Neroli, Amber, Rose...oh my! And Mad Oils!

My first order from Mad Oils! So excited!

Over last week, I finally took the dive. I ordered some new supplies from mad Oils, and I absolutely love it! I received rosebuds, hibiscus petals, cornflower petals, and tea tree essential oil. They even included a little sample fragrance oil (It smells like Christmas in a bottle!) and a bit of sample mica. I've already used these in some soaps that you can see below!

So, first off we have my latest Amber handmade soap, scented with Amber fragrance oil from Bramble Berry, along with the cornflower petals from Mad Oils. Gorgeous!

I also made a Neroli & Shea soap, scented with Neroli & Shea Blossom from bramble Berry (I have SO MUCH of this from the samples!) and decorated with hibiscus petals and rosebuds. I love how this one came out, nice and white, no discoloration, and no acceleration. Fantastic!

I also got around to redoing my Etsy store with all my latest soaps, and you can view them here.

I do plan on ordering a bunch of new exfoliants, and I need to restock my castor oil and palm kernel -- order one and run out of two more! Oy.

I also entered Kenna's (from Modern Soapmaking) contest for Gratitude Soapery. I'm very excited for the opportunity, and if chosen will consolidate my Unique Useables with Gratitude -- and have a little leg up in the world to get everything up and going. So many things!

So, my soapy fellows -- anyone tried anything new lately? Let me know in the comments!

Update on Life and crazy happenings..

Man, it's been forever. Or it seems like it.

I'm such a horrible blogger, haha. At least this little break wasn't like the LAST hiatus I had! So to give you guys an update on my current standing...

1. I'm finally out of my old job! No more call center. :)

2. I have a slight break between jobs which will mean MOAR SOAP!

3. I DO have some soaps I've made since the Warm Vanilla Sugar batch, but I still need to photograph them. Namely, I made a batch of Lavender, I resupplied a client with her custom order of my new Energize blend (Lemongrass, bergamot, and listea), and another custom order soap from coworkers, a Lemongrass Mint!

4. I have so many plans for new soaps! I have an order shipping in from Mad Oils (so excited! They're fabulous; find them here)

5. I keep my Facebook more up to date than my blog (sometimes), so if you ladies/gents want, you can follow my page here.

6. So outside of my move form SC to WA, the reason we have been so busy lately is we moved from Bremerton WA to Tacoma WA to be closer to Jay's job, get better pricing on rent, and really just get out of Kidnap County --- oh I'm sorry, I meant Kitsap. :)

7. Sadness for the move, though, because I could not bring my lovely furbabies with me.. They are now happy in another home, and my heart is heavier for it.

Lessa and Ramoth, spooning in Jay's chair.

8. Furbabies that we COULD have, however, included rats! Working with a lovely lady out of West Seattle through Craigslist, I was able to relocate three amazingly cute baby boys!

 From left to right: Larry, Moe, and Curly

I'm sure they will find ways to help me during my soapy excavations. :)

9. So my new job will be work from home, same sort of stuff I did at the call center just different client. And with the advantage of saving 300+/mo on gas and toll costs, it will allow me to focus on my soaping in my free time!

Once again, I apologize for being so busy, but we can all see HOW busy its gotten! Once I get my next batch of soap out, I will post a soapy update!

Soapy Swap Update #2!

I was excited to find a package slip in my post office box this afternoon, as it meant the rest of my soapy swap soaps had arrived! As you guys know (if you're been reading), I participated in both the melt and pour AND the cold process swaps, as it was my first one, and I wanted to have a large sampling of other soaper's work to examine and analyze and pour over and sniff and USE. Because it's what I do! Yaay, OCD.

So, without further ado, the soaps!

I got a soap from QUEBEC. How cool is that!? Unfortunately, I don't speak French. :( I DO know that the name translates to The Daughter of the Sea (Yay Google!). First off, this soap is incredibly adorable! It's a very crisp rosy scent, though I don't think the fragrance is mentioned. The name of the soap is Apple and Pink, and it's made using Magdalen Island's Honey, which I've never heard of before. This bar is very sturdy, and I adore the mica swirls on top! And the little rose :O

Next up is Fresh Linen & Lavender from Joyful Sundries!  I love the simplicity of this packaging. The ribbon of cloth makes a lovely subdued compliment to the naturally colored soap. The top has hints of lavender blossoms, and the scent is definitely a keeper.

Cinnamon Ridge Fragrance Company used Cranberry Pomegranate -- which is also another favorite of mine. I used to use little car fresheners that smelled like this soap does! It's interesting to see the soaps packaged in muslin bags -- I'd never considered that one before! Maybe a packaging switch is in store in my future... 

