Thursday, July 28, 2011

Salt Bars - The Results

I unmolded my salt bars this afternoon and they turned out fabulously. I'm very happy with the results. The Pink Grapefruit salt bars are exactly how I envisioned them turning out. Yay!



My facial salt bars aren't looking too shabby either. :)




This morning I made a batch of Sweet Orange Patchouli Bastille soap. I infused annatto into the lye solution. I think it worked out great. I can't wait to see what color the soap ends up being.

Salt Bars!

I have to thank Brambleberry for the inspiration for yesterday's salt bar making. I knew I wanted to make soap in the afternoon but after seeing their newsletter in my inbox, I was inspired to make salt bars. The pink and white salt bars are very similar to the tutorial in the newsletter. I'd had the idea to make a pink and white salt bar scented in pink grapefruit with pink himalayan salt on the top for quite some time. But seeing how beautiful Brambleberry's soap was, I just had to make my version. I did split my batch and also made some facial salt soaps to try.


So here is the Pink Grapefruit Salt Bar. It's scented with pink grapefruit and litsea essential oils. I used fine sea salt for my base salt and then just topped the soap with some chunky pink himalayan salt and some glitter of course.


These salt bars have an essential oil combo of tea tree, chamomile, lavender, pink grapefruit, and peppermint. I added just a bit of clay to them as well.



You can watch my salt bar making videos on my YouTube channel. I will unmold my soaps later today!

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Finally Have Some Cut Pics

So, I was kind of busy/kind of unmotivated soap-wise last week and didn't get my soap cut until Friday. At that point, my silly battery on my camera was dead and then we left for the weekend. So...I finally took pictures of my soap this afternoon. I'm kid-free this week as the kiddos are at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I'm enjoying the peace and quiet but I sure do miss my babies!

Berry Lemonade:




White Chocolate & Honey:


Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Berry Lemonade/White Chocolate & Honey

I did some late afternoon soaping yesterday. I needed to get those soap balls made before that loaf I made for it got too hard. I split the batch and made two different loaves.


I did another double-pour for the Berry Lemonade soap. I cut the soap balls with a melon baller and so they aren't completely round. The balls are also only on top. The fragrance is my own blend.


This one is a blend of the oh-so-popular Honey Vanilla Love Dust fragrance and also some white chocolate. I left the base uncolored but I did use stabilizer and titanium dioxide on it. Once again, it's an experiment to see if it will stay fairly light. I topped that with some unscented orange/honey colored soap and then the white dolloped on top for the white chocolate part.


I don't like using so many additives like the vanilla stabilizer but I've decided that as long as I'm using up the fragrances that I will do my best to make the soaps as pretty as I can while I'm at it. I don't believe that I'll purchase any more stabilizer in the future. I'll just allow my vanilla soaps to go dark.

I'm in the process of uploading the videos to my YouTube channel right now.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Bubble Gum Soap - CUT

I cut my bubble gum scented soap this afternoon. The yellowness of the base leads me to believe that the soap will darken considerably even though I used stabilizer and titanium dioxide. Even darkened I think they'll look pretty cool don't you?



Friday, July 15, 2011

Another Colorful Soaping

I did another split batch today. With the first part I made a shallow double-pour (more like double-glopped) pink and yellow soap scented in berry lemonade. I blended the scent myself and I'm excited to continue to whiff it and see how it turns out. So far it smells wonderful. I am going to use that batch to make soap balls for a later batch...hopefully sooner than later.

The other batch is scented with the famous Tooth Fairy Taffy fragrance which smells exactly like bubble gum to me. I know it will attempt to turn dark so I've added a couple of things to try to prevent a major darkening. I really do want to move back to the more natural side but I have lots of fun fragrances to use up first. I will still use fragrance oils but I'll shift more towards more naturally-scented and colored soaps.


The base of the soap is going to be plain with whatever color it turns since I was working with a pretty high vanilla content. I had fun with the top though and did some pink and blue dollops.


I thought this was a fun scent but it almost took my breath away even though I didn't use as much per pound of oil that I normally would. Too me it's a bit overly sweet so I don't know if it is one I will remake or not. But it was a fun one to make.


Videos of the making of these soaps will soon be uploaded to my YouTube channel.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Huckleberry Cream Kitchen Soap - CUT

I'm not super happy with the pictures I took but I do love the soap itself. Other than the creamy-colored part being more yellow than I anticipated, it is perfect. I have about 14 bars of this soap so once cured, we'll be rolling in the kitchen soap for a good long while.



Here I am cutting the soap. :)