Yuletide au Lait

Tis the season....My Christmas soap is done. This is Yuletide au Lait, a creamy turkish mocha scent with notes of chocolate and vanilla. To kick it up a notch, i added some eggnog, french roasted coffee and grated nutmeg. It's a rich, warm scent, perfect for the cold weather. Will be up for pre-order in a few days.

Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale

Christmas, my favorite holiday is almost here. As my gift to you, enjoy 20% off your orders. No minimum purchase required. Sale starts November 29th until midnight December 2nd. EST. This offer does not include the purchase of custom items.

The case of the lumpy soap batter.

I was never a big fan of jasmine. The flowers are pretty but for some reason the scent always made me feel nauseated, even more so if i'm hungry. However i put my personal feelings aside and experimented with jasmine fragrance oil for one of my newest soaps. On any given day working with floral scents in cold process soap can be difficult. While this scent didn't misbehave beyond repair, it was certainly unruly. I was soaping above room temp. Knowing how floral scents tend to behave i had my soap batter (colored with titanium dioxide) ready to be scented. As soon as i added the fragrance, small lumps formed in my batter; the type of lumps you see when mixing cake mix from a box. I stick blended a little and also used my spatula to annihilate the lumps. I was able to whip most of them into submission however a few still remained. I have heard of ricing, but don't recall ever experiencing it. The fragrance oil seemed to cause some ricing, and the batter did get a bit thick, however it was still manageable. I have since cut the soap and the tiny lumps were made of oil. Overall, the soap fared better than i hoped. I will have to read more about ricing soon. Jasmine is a nice floral scent in CP soap so i hope to work with it again.

Smell the Tropics (Coconut Lime Verbena)

Here are some pictures of the coconut lime verbena soap.

Smell the Tropics

With the holiday season just about upon us, I am working feverishly to get many things on my to do list checked off. Of course my list includes making soaps. I'm working on some new soaps for my Etsy shop. Today i made coconut lime verbena. This is a great tropical scent, a nice buffer for this very cold weather. It would be nice to getaway to someplace tropical "sigh......" I tried to incorporate colors to match the scent of the soap, however there is a small amount of vanilla in the fragrance oil so hopefully there won't be any discoloration.

Mini Christmas Soap (cut)

So, i cut the mini Christmas soap this morning. I am definitely liking the colors. I cut three full size bars from the 1 pound loaf. I will use these soaps as part of my Christmas gifts for family and friends.

Mini Christmas Soap

I started selling my soaps only a few weeks ago. Since then I have been debating with myself whether or not to make a Christmas soap. Even though i hadn't decided on a fragrance or design, I finally decided to make a Christmas soap. Unfortunately, i did not have enough sodium hydroxide on hand, so i have to wait for my lye delivery and then decide how i will proceed. In the meantime i made a 1 pound loaf in my silicone mold. I used Bramble Berry's Tart Apple fragrance. This is a lovely scent that behaved very well. No acceleration or discoloration. I also added an ounce of goat's milk. I have never soaped with goat's milk so i was very happy that it behaved well. I did go with some traditional Christmas colors or white green and red. My red looks a bit pink like, so that's still a work in progress. I will cut it tomorrow to see how it turns out. I'm looking forward to my extra hour of sleep after we turn our clocks back 1 hour this weekend.