Soap Demonstration

This past weekend I got to do a

cold process soap making demonstration at the

Plaid Peacock

located in a beautifully restored building

in downtown Waterloo, Iowa.

It's located just across from the Riverloop Public Market Co-op

and the Downtown Waterloo Farmers' Market

Plaid Peacock

See the window to the left with the shades pulled?

That's where the demo was held.

The Plaid Peacock has a nice setup for classes and demonstrations.

It's a beautiful setting, and they are always helpful and quick to

supply me with whatever I need.

Like power, a microwave, tablecloth and protective cover, etc.

Even when I forget to ask for it ahead of time :-)

Isn't the woodwork beautiful?

For the soap demonstration,

I made a batch of oatmeal, milk honey soap,

then poured it into the molds. 

There were about a dozen people there.

They asked lots of good questions. 

Some of the materials that went into the soap

The oatmeal, milk and honey soap is my best seller. 

People love the fragrance.

They also love the mild exfoliation quality of the oatmeal. 

Our skin loves oatmeal. 

Oatmeal has properties that soothe and soften our skin.

Freshly made soap

The soap needs to cure for about a month.

Curing lets extra water can evaporate.

This makes for a longer lasting bar.

It's so hard to wait for the soap to cure, but it's well worth it. 

Cold Process soap just gets better with age.

Bars of this soap will be for sale at Plaid Peacock in mid August.

The fragrance oil has vanilla in it.

Vanilla makes the soap darken a bit.

Just poured and still ivory

By the time these are ready to go, they'll be a lovely light tan color.

Crosscutting the bars lets the texture of the oatmeal show through.

Two days after pouring

These soaps smell wonderful!

Oh, and this soap is great at doing what soap is supposed to do -

gently cleaning and nourishing your skin.

How the bars will look after they are

cut and stamped

Oatmeal, Milk and Honey soap can also be purchased

at SoapArtOnline or

in SoapArt's Etsy shop

Thanks for reading!

Happy Mother's Day

I’m so excited to finally get to share the pictures from the soaping morning with the kids at Plaid Peacock.  Thanks to Plaid Peacock for supplying me with these great pictures!

If you haven’t been to Plaid Peacock in downtown Waterloo, you really must go.  The restored building is absolutely beautiful, and the variety of Iowa art and products is sure to have something for everyone.

The classroom area is very pleasant, with plenty of space and a huge window looking out onto the Public Market across the street.

Now, back to the kids. 

A couple of the kids showed up a tad early, so they helped me with last minute preparations.  We also chit chatted and got to know each other a bit. 

Our first project was a soap the kids mad for themselves.  It was a practice soap so they would have some experience before making their gift soap.

They could choose between a fish or a robot.  While they were doing that, they waiting for me to microwave the glycerin soap base.  Once the base was melted, they added fragrance and stirred.  After putting their toy into the soap mold, they carefully poured soap over the toy.

Next we moved on to the gift soap.  I pre-made little soap spheres with glitter and the kids got to choose some for their soap. 

They put the spheres into a clamshell mold.  Then they waited for their cup of soap to get melted.  Once they had a cup of melted soap, they added some yummy pearberry fragrance.  After spraying the spheres with rubbing alcohol to help the overpour stick, they carefully poured their melted soap over the spheres.  The hardest part was waiting for the soap to set.

While we waited for the soap to set, they made another gift.  Each child got to make some bath salts.  I brought some little salts, kind of like table salts, that already had fragrance added.  Each child got a couple of spoonfuls of those, and then got a big scoop of larger sea salts.  These were placed into a yogurt carton. 

The lids went on and the kids shook shook shook the salts to get everything good and mixed.  Once things were pretty well mixed (it got kind of noisy!), we added a few drops of color to the salts.  I was fun to see the color choices.  There was some color combining going on, and all of the salts ended up with absolutely gorgeous color.  The kids noticed that some pieces of salt were darker than others. 

Oh, I just loved working with these kids.  It’s so nice to have such enthusiastic and interested kids. 

While we continued to wait for the gift soap to set, the kids made cards and gift wrap.  I enjoyed watching the creativity of these precious children.  While they made cards and gift wrap, we also talked about having another soap activity in June. 

 Plaid Peacock and I haven’t set anything up yet, but we would certainly love to do another morning of soaping with kids.  I better get going on checking my schedule to see when we can make that happen.  I hope the kids will come back and that a few more will come join us.  I'm also thankful that one of the moms stayed and helped out with the class.  She was a life saver!

Thanks for reading!

Soaping With Kids

This morning I had the pleasure of making soap with seven delightful kids at Plaid Peacock.  It was so much fun!!

The parents graciously gave me permission to post some pictures on the blog, so I'll be sharing some in the next few days.  I probably need to wait until after Mother's Day so I don't ruin any possible surprises!  I'm pretty sure it's going to be tough for some of the kids to wait until Mother's Day to give Mom her gift.

If any of you parents read this - thank you so much for letting me spend some fun time with your children.  This was a perfect group of wonderful kids.  The children were so helpful and enjoyable. They were patient when they had to wait for me, were very polite in all aspects, and seemed to have a good time.

One of the kids asked when the next kids soaping day will be, so I asked when they would like it to be.  I'm pretty sure I heard a few "tomorrow" replies to that one.  I do hope we can do it again soon.

A special thanks to Plaid Peacock for letting us have this fun morning of soaping.  You can see more of what's going on at Plaid Peacock at their website or their Facebook page.  And if you live in the area, be sure to stop by and check it out.  There's something for everyone.  It's a great way to support local artists and small businesses.

Thanks for reading!