Equality Soap 2.0

I'm sorry it's taken so long to post pictures of my two newest soaps, but I've been working on making my own light box (blog post on that to come...) and simply haven't gotten around to it.

For the Equality Soap, I was disappointed that the green color morphed in the cold process soap.  Even though the site where I purchased the colorant said it was safe in high PH products like cold process soap, it just didn't do what I wanted.  I have had good luck with BB's Green Chrome pigment, and I had previously made a number of small Christmas tree guest soaps using that pigment that were a perfect green for the rainbow color scheme.

I chose my 3 least favorite Equality bars and shredded them down and separated the colors (and excluded the gross maroon color that was supposed to be green.  I'm sure that it will be lovely embedded in a different soap, though!).  I also shredded 2 of the small tree guests soaps for the green color I needed in the rainbow color pattern I wanted.

I really love the confetti look of this soap!  

I scented it with WSP's Pure Rain fragrance oil, because I was looking for a clean, ozone-y scent for this rainbow soap.  I mixed a white batter to a medium trace and poured 1/6 of the white batter with the shredded red color.  I did the same with the other 5 colors, ending up with the violet color on the top.

This made a HUGE bar - it will be over 6 oz when cured!!  Here's another photo:

I also ordered the heart tube mold at WSP, because I was inspired by the adorable soaps that Jennifer has been making with the mold.  I have been really loving the Pinkberry Mimosa fragrance oil from WSP also, and I made this batch with pink kaolin clay for the bottom part (and the top) and BB's Gold Mica for the top portion.  I am so happy with how this turned out! 

I'm sure I say this after most of my soaps, but this may be my new favorite :) I even am loving the halo effect that the cocoa powder is creating around the heart and throughout the pencil line.

{When I was looking at these pictures with my chin in my hand, I swore I could smell the fragrance.  Then I realized I WAS smelling the fragrance - since I just finished photographing these soaps, the smell was still there...  Maybe it's time to call it a night!}

Hope you all enjoy the weekend!  It feels like it's been raining every day since it stopped snowing in May, but tomorrow afternoon is supposed to be gorgeous, so I plan to be outside, celebrating with friends!

~Chrissy

Equality Soap!

I am not one to post political stuff on my blog, but I am proud that earlier this week, MN passed a law to legalize marriage equality!

George Takei even posted this pic on his FB page - she is a friend of my hubby.

So, to celebrate, and so that I could practice making layered soap, I decided to make a rainbow equality soap.  I had 2 2-lb loafs, so I figured even if I screwed one up, hopefully the other would still turn out.

I had bought some neons and oil-locking micas from WSP and also have some awesome neons from BB, and mixed my colors for the rainbow:  red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and some white for hearts on the top.

I haven't used the WSP colors yet, and to my dismay, the oil-locking green turned a gross brown when I mixed it in the soap batter, and when it saponified, it turned this weird light maroon color.  Not quite what I was going for, but now I know not to use this for a green going forward :)

Here are some pics of the soap I took on this cloudy day today:

I'm happy with how the hearts turned out - I was really worried with keeping the top layer at a light enough trace to do this.

The layer between the yellow and blue is supposed to be green.  Disappointing.

I broke through the layers on one loaf, so I made it a spoon swirled rainbow :)

It looks kind of tie-dyed with the way the swirl came out.  I kind of like it!

Way to go MN!  Have a great Saturday, everyone!

~Chrissy

Amy Warden's Soap Challenge 2013 - Tiger Stripes

Hey everyone - I have not been as active on the blog this past week or so.  It's getting to be spring here (finally!) and there is so much to do!  I'm working on some pretty exciting things that I should be able to share in the next month or so.

This post is my submission (even though I am blogging too late to be included in Great Cakes Soapworks' list for this week) for her Tiger Stripes challenge.  Many of you are familiar with the challenge, but for those of you who are not, Amy Warden has hosted Soap Challenges for the past two years for soapers to try out new techniques in soap designs and styles.  I didn't participate in this challenge last year, but I am very excited for this year.  She has 4 challenges:  Tiger Stripes, Elemental Swirl, Mica Swirl Tops, and Leopard Spots.

This is the first soap my husband and I worked on together, and it was pretty fun!

He even did the swirls on the tops for the left and center logs!

