from Milky Way came out very fuzzy to this is much better.

 I used 2lbs of soap total and this is scored to give you six bars.

For smaller bars you could take each square soap and cut it in half.

This soap is scented with Cherry fragrance. Other supplies: 1.5lbs Goat Milk soap base, .5 lb of Pink Glycerin soap base. One pinch each of pink & purple mica powders (added to the glycerin soap).

I only have two of these molds left! Thanks for looking.

Arabesque Tray

Snapped a quick pic of this soap made with the new Milky Way Arabesque tray mold. I still don't have these on the web site, hopefully this week I'll have my laptop back & get it done. This soap is fragranced with Chai Tea. Other supplies: Goat Milk soap base 1.5lbs, Clear soap base .5lb, Cappucino Mica. Thanks for looking!

New Molds Have Arrived

The new molds arrived this morning. These are two brand new designs. Sorry the Paisley Tray picture is a little fuzzy, its so pretty IRL.  So there's these two designs plus the ones on the link to the right. I will put most of them on the site. There are some that are I only got in threes and with a lot of the designs one or two are already spoken for. All of these molds are 10% off from now until July 31 (sale price $8.99)!