Cookie Cutter Soaps

Here's a neat idea from a while back that's still easy and fun to do. If you follow the link to this post from 2010, you can read about how you can take any cookie cutter and turn it in to a soap mold. Aren't these Christmas shapes cute? Thanks for stopping by!

Black Raspberry Vanilla Swirl

 I've been putting Black Raspberry Vanilla fragrance oil in a lot of my stuff this year. I behaves really well in soap and I thought the scent would go well with a pink and purple swirl. For the colours I used pink and purple ultramarines and darkened them both with a bit of purple mica. I alternated pours with the white soap (some titanium dioxide is in the white) doing kind of a drop swirl and then did a very small amount of swirling with my hanger.

This time I remembered to take a picture of the tops, there's some pink glitter on there.

Thanks for looking!



Energizing

Forgot to photograph my favorite part of this soap which is the top, but its too late now because I've already wrapped it. Anyway, I'll tell you its fragranced with a scent called Energizing which is a light mint with something LOL. In my hanger swirl I got a nice deep purple by using purple ultramarine with a plum coloured mica and a funky yellow (which I was not expecting) from lime green liquid colourant with a little lime green mica thrown in. The top has some lime green mica swirls, really pretty, and hopefully the next time I make this I'll remember to snap a picture. Thanks for looking!

Candy Cane Mold

Ugh! I've photographed this soap (above) in every kind of light and it keeps coming out orange. It is a little more orange than the soap below (from last year) but not that much! Anyway, the Candy Cane Mold is on sale for $5.00 til the end of the month so I wanted to post a picture.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Blackberry Sage Tea

These Blackberry Sage Tea Bath Bombs are spritzed with some rubbing alcohol with a pinch of purple mica added to it and then a tiny bit of purple glitter was sprinkled on top. The glitter was set with a little more rubbing alcohol. I know I seem to be getting carried away with the mica and glitter but adding this colour easily tells me they are Blackberry Sage Tea fragranced.

And I made some Blackberry Sage Tea soap. That's a little iridescent glitter on top of the soap.



 

I also used less coloured soap and did a little less swirling with my hanger than last time.

You can see the Blackberry Sage Tea soap from last year at the bottom of this post.



This is the same soap from last year, I used more colour for sure and you can really see the way I dipped the hanger up and down. I think this was my first hanger swirl.
Thanks for looking!


Mini Trees Bath Bombs

I've had a silicone ice cube tray with these tree shapes for a few years and just took it out of the package last week. I thought anything I made in them would look too plain,  but thanks to my new sparkle and shimmer addiction I decided to make some bath bombs and then jazz them up a little. They are actually a light green colour, I made them white and then sprayed them with a Lime Green mica mixed with rubbing alcohol. Then I sprinkled on a little cosmetic mica and gave them another spray with clear rubbing alcohol. So much fun! 

I've ordered a couple more colours of glitter and will put them on the web site www.fragrantmall.net this week. Thanks for looking!

Gingerbread Puppy Paw

 So last time I did this.

And this time I did this. I thought it would be easier than just filling in the paw and it would have been if I had remembered not to fill the whole circle. When you're pouring soap into small areas, just fill it a little over half and then spray with rubbing alcohol, it will usually fill the rest of the way on its own. So I had a lot of cleanup to do:) Once I had cleaned off my over pour I did spray all of the paws with rubbing alcohol and then topped up the mold with some Goat Milk soap base. The glycerin soap paws were left unscented and coloured with some bronze mica, the Goat Milk soap has a little bronze mica for colour and is scented with Gingerbread fragrance. The shadows on both of these pictures is from me, I couldn't find a place to stand without a shadow :(  Thanks for looking!

Twinkle Twinkle Star & Starfish (Bath Bombs)

Oh how I wish I was better at photographing, especially where sparkle is involved. You'll have to trust me that these both have more sparkle in real life and I hope you try it so you can see for yourself. I started by goofing around with the starfish bath bombs below. They were plain white which is the way I usually leave them. I added a little gold mica to a spray bottle of rubbing alcohol and sprayed the bath bombs. To avoid a lot of mess put the bath bombs is a box before spraying :) The result is a pretty shimmer as well as a bit of colour.