I decided to use purple, black and white for my tiger stripes in a Black Raspberry Vanilla scent, since I needed to make some more in that scent.  I am using Rich's 3-log set-up of my mold, and I needed my husband to help me out with the pouring.  The reason I used the 3-log set-up is that I wanted to try the tiger stripes at thin trace, medium trace and thick trace to see how this impacts the soap design.

At least that was my theory :)  I really struggled to get the soap even to medium trace for the last log, which was odd.  I guess I was so nervous about it thickening up too quickly that I was light-handed with the mixing.

Here is the first log we poured - it has weird soap flakes on the edges where it was cut.  This was actually the last log cut, and even though I wiped the wires off between cuttings, I may not have wiped well enough...

The second log did not turn out how I expected at all...  I think it's because we didn't do a great job of pouring directly on top of the soap batter line beneath, but it turned out some pretty awesome soaps:

I love the faces on these bars - there were probably 3 or 4 bars that had these faces.  The rest were some kind of impressionistic swirl :)

The third log was the most tiger stripe-like.  In between pouring each log, we stick-blended and whisked the batter to get it to thicken up a little more.  These looked the most clean, even though they weren't exactly what I was looking for:

Here are my favorite two of the bunch:

The faces on the second loaf just crack me up!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

~Chrissy

Strawberries & Cream

It seemed like a good idea for me this weekend to attempt a soap with cream again.  This was partly because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, after all of my ruined attempts, and partly because I had a partial container of cream in the fridge that was going to get tossed if it wasn't used quickly :)

One roommate has asked for a good strawberry-scented soap, and I found this Strawberries & Cream FO at Wholesale Supplies Plus that seemed like it would fit the bill.  It got some good comments from reviewers, and it's definitely time to think about some fun late spring scents.  This FO does have a 5% vanilla content, so I needed to plan the colors and design accordingly. 

I replaced 2 oz of water with cream (approx 20% of liquids are cream) in my 2-lb mold recipe (approx 20% cream) and stick blended the cream into the oils instead of mixing it with the lye water. I had read this tutorial from Amanda over at Lovin' Soap, and this seemed to be easier (and quicker) than trying to mix the cream in with the lye.

Since this FO has some vanilla and will discolor to some degree of brown, I didn't want to fight with the color too much, but I also didn't want a brown Strawberries and Cream soap.  I decided to use some of BB's Super Pearly White Mica to color the entire batch to give it a bit of a sparkle and then to color the portion that was scented with the FO with some of BB's Merlot Mica.  I also used cranberry seeds in the colored and scented portion to make it look a little more strawberry-like.

Here's what it looked like after I poured it on Sunday:

I really love how the color turned out!  Since I didn't want the colors to be too dark, I tried to keep this soap from gelling by putting it in the "icebox."

I cut it today with the handy-dandy wire cutter, and I noticed that I got a bunch of air bubbles.  I wonder if it's from cutting it and dragging the cranberry seeds through the soap?  The soap color got a little darker, but not too brown.  I'd be happy if the soap stayed this color - only time will tell :)

These pictures were taken right before and after cutting - after curing for a few more weeks, I will polish them up a bit more so they look more smooth and shiny.

The scent out of the bottle smelled like a strawberry milkshake, and both my roommate and I love it!  After 3 days, it seems to have faded and taken on a more plastic-y smell, so I'm hoping it's just the mold I was smelling and it will will smell more true after the bars cure.  Cross your fingers!

I will wait with baited breath to see how this soap does after a nice cure - I am hoping I've beaten my cream issues once and for all!  I also hope this soap stays this nice color - reminds me of the Strawberry Shortcake dolls I used to have as a little girl.

Here's one gratuitous pic of my dogs for good measure - this shows perfectly their relationship, even though this picture was taken nearly 4 years ago:

~Chrissy

Over 1,000 page views!

I know everyone has their own measure of success for their blogs, but I am so proud of this milestone.  I started this blog a little over 3 months ago, with the hope that I might be able to convince my mom and husband to read it occasionally, and now it has over 1,000 views!! 

So, to celebrate, I decided to finally try to make some soap cupcakes.  I found an awesome sale on cake decorating supplies at Joann Fabrics and bought a bunch of stuff earlier this week to use as "soap only" decorating.  I had some Hot Chocolate FO from Brambleberry and some green sea clay I wanted to try out.   My recipe was supposed to make 6 cupcakes, using 25 oz of oils.  

