Blog feature!

A quick note to mention that one of our hanger swirled soaps was featured on Bath Alchemy Lab's Soap Blog - check out their post, all the hanger swirls are gorgeous!

Two new items today!

 

We've been making them successfully for a while now, but today we were able to finally list these amazing multipurpose sprays on Etsy! You can get either a 2oz or 4oz bottle, and you can choose from any fragrance oil we have in stock. See the listing for more details!

Cucumber & Aloe soap - we've had soap with this fragrance in the shop for a while, but in this batch we also added some other nice oils and extracts. You can preorder this soap now, and it will ship after its cure ends on March 19th. :-)

Two new soaps and more to come!

There are two new soaps in the shop- one cold process and one hot process. Take a look!

Carlton fragrance - "Clouds and Sky" hot process soap

 We recently got a request to make a special hot process soap fragranced with Carlton and this was the result! We wanted to make the soap look like a cloudy sky, and since the soap is hot process, the edges and top are a bit more "rustic" than cold process soap- we think it just adds to the 'big fluffy clouds" theme. ;-) Carlton smells like orchid, with notes of champagne, rain, and musk overtones. (It's not a heavily floral scent at all.)

"Celtic Waters" - Shea and Cocoa Butter soap

Celtic Waters has a knock-your-socks-off fragrance that smells almost exactly like a popular brand of soap (of course, we can't tell you which!). We blended it with another clean, soapy, cologne-like fragrance for a little variation- the difference in this fragrance and the original is that this blend smells more like clean water, moss, and verbena. It leans more toward being a "man soap", but the fragrance is so fresh that ladies are sure to love it as well!

We have more soap to add soon, so check back with us! :-)

What I've been up to & Projects for next week

I spent yesterday and the day before making and pouring 265 mini lip balms (including a flavor that will be familiar to friends, but hasn't been in the shop yet) and aromatherapy balms!

I have a bulk batch of lotion to make and THREE batches of soap to cut this week. They all turned out so well, but I still get nervous when it comes to cutting them. We're working on a cutting rig that will do the whole block at one time. When we get them cut I'll post pics. :-)

I ordered a bottle of Crisp Apple Rose from Bramble Berry to use in... everything. It's crisp, clean, sweet, light, fresh, fruity, and floral all in one. I'm such a fragrance oil junkie- (maybe I shouldn't say that, it makes me sound like I drink the stuff!) I keep telling myself I have enough, but... then I tell myself that's an awful lie and that you can never have enough fragrance oil. My next fragrance oil purchase will include MMS's Dream (type) Fragrance and Rustic Escentuals' Green Irish Tweed. Both of them are awesome "Well Dressed Man" fragrances! Can't wait to soap with them!

Lip balms coming up next week will involve more Ghirardelli chocolate... I won't say any more about them until the experimenting is done..

Your last chance to get a daisy that doesn't smell at all like a daisy!

I noticed that, although people go crazy over the daisy soaps in person, the poor guys have been getting kind of a non-response on Etsy. I had been planning to post a link to the daisies in the hopes that they'd get a bit of love... but in the past 24 hours three more people came along, fell in love with them, and bought all but one up!

So here's a link to one lone daisy-shaped bar of Red Clover Tea scented yogurt soap. It's the last one in stock (until I make more...)!

Autumn S.O.A.P. team time!

Whoa, time flies, doesn't it? I can't believe it's already been a whole season since the last S.O.A.P. team was chosen and did their testing. Bramble Berry is accepting blog entries to choose the new team, and I'd love to be chosen to be on the panel!

Believe it or not, my favorite product from Bramble Berry is still the water resistant label paper! This paper is awesome! I've gotten the paper wet on accident and wondered what would happen, and unlike some other "water resistant" paper, you can't even tell that anything happened. It's also not glossy (which I liked because it looks more natural) and not pre-sectioned, so your labels can be whatever size you choose. Okay, maybe that's a bit boring of me to choose the same thing I did last time, so I'll show you the mold that's a favorite around here- the Wave mold! It's a great, and stylish, all-purpose bar mold- the best thing about this mold is that the soap it makes stays in your hand and keeps its wave shape down to the very last ounce of soap.

