Mardi Gras Soap

This soap was done for the Mardi Gras challenge over at the Soap Making Forum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a goat's milk soap with jojoba beads and confetti shavings from other soaps on top.  The scent is Tangerine YC dupe from Saveonscents.  It's also got a couple of ounces of heavy cream in it, as well as shea butter.

 

I'm really happy with the way it turned out!

My first farmer's market

 

 

 

 

SO much fun!

 

This was at the local indoor farmer's market on a Sunday, from 10 am to 6 pm.

 

I made some great networking contacts, including 1 other CP soaper with whom I will be good friends, I am sure - she's a hoot!  She does all-vegan soap, so we won't be competing with each other thank goodness!  The other soaper who was selling does HP and is a high school student (!) so I felt a little bad for potentially taking her business.  Hopefully our stuff is different enough that there's room in the market for both of us.

 

All in all, I made enough to cover the price of the table plus a modest profit.  And handed out lots of flyers and business cards.  Yay!

 

I'm going to send out some of the soaps that didn't sell yesterday to my testers, to make room for the new batches that are currently curing.  Next farmer's market is on Feb 10th, right on time for Valentine's Day!

Mojito Soap

I am just not happy with this mica that I bought from The Conservatorie.  This is the 2nd or 3rd time that I've soaped with it, and it just turns grey.  The name is Starlight Green Mica.  From now on, I'll have to mix another green with it.

 

On the bright side, the soap smells great!  It's a spearmint and lime EO blend with powdered lime peel added as well.  Shea butter & kaolin clay.

 

 

 

As you can see, the blue is nice and vibrant, and the base is a light yellowish beige due to the lime peel powder, but the grey part of the swirl is supposed to be a nice light green.  Ick.

Update

Hi everyone!

 

I'm sorry that I haven't posted in a while.  I have been going back and forth with the thought of not using the blog going forward.  But I think I'm going to keep up with it for now.

 

I'm happy to report that I've perfected my recipe!  My basic oils are coconut, grapeseed, and castor, along with lard.  If I have shea butter I will include that also, however I don't always keep that on hand.  I wanted to go with supplies that I can buy locally, and I don't have a reliable local supplier for shea butter.  If I'm placing an order with Amazon, I'll go ahead and include it, which means it won't always be available.

 

In other news, I have tried soaping with goat's milk and love it!  I use the goat's milk frozen into ice cubes.  It makes a lovely creamy bar.  It's going to be my go-to liquid from now on.  I tried condensed goat's milk, which is ok but turns orange when frozen (which doesn't affect the soap), but I prefer dehydrated goat's milk rehydrated with water and then frozen.

 

Here are some of my more recent soaps:

 

 

This is not a goat's milk soap, more's the pity.  I ran out!  But I really wanted to soap this scent.  I'm calling it "After the Rain" and it's a really nice fresh unisex scent.

 

 

This one *is* a goat's milk soap.  I got the idea for using Save On Scent's Yankee Candle "Sun & Sand" dupe from a coworker who loves the fragrance.

 

 

Also a water based soap.  Cucumber melon scent - I love the colors!

Thai Pina Colada Soap

Pineapple and coconut was one of my first ever fragrance combos that I tried when I started soaping a few months ago, and I still love it.  I was born in Thailand, so I am in search of the perfect "Thai" fragrance blend.  I also wanted to do a soap with the Iowa Hawkeye colors, so here we go:

 

 

 

For the blend, I used pineapple-cilantro from Brambleberry, as well as Coconut Cream from Save on Scents, along with a dash of Lemongrass-lavender (local vendor) and Basil from Brambleberry.  It smells mostly like pineapple; I am hoping the scent will mellow a bit as it cures.

 

The color does look faintly green on top in the "wet" pic but it's more of a gray.  The batch took a while to set up and I kept futzing with it, trying to get the ridges on top.  Which mixed the colors more than I would have liked.  But I like the inside swirl!

Results of Rebatch & Blackberry Patch Soap

Here's how the rebatched soap turned out.  My husband's effort is stacked on top of my glop-n-pray effort:

 

My part is definitely a wash (pun intended!)  It's just horrible.  I'm going to let it harden and then grate it down for laundry soap.  DH's soaps, the ones on top, are nice but they are soft.  At least they're usable.

 

Last week I made a new blackberry soap.  The Blackberry Sage FO comes from Peak Candle Supply, and it's so fruity that it makes my teeth itch.  I tried to cut it with some patchouli FO from a local soap supply store, but the BS FO drowned it out.  This one will definitely be a giveaway or selling soap as I just don't like the fragrance, but I'm sure someone will!

 

Wet:

 

 

 

 

Green Tea Soap

I gave away a bunch of sample sized bars at a client site last month, and a friend of mine from there ordered 3 bars of the green tea soap!  Yay!  I tried a new color combo.  I'm not sure about the gray-moss-green part of the swirl, but it sure is dramatic.

 

Wet:

 

 

Cut:

 

 

 

I'm pretty darn close to my standard formula - coconut oil, castor oil, grapeseed oil, and pig lard.  I have no problems using animal fat, personally, and that list is all available locally for me.  Whatever works, right?