Oh man. I could eat this. Seriously. It isn't an overpowering fragrance. They used Dark Chocolate and Cream Cheese Frosting FO, and oh my god, I think I may have found an artificial chocolate scent I enjoy. It's also naturally colored with cocoa powder, and I love that I got a round soap! I've been wanting to make some for a while, but I have no containers, except for a grits one I've been saving -- though that would make a sizeable circle. Okay, before I eat this one, I need to stop sniffing it. Or maybe just one more little one...mmmm.

And from Bubblin' Glenn, we have their Lounge Lizard soap! Love the swirls with this one -- their activated charcoal black is SO INCREDIBLY BLACK. I wonder how much they used! I need my blacks to be that dark. And stiking the label TO the soap! Very nifty idea, and probably saves a lot of time. Not sure about the scent on this one; it's musky and lightly minty, but it wasn't included in the description. :(

I've never smelled Tea Tree oil before. Cue my surprise when I took a decidedly strong sniff of this one out of the bag. COUGH. Yeah, lesson learned. :) Raven and Rain Soap Co send their Rosemary Tea Tree Oil Shampoo bars, which is EXCITING because I want to try shampoo bars but havent because I'm chicken and my scalp can decide to be -quite- flaky. So I'm very terrified to try anything that isn't Head and Shoulders or Pert Plus (do they even make this one anymore? I remember my grandad using it). Not sure if tea tree oil would do the trick for me with that one though...I do need to invest in tea tree oil, however. ITS SO DANG EXPENSIVE. It makes my soapy-trickle funds sad.

I LOVE THIS SOAP. It literally smells like I just popped open a Ginger Ale. I can't even process this! Oy! And I obviously cannot drink this one. :( Sad Ashley is sad. This soap is lovingly brought to you by Pine Place Market Soaps, and I have now decided that I need Ginger Ale Fragrance Oil IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW. Love the sparklies on the white embeds, too.

Maitri Bath and Body LLC gave their Beau Brummel soap, scented with "a heady tobacco fragrance." Not sure if that includes marijuana, but it sounds like it. :) And this one is a Goats milk soap! Awesome! I have something to compare my goat's milk soap to. Which I'll post cut pictures of later by the way. ;)

COFFEE BEANS. I smelled them INSTANTLY. Yum! This soap is from Rustic Relevance.  While I'm not a huge fan of leather fragrance oils (yuck) I DO think that the natural coffee bean aroma compliments it nicely. Smells like my great grandfather, who loved his old leather jacket and always had that coffee-tobacco smell about him. :) Love the very low-key packaging to it. I LOVE KRAFT COLORS. There, I said it. I can be admitted now.

Mud Creek Alchemy scented their soap with Spiced Mahogany -- which smells incredibly enticing and masculine and yum. I might have to see if one of the boys wants this soap. And it's HOT PROCESS! So happy to have gotten one of these. I started with hot processed soaps myself, but they seemed so squishy. This one does have sodium lactate in it, though -- I also have to invest in that stuff, too! I'm too impatient to wait 3-4 days to unmold my soap, so I'm usually stuck cutting it out of my HDPE molds after 24 hours.

Ida Rose's soap is scented a very light Spearmint Eucalyptus. It comes off very clean, and not heavily minty.  Also enjoy the textured tops on this one, very nice and simple. 

Lavender Chamomile! Yay! I loved this Huggies scent (we use wipes to clean up the kitties sometimes) and I absolutely ADORE this packaging! Too time consuming for me personally, but very lovely. This one is made by Susan's Handmade Soap. Love the fact that the soap bar is kept simple as well, with a nicely textured top.

SO, those are my CP soaps for the CP part of my BB soap swap! So many repetitive letters, haha. :)

Thank you all for listening to my crazy ramblings, and as always, happy soaping!

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.

16lbs of Cut Soap!

You guys remember this lot from yesterday, right?

Oh yes. Getting all of this soap out of the molds was a challenge in itself, but cutting it -- whew! Hand cutting it, I might add. The bars arent all even (let me tell you, I LOVE my slab mold now - it does it for me!) but money is tight, so I'll have to wait for a special day to invest in one of the fancy wire cutters.

But here are the soaps!

This is my Energize bar. A nice little (no column!) swirl done in my slab mold. It's got a bit of ash on the top, and some of the bars are sweating, but it smells heavenly. Scented with a blend of yuzu and lemon verbena, it's strong citrus top notes have a nice, sweet undertone. Lovely for morning showers!

