Flashback 2013

Where has the year gone? And where have the past six weeks in particular gone? I think I heard a whoosh as they rushed by. Things get so hectic around Thanksgiving time, and it continues through the holidays. But in a fun way. And you know what they say - time flies when you're having fun.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday! My husband and I went home to Northwest Florida for Christmas and we had a great time hanging out with family and friends. The time went by too fast, as it always does, but we packed as much fun as we could into the time that we had.

It's hard to believe that 2013 is almost over. I like to take a look back at the year as it draws to a close. I made quite a few soaps this year, and I am looking forward to making some more in the upcoming year!

Let's revisit 2013, shall we?

Clockwise from upper-left:

Blue Man Shaving Soap (January 2013)

Pineapple Ginger Salt Bars (January 2013)

Roses & Champagne Valentine's Day Soap (February 2013)

Honeycomb Soap (March 2013)
 Bacon Soap (April 2013)

Peppermint Lemongrass Sage Swirl Soap (March 2013)

Clockwise from upper-left:

Wasabi Vertical Swirl Soap (April 2013)

Castille Soap (with mica swirls) (May 2013)

Mediterranean Garden Spa Shaving Soap (July 2013)
 Gumball Soap (August 2013)

Geranium Patchouli Soap (August 2013)
 Orange Basil Swirled Hearts Soap (July 2013)

Clockwise from upper-left:

Candy Cane Soy Candles (September 2013)

Dolphin Soap, Miami-Style (September 2013)

Snow Day Soap (October 2013)

Candy Cane Impressionist Swirl Soap (November 2013)

 Pumpkin Gingersnap Soap (October 2013)

Yuletide Cheer Soap (November 2013)

It's hard to pick a favorite from all of the soaps I made this year, but the Orange Basil Swirled Hearts and Snow Day make the short list. As do the Honeycomb soap (which is a favorite in my house) and the Geranium Patchouli (it smells great, and the Red Moroccan Clay is such a nice ingredient). And I discovered salt bars this year, which I especially love for my face! Which reminds me - I need to make more salt bars.

Goals for the New Year? I plan to finally make some wine soap. And I got some new soaping tools that I'm looking forward to trying out. The hanger, mantra, and peacock swirl techniques are still on my to-do list, and I'm particularly eager to experiment with them.

The New Year also means that this little blog is nearly two years old now! I published my first post here on January 15, 2012. Since then, this blog has grown and I have met some wonderful new friends in the process.  I have discovered many new blogs and I enjoy interacting with you all here and on your sites. Thank you to each and every one of you for following me here at my blog as well as on Facebook, YouTube, and Google+. Thanks for coming on this journey with me. You make my soaping adventures even more fun!

Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve, everyone! And I wish you all a fantastic 2014!

Christmas Packaging



Soaps and candles, packaged up and ready to go under the tree!

The holidays are almost here! Is everybody ready?

I made it home to Florida earlier this week, and I finished Christmas shopping a couple of days ago. I've got everything wrapped, except for a couple more packages I'm waiting on.

And, of course, everyone on my list is getting a special something handmade by me. The nice thing about being able to make soap and candles is that your shopping list gets shorter, and everyone likes receiving what you've made! (At least, I think that they do.)

I started making my holiday soaps in August and had them finished by October. With all of the hustle and bustle from Thanksgiving on, it was a relief to know that a lot of my Christmas gifts were ready to go. There was still labeling and packaging to consider, though, and it seems that no matter how early I get the soaps done, I still end up doing the labels and packaging at the last frantic minute. (But you know what they say - if you wait until the last minute, it takes only a minute.)

The labels for my soap were made with Microsoft Word. (This tutorial helped me immensely.) As you can see below, the front of the label has a graphic and the name of the soap. The back lists the ingredients and my blog address.

For the candles, I used 2.5" round white labels and designed them using a Word template. The stickers fit perfectly on the wide-mouth pint mason jar lids. (The bottom of the jar has a caution label - CYA!)
 
I wanted to package things up nice and pretty for the holidays. In the past, I've tied bars together with ribbon and then put them in a gift bag. That works fine, but I wanted to do something different this year.