I really enjoyed reading all of the entries for the past few panels- everyone did their testing so thoroughly that it seems a bit daunting to try to think of new ways to test the scents, but I'd really love to give it a shot! I have a few ideas that are different from what others made, so I didn't want to pass up the chance to volunteer. My fellow potential scent testing participants (aka, my family!) are helping me get my ideas together, and we are excited about the challenge of testing on a larger scale than what we're used to. Autumn is our favorite season (here in San Diego even the weather seems to agree that it would much rather be autumn than summer!) and we'd love to participate in testing the new autumn/winter scents.

Thanks for reading, everyone! It's great to be part of the ever-friendly and ever-enthusiastic soaping community- here's wishing the best to everyone who gets chosen, and we look forward to reading your entries! :-)

Soap roundup

Today I've been working on taking stock of the soap we've made over the past few weeks, and thought I'd share a photo of a couple of the ones people have been loving so far. One lady mentioned that she hung on to her Spiced Apple-Pear butterfly for a few days because at first she thought it was just too cute to use!

Okay, I know you can't smell them, but these recent soaps are scented with Jasmine, and two lovely "soapy" scents- Crystal Blue (an herbal/oceany scent that I have been saving for a while) and Fresh Air (an ozone/fresh scent). All very "mmmmm!" inducing. ;-)

My main goal was to make soap today, but I found that I was just about half an ounce short of the amount of yogurt I needed! I thought I'd have to be patient until tomorrow, but my brothers are rescuing me by stopping to grab some yogurt this afternoon. Two tubs of it- "one for eating, and one for soap", as my older brother said. Thank you, guys!

I also wanted to let everyone know that sometime within the next week I'll be updating our site to include all the recent stock we've made, and adding a full page dedicated to the "made to order" products that we provide- lotion, lip balm, etc. Second, in the near future, we will me making a more detailed Yogurt Soap tutorial and posting it here. We noticed that a lot of people are browsing our last entry about our experiences with yogurt soapmaking, and wanted to give them a bit more info in case they wanted to try it themselves. :-)

AWESOME soap gear!

For Craft's Sake Soap cutters

This is waaaay out of my price range right now, but can you imagine going through your whole log of soap in just a minute or two? LOVE it!

Jasmine soap woes

Just finished a DELICIOUS smelling batch of Jasmine yogurt soap- the weather here is not making it easy... closed toe shoes, fully gloved, mask on, goggles on... on a warm humid day!

I somehow managed to freeze the yogurt I was going to use, and did not discover it until it was time to add it to the soap! Managed to get it pretty well defrosted, but I fear that my tan soap is going to have tiny white yogurt specks. I was laughing at myself because coincidentally, I did this exact same thing to the last batch of Jasmine soap that I made. It was wonderful soap- but had tiny white specks!

Off to make more soap! This weekend's project will probably involve making soap boxes and making coffee... to put in the soap and also in ourselves. ;-)

Yogurt Soap Half and Half experiment

We've wanted to make another batch of yogurt soap for a while, and when we read MMS' blog posts about making milk soaps using the Half and Half method, we were really excited! We had made yogurt soaps before, but with a lot of hassle- mixing and freezing the dairy and water, stinking up our kitchen with a horrible ammonia scent when we tried to add lye to it, watching it get darker and darker, not knowing if we did something wrong... We liked the feel of yogurt soaps but not the hassle!

Tonight we actually got the chance to try the half and half method for the first time, and we all loved it! Below is the recipe we used- this is what I call a "desperation" batch, in other words, we make it because of wanting to use up older remnants of oils. (I've found that sometimes desperation batches make the best soaps because you are more daring with your ingredients, thinking "well, if I ruin it, who cares? I was just using up some leftover oils anyway!")

25% Palm Kernel oil (approx. 12.6 oz)
27% Olive Oil (approx. 13.6 oz)
17.16% Shea Butter (approx. 8.65 oz)
10% Apricot Kernel oil (approx. 5.04 oz)
10% Wheat Germ oil (approx. 5.04 oz)
5.84% Cocoa Butter (approx. 2.95 oz)
5% Sweet Almond oil (approx. 2.52 oz)

9.576 oz water
9.576 oz yogurt

(optional) 1.575 oz Sodium Lactate
(optional) .8 oz Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate
(optional) .9 oz fragrance (We used Jasmine)