Fall is my favorite time of the year. I love that the air gets crisp and cool, I love the smell of the dying leaves, I like that we don't have to mow the lawn so frequently, and the colors we get up north are so beautiful!
I've been testing out some fall fragrances to add this year, and here are some pics!
This is a blend I made using BB's Almond Biscotti FO, some coffee EO I had at home, and a little cocoa powder to make the base of the cupcake a bit more tan. This fragrance smells ah-mazing! I even keep one cupcake up in the living room while it cures so I can smell it whenever I want :) The blend with the coffee EO is so fabulous - I just wish the coffee EO wasn't so expensive. This is definitely a limited-production blend. (side note- I think I've finally figured out the right consistency to pipe soap designs. I am so impatient, I never wait long enough. I think I finally nailed it on these cupcakes).
Ok, this next one is not a traditional fall scent, but I wanted to show off this cool halo effect the woad powder gave these swirls in this Caribbean Coconut soap. We got married in the Bahamas last year less than one week after Hurricane Sandy passed through, so these colors and swirls remind me of a Bahamas hurricane.
Last year, I tried to make some Fresh Snow soap, but I ended up forgetting to scent the soap before I poured it in the mold. This design is just what I was going for, using BB's vertical mold. I love the scent, I love the colors, I love it all :)
And last, but not least, is my Gingerbread Cookie soap. This is such a delicious fragrance - it smells just like a gingerbread cookie! It's a nice, round fragrance that is not too sugar-forward. The soap batter was not quite thick enough to suspend the gingerbread man embeds, but I feel happy with how this soap looks and smells. I used a vanilla stabilizer to help prevent the soap from discoloring too dark.
I am looking forward to trying a few more fall fragrances coming up.
Have a great day!
~Chrissy
I have been having so much fun lately with colors. I had ordered the sample LabColors from BB a few months ago, but I haven't tried to play with them until recently. I read the instructions on how to use the LabColors, and while using them diluted is preferred, you can also use them undiluted in drop-sized amounts.
I had 2 new BB scents - Berrywine and Spiced Mahogany - that I wanted to try out for my fall soaps.
First, the Berrywine. I didn't love this scent out of the bottle - it smelled too similar to red wine that has gone stale. I used the (undiluted) formulation for Wineberry Mist in my packet (1 part red, 1/2 part emerald), squeezed the color drops directly into the soap, and mixed the color in the soap with the tiny blender. I wanted to try a color gradation, and I'm really like how the layers turned out.
You can see that there are specs of colors in the layers. This is because I didn't dilute the LabColors and I just added each drop directly to the soap, instead of mixing the color and then adding the entire color to the soap. The scent also really mellowed over time, and now it smells really nice and bright - no longer like the day after a party. I will definitely make this soap again!
Next, I tried Spiced Mahogany. I was super excited about this, because I've always wanted to smell like Ron Burgundy's apartment (Anchorman reference - I love that movie...). The fragrance has discolored because of the vanilla. I made one layer using the suggested formula for Oyster (1 part canary, 1 part peach, 1 part royal purple). Same spotty problem as the berrywine soap above, but I am really loving this scent! It's a nice masculine scent, but I don't think it's off-putting.
After this initial run, I found my Germall Plus preservative, some 2 oz bottles I had around (I needed 8 oz for the fully diluted 10 ml LabColor bottles, but 2 oz bottles are all I had, so I scaled the water and the LabColors added down to 1/4 of the instructions). After all my LabColors were diluted, I made this Wish Upon A Star soap with WSP's Beneath The Stars FO. I really love this scent. I wanted to make the soap look like nightfall, so I used LabColors, because they will bleed and blend the layers, and this gave me an excuse to use them, now diluted!
I love how this turned out! The embeds were nice and sharp, and the layers did bleed, which had just the effect I was looking for! And the scent is really heavenly (see what I did there? haha!).
Hope everyone is enjoying their day!
~Chrissy