This Christmas, I went with large red Chinese take out boxes and gable gift boxes, stuffed with Eco Fill Christmas Blend filler paper. It's pretty, festive, and the contents are protected. Easy to carry, too.

The take out boxes are perfect for little presents, like hostess gifts or for when you want to give someone a little something. And the gable boxes can hold several soap bars and a candle.This year, the gift boxes include Pumpkin Gingersnap, Snow Day, Yuletide Cheer, and Candy Cane Swirl soaps. And everyone gets a soy candle, too - either Cinnabun Type or Peppermint Patty. Yum!

I hope that everyone on my shopping list likes the soap and candles! And I hope that all of you are enjoying the holiday season.

This will probably be my last post until just before the New Year, so I want to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy holiday!

Candy Cane Impressionist Swirl Soap

I'm a big fan of anything minty. And at Christmastime, mint shows up everywhere. It's fitting for the season - it's tingly and invigorating, but it also warms you on a cold day. Mint is not just for the winter holidays, though. It's a perennial favorite anytime of year. A bar of peppermint soap on a hot summer day is perfectly refreshing. (Crafty one, that mint. Like a Thermos. How does it know when to be cool and when to be warm?)

And if you pair mint with chocolate, it's even better. But then, chocolate always makes things better.

And so every Christmas, I must have not only minty foodstuffs, but also minty soap. And that means candy cane soap.

Christmas + Mint = Candy Canes

Candy canes are The Christmas Candy. When I was a kid, I'd go to the mall to see Santa Claus and tell him what I wanted for Christmas. I wasn't sure that I believed in the whole Santa thing - how's one guy going to deliver all of those presents to all of those kids in one night? - but I figured that it couldn't hurt to hedge my bets. And after I gave Santa my list of demands, he'd give me a candy cane.

Also, when I was little, my grandma would hang candy canes on the Christmas tree and my cousin and I would eat them on Christmas Eve as we not-so-patiently waited until it was time to open presents. The adults would play spades while we consumed an obscene amount of pepperminty sugar and inspected our gifts over and over again. The spades game was over once a team scored 500,000 bazillion points and only then were we allowed to open presents.

I don't visit Santa Claus anymore (I guess he just refers to my Amazon wish list these days), and my cousin and I no longer gorge on candy canes on Christmas Eve. But we still need a candy cane theme for the holidays, and soap is the perfect medium.

For this project, I decided to give the Impressionist Swirl a try. This technique uses squeeze bottles to squirt the soap into the mold in alternating colors, creating a swirl that resembles the short brushstrokes of the Impressionist artists from the 19th century.

Candy Cane Impressionist Swirl Soap

It's important to choose a well-behaved recipe and fragrance oil when using this technique. You want a thin trace, and it is necessary for the soap to remain liquid throughout the process.

For the scent, I chose Nature's Garden's Peppermint fragrance oil, which soaped like a dream. I mixed the FO into my cooled oils and then added the lye solution. Once I reached a light trace, I divided the soap batter into three equal portions and colored one with titanium dioxide, another with Bramble Berry's brick red oxide, and another with BB's green chrome oxide. (I mixed each colorant with a bit of liquid glycerin to work out the clumps and help minimize streaking.)

I transferred the colored soaps into three separate squeeze bottles and then squirted the colors into the mold horizontally in a S-shaped pattern, alternating between the white, green, and red. I repeated that process until the soap was gone. (I turned the mold every so often to keep the sides even, as the Soap Queen tutorial above recommends.) Once the soap was all used up, I used a skewer to swirl just the very top layer.

Here's a video I made of the process:


These soaps turned out really cool! I really enjoyed this technique, and I will have to revisit it in the future. I love how each bar is unique, and how you don't know what you're getting until you cut into the soap loaf.

Are you a big mint fan? Which scents and flavors do you associate with the holidays?

Yuletide Cheer Soap

A few snapshots from our Boise trip

It's that time of year! The holidays are almost here. Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away, and then Christmas will be here before we know it. I've got lots to do between now and then, as I'm sure all of you do, too.

