A word of Encouragement to my fellow Artists

So this morning I log into my Etsy shop and this message was waiting in my inbox:

Hi,

I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your soap. I bought about 4 or 5 bars in April and I put them aside in a basket by my tub. Fast forward to about 3 days ago and I was feeling a little blue while getting ready for my day and I spied your soap. I opened it and placed it in my shower. I know it is a little thing, but it was such a nice start to my day and I did feel better using such a lovely bar of soap.

Have a great weekend.

Susan

How cool is that!! Sometimes slow sales, creative dry spells, etc. can really get me down. To know that something I created could bring a little bit of joy to someone else, totally makes the ups and downs worth while. I hope that this can be encouraging to all my fellow artists as well. Keep your chin up :D

Sunripened Raspberries & Honey Soap Unmolded

Here are the pictures of the soap unmolded. I poured these in, went to the theater to see Twilight Saga: Eclipse (woohoo!!), came back home and they were ready to unmold. How fast was that!? I'm considering adding salt to all of my recipes now.

Sunripend Raspberries & Honey Soap

Don't ask me what made me combine these two fragrances. I can't stand the smell of raspberry bath & body products. But, the two bottles were sitting there and I thought, hey, why not?

The combo really does work. If you're a fan of raspberries, you should like this. 

As you can see, I'm really having fun with this whole swirling thing. I most likely will keep it up until my lye runs out and then move on to something else. But for now, I'm really diggin' this. It's a lot of fun!

Using Old Soap as Laundry Detergent

When we were younger, my sister and I and some of our cousins used to go with our grandmothers down to the family house in Virginia. It is out in the middle of nowhere. Back then it even had an out house. We had to do the laundry with a wash board and brick hard bar of lye soap.

That got me thinking of a batch of soap that I made back in November scented with Cool Water. I forgot to superfat with Cocoa Butter. It's rock solid and just doesn't look like anything that I would want to use on my skin. I was feeling adventurous, so I pulled out the cheese grater and shredded it up and also threw in some lavender essential oil scented soap; also lye heavy...I forgot to add the Palm Oil :0(  Combined they sort of remind me of Gain's Spring Lavender detergent.

I know that there is a proper way to make laundry detergent that includes borax and washing soda and I know that this isn't it. But, it's my laundry and I'm allowed to experiment, lol. The shredded soap dissolved completely in the water and made lots of bubbles. Pretty cool. I did a load of bath towels and then a load of clothes (although I did add some baking soda to the 2nd load). Both smell and feel like any other load that I wash with store bought detergent. I'm definitely going to try this again, but,with the borax and washing soda added.

Dreams for Riley

This is a beautiful Treasury curated by Julie of Julieslittlebits on Etsy.  She made this collection with prayerful thoughts of her young nephew who is in ICU right now battling for his life. He's been fighting leukemia since he was 5 years old and the family can really use lots of prayer and support right now. You read about Riley on her blog: http://juliesbits.blogspot.com/ .

More fun making Bath Bombs

Now this is what I call a Bath Bomb! Granted my hands are on the small side, but this thing is huge (and heavy)!! My Mondo mold arrived a few days ago along with my Kaolin Clay. I used my last bit of Citric Acid to make this as soon as I had it out of the box. It's scented with Juniper Breeze and weighs just under 8 ounces (a tad larger than a tennis ball).

It was super easy to make and popped right out of the mold without a hitch.

Soap (name still unknown) Unmolded

This was my first time using Dead Sea Salt in my soap making process. Dead Sea Salt is known to be great for the skin but it is a killer of bubbles when it comes to making bar soap. So, I chose to use Coconut Oil as the first of my oil ingredients because of it's bubble making properties. Unfortunately, it can also be drying when used in higher quantities. To offset that, I superfatted by 10% and added Lanolin & Goat's Milk to the recipe. The salt caused the bars to get hard really fast so I was able to unmold within a few hours of pouring. Which was a really good thing for me since I'm so impatient.  At any rate, I have dry skin and eczema, so I'll be my own guinea pig this time. My family can take a break, lol. If my skin can handle it, then: Mission Accomplished!