This is the batch that accelerated so much it nearly hardened in the pot! Whisper, it was meant to have a hangar swirl (which is present in like, two bars) but whatever. It smells wonderful, a nice, heavy white floral (which I know accelerates anyway, duh) with a slight tinge of perfume. The tops of these are ashed as well, though I'll be using my soap planer/beveler from Soap making Resource to clean all of these babies up!

You can see how bad the ash is really well on these.

Probably my favorite one in terms of design out of the previous bars, this is Pink Lavender. Scented with a blend of lavender and some nice light florals, it has lavender buds sprinkled along its textured top. Lavender buds are also present throughout the middle of the bar (meaning there were some streaks when cutting). I used purple labcolor from RE to color the top part with, with TD mixed into the whole batch. Not sure if it's the TD that mixed with the labcolor, or the CP method that made it turn this delightful pink color. Happy accident, yay!

And, finally, Rustic. This is scented with a blend of eucalyptus and musk, a nice manly scent. I went with a simple grey bar, dusted the top with black glitter (more manly than -- pink glitter? I don't know) and ohmygawd it smells amazing. This bar and the Pink Lavender were softer out of the molds, more sticky -- though they were 3lb batches versus the 5lb of the others, so I'll account it for a cooler saponification temp.

Yay glitter!

These are some of the more professional soaps I've made, as these will be the ones I show to a wholesale client later int he week (wish me luck!) I never would have imagined that my hobby would have evolved this fast, and I have all of you to thank for having such an amazingly insightful community of soapers for me to explore! 

Happy soaping, my lovelies -- I will be updating more past batches until I get more palm oil in, as I barely have enough for a 3lb batch!

Let's get down to business...

...and make some soap!

Thursday I lost my day job -- don't worry, the reasons were silly, the company is intensely conservative, and I'm glad to be rid of them. I just need to find somewhere else to do my business. Better news is, however, that I have more time to make soap!

Exciting!

I got my molds in from MRDORIGHT on Etsy, and I was excited to try them out. Today was my "catch up on soap dishes/soap until I drop" day, which included me washing my soap dishes four or five times today, because after I finished one batch -- it became time for the next!

This was my first batch, done using MRDORIGHT's 18-bar slab mold. I'm so happy with this purchase! Everything was easy to put together, and the bars look lovely already. Can't unmold until tomorrow, but dang it -- they're gorgeous. This one I'm going to call "Energize" -- scented with a delicious blend of Yuzu and Lemon verbena, it's strikingly citrus.

Here's a better image of the swirl pattern from above. Fizzy Lemonade and Tangerine Wow from BrambleBerry, done in a simple spider web swirl.

The second batch was a slight bit more of a nightmare.

I wanted to use Whisper, a scent I found at Rustic Escentuals that smelled amazing -- I'm guessing it was a heavy white floral scent, because this was the FASTEST acceleration I've had to deal with yet! It was scary -- hardening in the pot and everything! OY!

I'm terrified with how this will turn out. The base layer is white, with a purple top, and I *attempted* a hangar swirl, though it was so thick I probably just made rivets in my soap. :( This one may just end up on my clearance rack..

It smells wonderful though, even now. The apartment smells of citrusy florals. Weird.

Batch number three!

I'm very impressed with this one. The base is white for this also, but it's layered. The top is a nice light pink -- I used purple labcolor, though it changed in the pot. Fine with me, as the lavender I scented with this suits the nice pink top, and I like the contrast of the shade with the lavender buds that are a striking purple. <3 Lavender buds were also mixed into the soap mix, for a nice little surprise.

My second attempt at a man-bar. Batch 4!

Scented with Eucalyptus blend (which smells very, VERY MAN. Mmmm.), this is a grey based soap, simple, topped with whisk swirls and black glitter. Just for shoots and giggles -- because what man DOESN'T need glitter? :D

The total weight for all of this soap is around 16lbs! Whew! I basically soaped until my palm oil was so low I couldn't make another batch. Which means ordering, and waiting, and ew. My coconut oil is low too, so it looks like I'll be hitting up the Chemistry Store soon. Oy.

All in all, 3 out of 4 of the batches were fine. The last grey batch had a slight acceleration, but nowhere near the Whisper. Needless to say, I think I'll save whisper for a future uncolored soap, or just add fragrance last, after coloring. Definitely not a swirler.

Thanks for reading, guys, and HAPPY SOAPING! I'll update with cut pics of these later. <3