But being busy didn't stop my husband and I from taking a break and visiting one of our favorite cities - Boise, Idaho. My first trip there was in 2008, and we've been back five times since. We love the downtown area, what with its myriad restaurants, pubs, shops, and events. We ate well (maybe a little too well, according to my scale), sampled some delicious Pacific Northwest beers (my favorite this trip was Sockeye's "Sprucin the Trail" ale, brewed with spruce tips), and visited the farmer's market and the Boise co-op. Boise State University also provided us with ample opportunities to get us some culture (goodness knows we need it) - we caught the symphony and an interpretive dance performance by the Idaho Dance Theatre. We dropped by Zoo Boise, where the meerkats in particular were hamming it up for the camera. The Idaho Steelheads were in town, so we caught a hockey game. (The Steelheads have never won when we are present. We are bad luck. But we did get to hang out with their mascot, Blue the bear!) And there was plenty of jogging to be done along the Boise River's Greenbelt. We try to go every autumn, and I am already looking forward to visiting again next year.

Now onto the things about the soap!

Say hello to "Yuletide Cheer," a holiday soap scented with a combo of Bramble Berry's Christmas Tree Cybilla and Elements Bath and Body's Rocky Mountain Christmas fragrance oils. (I had one ounce of the Christmas Tree FO and used another 0.6 oz. of the Rocky Mountain Christmas to make up the difference for two pounds of oils.) I love the droplet (or teardrop) effect, so I decided to make some green and gold swirls, since those colors make me think of Christmas trees. For the green, I used a hydrated chrome green pigment, mixed with some liquid glycerin to avoid clumping. For the gold, I chose gold sparkle mica. And I also added some titanium dioxide to the base to whiten it.

For this project, I wanted the soap at a thin trace so that the green and gold soap would penetrate the white layer and create pretty droplet swirls. It's important to choose a well-behaved recipe and fragrance oil for this technique.

After bringing the soap batter to a thin trace (I added the fragrance to the cooled oils before mixing in the lye solution), I portioned off 8 ounces each into two measuring cups. I colored one 8-ounce portion green and the other gold. Then I added the titanium dioxide to the remaining soap. I poured all of the white soap into the mold, and then poured the green soap from up high so that it would sink into the white layer. Then I did the same with the gold, drizzling it in a random pattern into the mold. A bit of green and gold soap was leftover in the measuring cups after pouring, so I used what was left to drizzle onto the tops. Then I used a spoon to swirl and push the soap on the very top layer around, giving it some interest and texture.

Here is a video I made showing the process and the cutting of this batch:


The droplet swirl is one of my favorite techniques because it creates such a beautiful effect. And no two bars are alike.

The Christmas tree-like scent is also fabulous! I wanted something that smells like balsam or fir or cedarwood or holly berry, or a combination of those fragrances. These two scents are balanced nicely on their own, and work well together, too. Not too pine-y, and definitely reminiscent of the holidays. I've never had a live Christmas tree, but I imagine that it might smell like this.

I've got one more holiday soap up my sleeve and I'll share it next time. (It's pepperminty!)

How are your holiday plans going? Got any fun trips planned over the next couple of months?

Snow Day Soap

Goodness, where does the time go? Is October really almost over?

I meant to have a blog post up a bit sooner, but it's been a busy month. My family came to visit last week and we had a great time hanging out! And I've been making holiday soaps so that they will have plenty of time to cure before Christmas.

Since September, I've made four batches of holiday soaps. My Pumpkin Gingersnap soap was the first of the four.

And I am proud to present holiday soap batch number two - Snow Day!

To create the ribbons of blue and gold through the middle of the bars, I used the tilted tiger stripe technique. It is similar to the tiger stripe - which I used to make this Bacon soap - except that the mold is tilted instead of flat when the soap is poured.

I hadn't heard about the tilted tiger stripe until recently. Milla, a fellow soap blogger, posted a few weeks ago about practicing some soaping techniques, and her gorgeous tilted tiger stripe soap near the bottom of her post caught my eye. I did a little more research on the world wide interwebs and found this YouTube video by Soaping101, demonstrating how to do the tilted tiger stripe.