I used the FO for the base of the cupcakes, since it will discolor them to a nice dark brown.  I poured out about 18 oz of the soap batter for the base and mixed in only the FO, no additional colorants.  Already, you can see the discoloration from the FO:

 I added some peppermint EO and 1 tsp of sea clay to the portion reserved for the tops and waited... and waited... and mixed...  and got myself some breakfast and fed the dogs... and mixed again... and FINALLY the batter was at a thick enough trace to pipe the tops.  I realized now that I should have used a larger tip for the piping - the one I got was for cake decorating, not cupcake decorating.  Oh, well.  Here's how they turned out after I was done piping:

The batter I poured was enough for 7 bases, but I didn't use enough of the "frosting", so I had enough left over for an extremely ugly cupcake. 

The color was not as vibrant as I had wanted, so I found some body-safe pink glitter and sprayed the tops of this cake.  Now the cupcake is a weird patina color and looks kind of slimy.  Another soap that is definitely going into my personal stash :)

I tried poppy seeds on a couple, both for some extra exfoliation and some visual interest (read: to cover up the poor job I did on piping...)

All in all, I'm quite proud of my first foray into soap cupcake-making.  I know how I can continue to improve, and my soap area smells ah-mazing!

~Chrissy

I'm back!!!

Hey everyone - I've had a really long hiatus from this blog (and from soaping), but for some good reasons...

I have mentioned before about my upcoming wedding, and I was away for a few weeks for the wedding and honeymoon at the amazing Atlantis in the Bahamas!  It was an absolutely phenomenal time - we couldn't have asked for better weather for us and our guests.  We got there a few days after Sandy blew through, and even though Sandy did some damage on the beach we had chosen, we were able to upgrade to an even better beach to have our ceremony.  My husband's uncle conducted the ceremony, we had steel drums for music on the beach, and we had the most amazing food and music!  I had such a good time, and I know everyone else did, too!

We had some phenomenal vendors for our wedding, including wedding planning by Gretchen Culver at Rocket Science Weddings and Events, hair and makeup for the ladies by Brett Dorrian Artistry Studios, photography by Studio Laguna, amazing flowers by Wildflowers in Nassau, and the best wedding music ever (even though I *may* be biased...) by DJ Jose in Nassau.  It was an amazing time!

Then, my new husband and I returned home for a week before we headed off to Detroit for his birthday and Thanksgiving celebration with his family.

Whew!  That's a whole lot of travel in the past month and a half, and I am ready to get back in the swing of things here.  I am working on some new soap recipes with some new fun ingredients I have gotten recently - including hemp oil, pistachio butter, and silk - and trying out some new techniques.  I cannot wait to get back into soaping!!  Have to get my stock back up for all the holiday gifts coming up :)

Here's one picture from our incredible wedding from Katrina at Studio Laguna:

~Chrissy

First!

The first post always seems to be the hardest.  I wanted to start a blog to share my soapy journey, new ideas I have, lessons learned, and, probably most importantly to me, document my skills as a soap maker.  I am excited to be able to look back at these soaps that I've done below, that I'm so proud of, and see what I am creating in future years' time!

I have been a crafty person the majority of my life, but I started buying handmade soaps when I became an adult.  I loved their smells and designs, I loved that they were created locally, they made great reminders for me of places I've traveled.  I wanted to make soaps for my guests at my upcoming wedding, so I decided to learn for myself.

It's been addicting so far, as you can see by some of the projects I have sitting around through September.

 I made this one from Soap Queen's Sunshine Soap recipe here. Love the scent!

 I really love this scent - BB's Earl Grey Lemon FO.  The top soap (swirl of the left overs) is my favorite!

 This is BB's Christmas Spice FO - really accelerated on me, so I kind of slopped it in the mold.  Still looks okay, though, and smells great!

 Hobbes is an adorable model, but he's really hard to work with. I'm going to have to have him watch Top Model with me - learn his angles.

 He does love the soaps I've been making, though!

 Here is one soap I made for my wedding guests - Guinness beer!  Scented and colored only with Guinness (my favorite beer).  Next time I'd add some activated charcoal or something to make the beer part darker...

My shop assistant, Hannah :)

~Chrissy