More soaps

Has it been that long since I made soaps? Surely not... I imagine I forgot to post about my last expedition. Anyway, I decided to make up a few bars for Christmas gifts this year. Here's what I did:

Two types.

First - in a round mold with a snowflake on top, I made a pecan pie scented soap, with a bit of bronze mica powdered coloring, and it contains coconut milk and kaolin clay.

Second - in a poinsettia shaped mold, I made some soaps with red soap dye, collodial oatmeal, powdered chamomile, and peppermint with vanilla scent.

Of course doing this set me off onto quite a few thought tangents, as is typical for me. For one, I came up with a list of some additive combinations with a purpose that would go well together.  Some of these were not necessarily great for soap so this could expand over into balms or lotions.

The second is a class. I wrote up my notes and am in the process of building these steps into what could be a soapmaking class. It is still an ongoing work in progress.  Eventually there will be a shorter class set of notes along with a longer supplement available for additional information, because this sheet is pretty long right now and I'm not even done with it!  I still need to go find some actual medieval recipes to tie in with the information on the history and making of soap.



https://www.dropbox.com/s/ppoycrs2zjgngpb/Soapmaking.docx

New Soapies

Yay!  I finally got into the holiday spirit and made some more soapies last night.  I can't believe I didn't get any pictures of them before I wrapped them all up.  Oh well.  I'm so glad I had all my additives ready on hand and everything else so I could just melt, mix, and pour.  Not that it didn't take a long time to make over a dozen soaps, but still.

White kaolin clay + dead sea salts.  Detoxify
Chamomile and coconut milk.  Soothing
Rose hips and aloe vera.  Healing
Collodial oatmeal and almond oil.  Relieving for dry, itchy skin

Red poinsettias, and the rest are all round with a snowflake stamp..... Snowstorm (blue), Peppermint (green), and Pecan Pie (beige)

Valentine's Soaps

Hah, so I meant to make these exactly one year ago, and had the supplies on hand. So, I figured it was time I put them together before they had to wait for yet another year! So here they are: one quick round of soapies.

Mmmm, they smell so good!

Just some glittery cherry hearts, 'cuz you gotta have hearts for V-day.



And some mocha-scented.. we'll call them chocolate cups!
With colloidal oatmeal, and a touch of shea butter.


It's kinda hard to photograph these, at night, in my kitchen, and it doesn't help when I'm in a hurry, so here's a close-up shot.

More Soaps

So, I got some stuff in the mail today, and decided to set to work. I made some very Fall-ish bars: leaf shaped, pecan pie scented. They have oatmeal & honey in them too. Yum.

While I was at it, I made up a batch of workshop soaps. I wanted to give them as gifts last Christmas but didn't have them put together yet. They're made with borax and turpetine for deep cleansing!

I also made some bath melts. Cocoa butter and sweet almond oil combined with honey & almond fragrance in tiny little cubes to drop into a bath to make it super moisturizing. Better than bath oil beads!

And finally, I tried making my first round of fizzy bath bombs. I didn't read the instructions carefully enough and ended up wetting the mixture a bit too much and setting off the fizzing, so I don't know how these will turn out just yet. I tried to get them in control and let them dry so we'll see if they make it, and if they still fizz once they're dry...

Soapies!

Sometime around the late part of 2006 I started making a few soaps. Leslie had been talking about wanting to do some and the more I thought about it and checked into it, the cooler it sounded! I decided I wanted to try it out too. I've only produced some soaps a couple of times but bought plenty of supplies so I'll be making more. I gave some away and am using some but I don't go through them *that* fast so I didn't want to have a stockpile of soaps hanging around, lol. Once they're gone or I have another outlet for some, I'll work up another batch. I'm also going to tinker with a few other bath-related products, like fizzy bath bombs.

Anyway, I decided to blog this so I had a place to store my cool soap-related links, and pics. So, here' tis!