For the scent, I chose a combination of Bramble Berry's Fresh Snow and Nature's Garden's Winter Garden fragrance oils. I had a little less than an ounce-and-a-half of Fresh Snow, and I used about a third of an ounce of Winter Garden to make up the difference. With this method, it's important to choose fragrances that do not accelerate trace, and it is also necessary to use a slow-moving recipe. 

To do the tilted tiger stripe, prop up your mold so that it is tilted at an angle. (I tied two packs of playing cards together and used them as a block, which I slid under the edge of my mold.) Pour some of your base soap into the mold, and then alternate different colors of soap, pouring a line of each along the side of the mold that is tilted toward you. I chose a white base with blue and gold stripes. Once most of the blue and gold soap was used up, I poured the remaining white soap over the top, being careful not to break through the layers below. Then I used the remaining blue and gold soap to create a faux mantra swirl on the tops, pouring a thick line of each and then moving a skewer back and forth just below the surface of the soap.

Here is a video I made of the process:


The tilted tiger stripe is a fun technique, and it creates a stunning design in the soap! I pretty much followed Soaping101's video, but I may try some variations in the future. I think it would be neat to tilt the mold one way, do some stripes, and then tilt the mold the other way to make contrasting stripes.

While I was looking up the tilted tiger stripe, I found a similar technique called the Dandelion Zebra Swirl, which was created by Vinvela Ebony of Dandelion SeiFee. (You may have also seen the Dandelion Zebra Swirl on Amy's Great Cakes Soapworks blog - it was chosen as October's soap challenge technique.) Instead of tilting the mold, a flexible plastic divider is inserted into the base soap and then alternating colors are poured or spooned down the side of the divider, creating ribbons of color. I will have to give the Dandelion Zebra a try someday, too!

Have you tried any new techniques lately? Which are your favorites? And how are your holiday soaps coming along? (Say, that reminds me - have a safe and happy Halloween, everyone!)

Pumpkin Gingersnap Soap

It is officially autumn now! Which means that we survived summer. I wasn't sure if I was going to make it this year. But then, I think that every summer. And every year, summer comes and goes and I am still alive. So far, anyway.

When autumn rolls around, I start thinking about cooler weather and how maybe soon I will actually want to go outside again. And I think about the upcoming holidays, and how I need to make some soaps for gifts. But what kind of soaps? What scents? What colors? Which techniques have I been wanting to try out?

Last year, I made a Pumpkin soap and a Gingersnap soap. This year I thought, "Why not combine the two and make a Pumpkin Gingersnap soap?"

And I have been wanting to try the Celine Swirl for a while and decided to give it a go. The Celine Swirl is named for its inventor - the talented and inspiring Celine Blacow of i am handmade, a Dublin-based artisan bath and body product company.

To do the Celine Swirl, you basically layer two or more colors in the mold and then use a spoon to scoop the soap from the bottom to the top, twisting your wrist as you go.

To make my 3-pound batch, I brought the soap to trace and then portioned off about 12 ounces of soap. For the colors, I chose Cappuccino Mica and Gold Sparkle Mica, both mixed with a bit of liquid glycerin to work out any clumps.  I added the gold mica to the 12-ounce portion of soap, and the cappuccino mica to the remaining soap.

Because both the Sweet Pumpkin and the Gingersnap fragrance oils discolor soap brown, I left the12-ounce gold portion unscented. I added the fragrance oils only to the cappuccino-colored soap.

Once the soap was at a medium thick trace, I poured about half of the brown soap into the mold. Then I spooned most of the gold soap on top of it, being careful not to break through the layer below. I layered the rest of the brown soap over the gold and banged the mold on the counter a few times to release any air bubbles.

Then I grabbed a spoon, pushed it into the bottom of the mold, and scooped the soap up toward the surface, twisting my wrist as I scooped. I did this along both sides of the mold and once down the center. Be careful not to swirl too much!

I had reserved a bit of gold soap and drizzled it over the surface once I was done swirling. After the soap set up some, I used my spoon to push the soap around on top, giving it some texture.

Here is a video of the process:


The Celine Swirl turned out pretty cool! And it definitely smells like the holidays! Gingersnap and pumpkin scents are always a hit at Christmastime, and this soap combines both beautifully. Just need to make sure that no one tries to eat it!