I have no idea what to call this soap...

I actually combined two different fragrances to create this soap. I had a little sample of Celestial Waters from Brambleberry and left over Bermuda Sands from Sweetcakes. They're both aquatic, spa like fragrances that are very fresh with a bit of sweetness. So, I figured why not combine them?

The two really compliment each other well but now I'm stuck with the dilemma of figuring out a name. I'm really stumped on this one. I'm trying very hard to channel some of Patrice's (the Soap Seduction) creative energy to come up with the perfect name. She has a real knack for that sort of thing. Nope. Still nothing. Well, at least I have about 3 more weeks of curing time to figure something out. Wish me luck :0)

Practice Making Bath Bombs

My first attempt at making bath bombs was a fizzing disaster. I gave up a year ago and never looked back. Last week, I found a fantastic tutorial on the Soap Queen blog and just kept watching it over and over again. She makes the process look so easy that I felt brave enough to pull out my ingredients and give it another go. I actually ordered the mold to make the jumbo mondo bath bombs, but it won't arrive here until next week along with the kaolin clay. I'm not exactly known for my patience, so I used ingredients that I already had on hand to start a few fizzies.

These are my ingredients:
2 part baking soda
1 part citric acid
10 sprays of sweet almond oil
5 sprays of liquid silk
3-5 sprays of water mist
iron oxides and ultra marines
fragrance oil

Here are my results

Starting with the one at the top with the little lavender buds and going clockwise: Lavender & Chamomile, Salty Mariner, Lime Margarita, Japanese Cherry Blossom, Clean Cotton, Night Blooming Jasmine, Tahitian Vanilla and Coconut Lemongrass in the center.

This is what happened when I sprayed too much water into the mix (I need to get some witch hazel). After that, I held the bowl 6-8 inches from the spray bottle and sort of caught the mist in the bowl. Worked like a charm :0)

Lime Margarita with Dead Sea Salt

Japanese Cherry Blossom

These have the whole room smelling soooo good!

So now to see if they will actually fizz.

That piece fizzed for about 3 minutes.

Now I'm all out of citric acid and need to order more. Which means next week I'll finally have my mold but not all the ingredients, sigh.

Creamy Citrus Mint Soap Unmolded

Citrus Mint Soap

This soap combines Orange 10x, Peppermint Essential Oils with just a hint of Patchouli to hopefully "anchor" the citrus in. It's hard to describe the scent but I'll try. It's not sugary sweet, nor is it super minty. The Patchouli lends a slightly earthy scent to the mix. Actually that sums it up pretty good. It's an earthy combination of citrus and mint. 

The overall scent is medium to strong yet none of the fragrances overpower the rest. It's actually quite pleasant I'll post the unmolded pics later today or tomorrow.

Bella Soap Attempts 1 & 2

I came across the "Bella" fragrance oil while shopping on the Magestic Mountain website for shrink wrap. It was my first time trying any of their fragrance oils. The scent is of course Lavender & Freesia rounded with notes of rose, iris, violet, and soft musk. Very feminine. This is actually my second attempt with this particular fragrance.

The first attempt turned out too soft even though I discounted the water. I think I've finally figured out what went wrong. Too much fragrance oil (I think).  The Sage doesn't really require that you use that much.  I tested my theory with the second batch (above) and it turned perfect. Those bars are already pretty hard even though they still have about two weeks of curing to go.

Pomegranate & Black Currant Unmolded

Here are the pictures of the unmolded Pomegranate & Black Currant Soap. I'm very happy with the way they turned out. They smell great too :0)

You may not be able to tell from the picture but they have a bit of sparkle to them from the crimson mica.

I've always wanted a slab soap mold with dividers for two reasons:

1. So that I could do these really cool swirls

2. So that I could drag the colors down the sides with the dividers.

Kind of silly, I know. But, I'm really giddy over these drag lines! Lol.