 

The bath bombs above (I seem to be writing this backwards) were sprinkled with some cosmetic glitter, I did this right after I made them so before they dried. I did spray the bath bombs with some plain rubbing alcohol to kind of set the glitter and they have lots of sparkle! The glitter is iridescent so it goes different colours. If you go to the cosmetics counter looking for glitter you want a mineral type of eye shadow that is loose, you should be able to shake the container and see it move.

Let me know if you try it! Thanks for looking!

Candy Cane Swirls

The first three pictures of this post are my attempt at a Taiwan swirl without using dividers in the mold. There is a really good video at Soaping 101 where the soap lines are poured by hand and the swirl comes out really pretty and wispy. I wanted lines like that for my Candy Cane soap and as you can see this did not work for me (:  I think my soap was too thick and my mold is too tall.  I will try this again but not this year. 

So I made a second batch, this time using the dividers in my mold and attempted wispy lines by layering white soap with the coloured soap and swirling it before I took the dividers out. So I had one slot with white soap, and the next had red and white layered and swirled, then another slot of just white and a slot of green and white layered and swirled. 

After I removed the dividers I did a back and forth zig zag with a skewer, going all the way down, and then circled around the edge of the mold 6 times.

 

So neither batch of soap was exactly what I was going for but I think they still look pretty and the scent is so good, I used Peppermint Essential Oil with Black Raspberry Vanilla fragrance oil. The fragrance oil is supposed to be non discolouring and so far the colours have not changed!

Thanks for reading!

And This One Is Eggnog

 I started carrying Eggnog fragrance oil last year and just now tried it out in Cold Process soap. I knew it was CP safe and wasn't expecting any seizing or ricing but wondered how the scent would hold, and its holding really well. I like it so much I've made a second batch. I took about a cup of soap and added some bronze mica for an in the pot swirl and for the top, so this was actually a pretty easy soap to make.

I like the in the pot swirl, you don't have to colour much soap to get a nice effect.

Thanks for looking!

Playing with Mica & Stamping Soap

I was doing some organizing of my soap stuff and came across a Milky Way soap stamp. It had been used, but not for years.

I've tried it out recently on a couple of soaps I've made for the holidays. Above is a soap fragranced with Juniper and Fir and coloured with Chromium Green Oxide.

These pictures are not great, I have a hard time photographing mica. Above I hope you can see that I added some gold mica to the top of the soap and below are a couple of the bars I stamped.

(Edit: There is also some ash on the top of this soap that I have since steamed off making the gold pop a little more.)



And the soaps below are fragranced with Victorian Christmas and stamped with some white mica.

 

The snowflakes are rubbed with some of the same mica.

Here's the top of the soaps that I stamped, I added white mica mixed with a little bit of oil and then swirled it. If you do this right after you pour your soap the excess oil will be absorbed.

Any questions let me know and thanks for looking!



Coconut Lime Verbena & A New Swirl

I made this soap a few weeks ago fragranced with Coconut Lime Verbena. I have soaped with this scent before (10% off this month) and knew it would behave.

So I was giving my dividers another go and trying for a feathered looking swirl. I do not see feathers here but it still looks pretty. The two outer slots got white coloured soap and the two inner slots got yellow in one and a green/blue (I mixed 2 colourants together)  in the other. As you can see the blue is most dominant.



For the swirl, I started out doing the circling swirl I did here, then I went the length of the mold with my stick doing the letter S from side to side, I think I did two of the letter S,  either too many or not enough, or maybe that's not they way to get feathered swirls LOL. If anyone knows, clue me in will ya:) Thanks for reading and happy weekend!

Pumpkin Soap 2015 & Recipe

 

It's become a bit of a tradition that I make Pumpkin soap every fall. This year I kept the recipe fairly simple, no coffee, cinnamon oil or other super heaters.  I left most of the soap un-coloured and added some Titanium Dioxide to the lighter portion.

