Soapy Swap Update!

As most of you know, I participated in this past Bramble Berry soapy swap, with both Melt and Pour soaps AND CP soaps! I still had some of my soap base lying around, and figured I may as well give it a hot!

I just received my M&P soapy package today, so here are the soaps I got!

All fragrances are from Bramble Berry's line.

All of these scents are wonderful, so I'll just go through the list!

This soap is from Mommy You Soap It! And is a Grapefruit Lily scented soap. It's a nice soft peach color fading into a soft cucumber green, and smells like a soft, sweet floral. The packaging is also super cute!

This soap is CRAZY AMAZING! It's from Wizard At Work from Etsy, and is scented apricot freesia. It's also a sweeter scent, and normally freesia is overwhelming on it's own, but I really adore this one. AND THE LAYERS. So impressed.

This one comes from Naturella Chandelle & Savons, scented with money Love. Hints of banana and coconut are present in this one, a nice sweet fruity scent. 

Oklahoma Red Dirt Soap from Okie Crowe! First off, this is some LOVELY packaging! It's got a layer of newspaper underneath the label to help hide some of the shrinkwrapped back, and I adore this concept because of recycling products! It also has the cutest red metallic "made in Oklahoma!" sticker on the top.This is scented with BB's Amber fragrance; which if you havent smelled it, it's a wonderfully spicy-yet-musky scent. This is definitely in the top of my favorite's list!

Next is The Mu from knittysnaps, scented with chocolate espresso. Which means it's an auto-fave, as I LOVE coffee scents. It's chocolatey-sweet with just a hint of coffee, very alluring.

And Me'Shea's Goat's Milk MP Soap, scented Peach Champagne. I LOVE THIS SCENT. Oh jeezus. It's sweet but not overly so, and kind of just smells "clean." But still sweet. And the top of this soap is super interesting, it's very soft anf fluffy -- I'm guessing it's "whipped," which works well with a peach champagne design!

This one is from Marilyn Payne Designs, and is (obviously) cherry almond scented. I love the lollipop theme for this one, as it's not so much almond as it is cherry. Smells like a cherry tootsie pop, minus the chocolate undertones. But it isn't an overpowering cherry! Some of them make me feel slightly sick if sniffed directly from the bottle, even though cherry is my favorite.Love the rainbow swirls!

And from Sudsie Q Soaps, we have White Tea & Ginger! First off, I really enjoy the white tea fragrances, they always smell so simple and clean, very nice without overpowering. The ginger adds a nice spicy note to it, and I love her color choices! The label is super cute, too, it wraps around the tops much like Anne-Maries do in her soap labeling tutorial. I want labels like these! <3

The next one is a very interesting blend from Once In A Blue Moon Soap and Bath. Not sure what the title of this soap is, but it's scented with rosehip jasmine -- which throws a curveball for it's sweet appearance. It's decked with cupcake imbeds and chocolate morsel embeds, 

It's a very floral scent with very sweet designs, lol!

Take a look at THIS! I LOVE the way Rosemary molded this soap, appropriately scented Fresh Bamboo. Her bamboo design is colored white, and the rest of the soap is a nice, soft green. The scent is lovely, too, and in the package are two really adorable, thin soaps. When we get our house, I know what's going in our guest bathroom to impress people!

I almost forgot one!

This Energy-scented soap comes from Key-Tones Soaps,  and is a lovely molded design accented by gold soapy paint! LOVE this scent, it's a nice sweet citrus!

And last but not least, the most epic soap:

IT'S THE DEATH STAR! This soap made me incredibly happy, as my household LOVES Star Wars. <3 The scent isnt named, but it smells like a deliciously spicy lavender, and is a nice, dark purple color with lavender buds embedded inside. This comes to me from Elly Ice at Frozen Water Designs, who gets total props in making a Death Star soap! <3

Thanks to everyone who created these beautiful, amazing, gorgeous soaps! I can;t wait to see what my CP package holds!

Until next time, happy soaping! :D

Cherry Goat's milk

Now that I have your attention, an update on soapy progress!

A dear friend of mine's husband fell in love with a MP soap I did when I was first experimenting with soapy stuff. It's called Cherry Swirl, and it smells just like pull-and-peel Twizzlers (my girlfriend always has to have some to eat when I make soap scented with this FO, or she gets grumpy!) and literally bought all of it I had made, minus the two bars one of my Etsy buyers got. 

Cherry Swirl chillin' out on the counter after cutting

It's made with a clear glycerin base with goat's milk base swirlies in it. It's probably one of my favorite MP designs I did when I still had bases to play around with!

After a few months, her husband was dangerously low on the soap, and she inquired about a custom batch. I told her I couldn't repeat the MP soap, but I could give it a try with CP. I explained that since I hadnt made soap with it that way yet, that there was no guarantee it would stick, and if not I'd refund the money, and she could even still keep it if she wanted (as soap is soap is soap!). So I brainstormed for about a week, and made the cute little 2lb loaf!

Mica oil swirled tops!

I alternated pouring red/white/red/white high enough for it to break through and swirl nicely, and just cut the bars today:

SO happy with how they turned out! And they still smell delish, so everyone is happy!

I've also been meaning to try my hand at a goat's milk soap, so I got down to business today. Blended the frozen milk cubes and lye int he sink in a saltwater ice bath, keeping them very chill. I even melted down all my oils the normal CP way, as I usually use the room temp route. Tussah silk, however, will not dissolve in a lye solution that cool, LOL, so this soap is just goat's milk and shea butter. No fancy silk.

Trace came beautifully, though I added a heaping amount of TD to keep it a nice cream color (I bought a ton of very YELLOW shea butter, and MAN does it some through in my soap!) It's so hard to achieve a nice white with it that I may end up getting more ivory shea, as the money I saved buying the yellow I easily will spend on TD coloring it. Lesson learned, Ash. Great way to kick yourself! ;)

And I was even able to make a lovely textured top! I blended some of the dredges of the soap batter with a TINY teensy bit of liquid aqua color, to give a nice off-white look, and blended it into the creamed base, making pretty peaks. It's scented with Clothespins, a very, very brisk, clean fragrance from Rustic Escentuals. I wanted to use lavender originally, as it seemed more traditional, but I already have a lavender soap. Here's the lovely textured details!

Very fun. So how has your week been lately?

Lavender Mist soap!

One of the reasons for wanting to make this soap is because I ordered a 1/2 lb of lavender buds off Amazon. However, I didnt realize HOW MUCH that would be. Oh my jeez.

Armed with melt and pour soap bases, I started my journey! I mixed lavender buds in the bottom in a clear glycerin base, spritzing with alcohol.

I then colored and scented a nice light purple base, layering that on top of the glycerin  Some of the lavender buds were all floaty-around!

And more lavender.

More base.

I was trying (and failed) to swirl. Oh well. More buds!

And cut and packaged. This was actually one of my most popular soaps when I first started. The lavender mist scent went well with the natural lavender buds in the soap.