What scents are you all using in your holiday soaps this year? What are some of your favorite autumn and winter fragrances?

Dolphin Soap, Miami-Style

My husband, Ken, is a lifelong Miami Dolphins fan. Being from Florida, his penchant for the Dolphins began in childhood. He fondly recalls how they had a perfect season in 1972, going undefeated and winning the Super Bowl. And he suffered through their nearly winless 1-15 season in 2007. He is loyal through both good times and bad, his affection and devotion to his beloved Fins evident with the start of each new football season.

And the new football season has now begun. I am not a sports fan myself, but I thought it would be fun to combine my passion for soap with his passion for football. Specifically Miami Dolphins football. Actually, Ken suggested that I make a Dolphins soap a while back, but I didn't think of it again until the season started.

So here it is! A Dolphins soap using Miami's team colors: aqua, orange, white, and navy.

And the scent? Energy, of course. It's fresh, clean, and sporty. Perfect for sports-themed soaps. Because the word "sport" is right there in "sporty." Can't have the sporty without the sport.

I envisioned a white soap with orange and aqua swirls and a navy blue dolphin embed in the middle. As I've mentioned, I'm pretty lazy when it comes to making cold process embeds. So, I decided to do a cold process soap with melt-and-pour dolphin embeds.

Making the melt-and-pour dolphin embeds.

I bought this silicone dolphin ice cube tray several years ago - I don't even remember where I got it. Each dolphin weighs about a half-ounce, making it a perfectly sized embed. I chopped up some clear melt-and-pour soap base, melted it in 30-second bursts in the microwave, and colored the soap with a few drops of ultramarine blue liquid colorant. Then I poured the soap into the mold cavities and placed them in the fridge to set up while I got the rest of my soap ready. (I was a little sloppy with a couple of the pours, but no worries. I just used an X-Acto knife to tidy things up after unmolding the embeds.)

Preparing cold process soap.

For the cold process soap, I used a slow-tracing recipe of olive, coconut, palm, and avocado oils so I could make swirls. And Bramble Berry's Energy fragrance oil behaves beautifully and doesn't accelerate trace at all. I mixed it into my cooled oils before adding the lye solution. Once I reached light trace, I poured two 8-ounce portions of soap into separate plastic measuring cups.

Colorants mixed with glycerin.

For the swirls, I used hydrated chrome green pigment with just a few drops of the liquid blue and a bit of titanium dioxide to get an aqua color. For the orange, I used orange mica with a bit of titanium dioxide to soften the color and make it a bit more coral. I added the aqua color to one of the eight-ounce portions, and the orange to the other. The base is colored with titanium dioxide to whiten the soap.

Coloring the soap and making swirls.

I poured the base of white soap into my slab mold, and then poured the orange and aqua from up high to make sure it penetrated through, reserving some for the swirls on top. I poured the remaining aqua and orange close to the surface so it would stay on top, and then dragged my skewer (my thermometer stick worked perfectly) through the soap vertically and then horizontally. After I placed the dividers and let the soap set up a bit, I gently pressed the embeds into the center of each bar. I decided that I liked the bottom of the embeds better than the tops. The bottom had more of a dolphin shape, I thought, and I could make the dolphins lay flush with the tops of the bars by embedding them bottom-side-up.

Swirling and adding embeds.

Then the mold went into the freezer overnight so that the soap wouldn't gel and melt the embeds.

I'm pretty pleased with this soap, but I think I can improve upon it. Mainly, I wish that I had held back less soap for the swirls. I always hold back too much. I should have either used maybe five ounces of soap each for the aqua and orange, or reserved less soap for the surface swirls. I was going for something a bit more subtle, although I think the end result is still pretty good.

And the scent is fabulous - lots of citrus with a bit of effervescence from the champagne notes.

I think it's a fun soap, sure to please any Dolphins fan. Or at least my husband.

It's only the beginning of the season, but so far so good for the Fins! I hope that they have a good season. No matter what happens on the field, though, at least we know that we'll have good soap.

Any Dolphins fans out there? Sports fans in general? Have you made or bought any sports-themed soaps?