I used a hanger to make the swirl. After filling the mold a little over half full with the un-coloured soap I poured a thin layer of the light coloured soap keeping it off to one side. The light coloured soap was not a complete layer, it went from end to end but not all the way across. Then I poured the rest of the un-coloured soap and topped it off with a full layer of the lighter soap. Once all the soap was poured I inserted my hanger and swirled it. I had no idea how the swirl was going to turn out!

To finish the soap I added some texture to the top with a spoon and then sprinkled on a little cinnamon spice. The pumpkins were really last minute. I made them a few days ago using some melt & pour soap and didn't think they were orange enough. By the time  decided to put them in the soap I was worried the top was starting to firm up so I stuck them in without measuring. You can see in the picture below they aren't even but I did manage to get a pumpkin on every cut bar.

Here's the recipe:

340 grams  Coconut Oil

298 grams Palm Oil

75 grams Coco Butter

370 grams Olive Oil

 

156 grams Lye

340 grams Distilled Water

 

50 grams of Pumpkin Puree

15 grams Cream

 

Mix the Pumpkin & Cream together and set aside. Once you have the lye solution and your oils ready, at around 90 degrees, warm the Pumpkin/Cream in the microwave gently - around 15 seconds should do. Add the lye solution to the oils and then the pumpkin mixture. Bring to a light trace and then fragrance as desired. Do not insulate this soap.

 

I fragranced my soap with Clove Essential Oil and Pumpkin Crunch Cake Fragrance Oil, 1 tsp Clove & 3 tsp of the fragrance & then separated out some of the soap to add the Titanium Dioxide,  I didn`t measure, it was just a guess:) Another thing I did was put the soap in my fridge for 30 minutes. After it had been in the mold for an hour it really started to heat up. If you pour it in to bar sized molds this won`t happen but in a loaf it`s possible. I didn`t want my soap top to be ruined so  cooled the soap for half an hour. The soap still gelled but thankfully did not volcano.

 

I think that`s it,if you have any questions let me know.

PS I couldn`t resist photographing the end pieces, that`s how happy I am with this soap!

Pink Licorice

So I took a break from using my mold dividers and did a hanger swirl. I used a dark grey mica and was happy with the resulting black and mixed some pink ultramarine and hot pink mica for the pink.

A mix of Raspberry fragrance oil and Aniseed Essential oil make up the Pink Licorice fragrance.

I got some nice big bars from the batch. Using my silicone mold without the dividers means I can fill the mold all the way up and it stays full. I still haven't mastered pulling out the dividers without loosing soap.

Below is a photo of my Licorice soap from last year and the recipe. The recipe makes a little over 4 pounds, for my 3lb silicone mold I multiplied the amounts by .75

Recipe:

Lye/ Water Portion:

208 grams lye

539 grams water

Oils/Butters:

454 grams Coconut oil

398 grams Palm oil

100 grams Cocoa Butter

495 grams Olive oil

 

If you want to see my home made hanger you can check out this post.

Thanks for reading!

 

Lemongrass with Poppy Seeds & A New Soap Cutter!

This a some Lemongrass with Poppy Seed soap I made last week. I coloured it with some Black Oxide, Chromium Green Oxide and Titanium Dioxide. I used the same mold as in my last two posts with the dividers. What's new is my nice straight cuts, I finally  bought myself a proper soap cutter. I have a picture of the cutter posted at the bottom of this post.

 Nice cuts means the bars are all exactly the same size and with the type of swirling I'm doing you get these mirror image bars and its easy to pair them up for photographs.

 I have four pairs, each pair is a little different. In the dividers I alternated rows of white and coloured soap, two rows of each. The coloured rows have a mix of green, black and a bit of white, I just kept layering in the different colours, this resulted in a real variety in the way the bars look.

I forgot to put my Titanium Dioxide/Water through a strainer, you can see little TD dots in the bars on the left.

 

 
But overall I'm really happy with this soap and I love, love this cutter.

Here is the cutter, I bought it  on Etsy from Workshop Heritage, if you look them up type the name

as one word. Thanks for looking!

Oops, I also meant to post a picture of the soap before I cut it. Here it is along with one of the 4 bars before they were split. They were taken with my tablet in a darkish kitchen :)

Thanks again for reading!