Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!

 

Here's a soap I made last year in honor of Earth Day.

It smells like my garden in the Spring.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Beer Soap, Part 2

If you missed the first post about beer soap,

You can find it here.

 

Now, for the reveal of the unmolded soap!

 

In this photo, you can see the beer on the bottom

And the froth on top.

I wish you could smell it.

 

Here it is from a slightly different angle.

 

 

Here it is right after I cut it.

I love how the edges are darker.

The difference between the beer and froth

Is very vague, but it's there.

My eyes keep getting drawn

To the edges.

 

Here's how it looked a day or two later.

The darker edges are less noticeable.

The contrast between the beer and froth

Is more visible.

 

And here it is a month later.

I'm happy that it still has the

Beer and froth look going.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday, James

Our son, James, is an Army Infantryman.

He is currently deployed to Afghanistan.

He turns 21 today.

Happy Birthday, James.

 

This post is in honor of his 21st birthday.

Certainly it's every son's dream

To have his mom blog in his honor on his birthday.

Especially on his 21st.

Ahem. But I digress.

 

I'm going to tell you about the beer soap I made recently.

Hey, a guy only turns 21 once.

Let's celebrate with beer soap.

 

I made some beer soap a few years ago.

At the time, I couldn’t find a beer fragrance to add.

So I didn’t add any fragrance to it.

It was great soap.

It was mild and bubbly.

 

Bramble Berry began offering beer fragrances a while back.

This time around, I got to add beer fragrance to the soap.

I decided to try one called Oatmeal Stout.

Thus the hunt began for Oatmeal Stout beer.

 

I found this.

I used this post on the Soap Queen blog as a guide.

I began by boiling the beer.

Yuck. It stunk.

Once the boiled beer was room temperature,

I added the lye to the beer.

Again, yuck.

It stunk even worse!

 

I added the beer/lye mixture to the oils.

 

 

It actually smelled okay.

In fact, it smelled good!

It became a gorgeous caramel color.

 

Here I'm adding the Oatmeal Stout Fragrance.

 

I divided the batch into two parts.

 

I added Pearly White Mica from Bramble Berry  to part of the batch.

 

The mica lightened the base a bit.

The lighter portion was designed to be

The foamy part on top.

The darker portion was to be

The beer itself.

 

Here is the beer portion in the molds.

 

And the frothy top.

 

I'll show you the cut bars in another post.

 

In the meantime,

Happy Birthday, James.

We miss you and love you.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Ninja Soap

Happy April Fool's Day!

 

These cute little ninja soaps are no joke!

 

These ninja soaps have a ninja toy inside.

The soap base can be clear or colored.

Glitter can be added . . . or not.

 

The ninjas come in green, blue, red, orange, yellow or purple.

 

Wouldn't these make cute party favors?

 

Up for sale now in my Etsy Shop.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

 



Feel Good Spa Soap

Feel Good Spa Soap

 

This soap was inspired by my son's request.

He asked for a soap for a stressed out friend.

 

After doing some research,

I decided to add activated charcoal

And Mauve Clay

To a natural soap base from scratch.

 

 

The bottom layer is soap base with

An essential and fragrance oil blend.

The main components are ylang ylang and vanilla.

 

The next layer is a thin one with activated charcoal added.

Activated Charcoal provides mild exfoliation.

It also is known to have detoxification properties.

 

The top layer is colored with mauve clay.

Mauve clay is chock full of minerals.

 

I couldn't resist adding some texture to the tops.

 

Here's what the soap looked like right after it was cut.

See the faint lines around the edges on the bottom part?

 

Here's what it looked like a few days after it was cut.

The vanilla content caused significant darkening.

Here's how it looks after a few weeks.

 

You can get your very own bar here.

 

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 



Lego Peeps

Today we went back to Daylight Savings Time.

Spring can't be far away now!

I love it when it stays light longer.

 

Here are some bright little soaps.

I call them Lego Peeps.

 

I make blocks to go with them.

 

 

They come packaged in sets of 3 blocks

and 3 peeps.

But I can put them together in any combination.

 

In this picture, you can see some robot soaps.

 

They come with little keys.

 

Glitter adds a fun sparkle.

 

I hope you enjoy the additional daylight

Tacked onto the end of the day.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 



Hand Milled Soap

I have wrestled with myself on exactly how much of this story to divulge.

I decided to go ahead and tell you the whole thing.

So, here we go.

 

This is my extra bubbly good for shaving soap.

It has bentonite clay for slip.

It has castor oil for extra lather.

 

This soap doesn't stay in stock for long.

There is also always a bar or two in my shower.

So I made a 10 pound batch recently.

 

I added the clay to the liquid oils.

I hadn't done it this way before.

It seemed to work well.

 

When the soap was at light trace

I added some colorant.

I used Blue Mix Labcolor from Bramble Berry.

It's been my go-to color for this soap.

I usually make three layers

In three variegated (ombre?) shades of blue.

 

I added Cold Water Fragrance,

Also from Bramble Berry

It's manly, but most women like it too.

 

Fast forward to the poured soap.

I guess I forgot to take pictures of several steps.

 

 There was so much soap that it filled four loaf molds

Plus a few single bar cavities.

 

As I was putting supplies away,

I noticed the jug of castor oil.

Yes, jug.

I buy it by the gallon.

Anyway, I realized that I forgot to add the castor oil.

 

As the oils and lye combine to make soap,
The process of saponification occurs.
That means the oils and lye react
To produce soap.
 

Saponification takes the mixture from this

To this.
It also continues for several hours after the soap is poured.

When I design a soap recipe,

I use this SoapMaker program.

It lets me make sure there will be some leftover oils.

I think of it as the oils eating up the lye.

I shoot for about 5-8% more oils

Than what is required to "eat up" the lye.

If you are a soapmaker, it's okay if you chuckle at my

Technical explanation of saponification.

I did some quick calculations.

Based on the oils I did remember to use,

And based on the amount of lye used,

The soap was going to come out lye-heavy.

Not by a lot, but by a little.
You could even call it a smidge.

I use this extra bubbly soap for shaving.

But even if I didn't,

I would not be satisfied with lye heavy soap.

Even slightly, barely detectable lye heavy soap.

A really great thing about making soap
Is that you can almost always save a botched batch.

The way I saved this one was by hand milling it.
Here's how I did it.

Two days after the initial pour,
I unmolded the soap.
I cut the slighly lye heavy soap into small chunks.
I put these chunks into a crock pot.
I added the castor oil that I forgot the first time around.
The crockpot was set on low.
I melted the soap down.
It took a few hours.

This is known as rebatching, or milling.

Here's the melted soap glopped into a mold.

After another couple of days,
I unmolded the hand milled soap.

Here it is!

 

I'm quite happy with the end product.
I've already used part of a bar, and am loving it.

One advantage of hand milling is that
The soap can be used right away.
Usually there is a 3-4 (or more) week waiting period.

Another advantage is that the soap has an interesting look and texture.
I also think it produces more bubbles.

Each bar is one of a kind.

I set a lot of these bars back for personal use,
But a few will go up for sale.

Thanks for reading my hand milled soap saga!