Christmas Soaps

Christmas Spice

Made with olive, coconut, rice bran and castor oils and cocoa butter. These soaps have Christmas spice fragrance oils and colourings added to them.

This seasonal blend is a mix of wood and sweet spice notes. Ripe strawberries meld with touches of green apple and pineapple. Next the spices, cloves, cinnamon, pimento and cardamom blend with a hint of rose, leading to hints of sweet vanilla and balsam fir.

Christmas Time

Made with olive, coconut, rice bran and castor oils and cocoa butter. These soaps have cranberry fig fragrance oil and colourings added to them.

A wonderful summery fragrance! The tart bite of cranberries and the sweet, mild allure of figs are made even more striking in this mix by adding a smattering of tangy orange and pink grapefruit.

Christmas Star

Made with olive, coconut, rice bran and castor oils and cocoa butter. These soaps have mandarin myrrh fragrance oil and colourings added to them.

This seasonal blend is sophisticated and romantic. Mandarin orange, meyer lemon and tangerine zest tangle with the freshness of basil, sweet clove bud and star jasmine before being brought to the grounding earth with patchouli, Indian myrrh, golden amber and Egyptian musk.

Tailem Bend Market

Table


Centre

Mannum Market

Table

Murray Bridge Rotary Market

Table Front
 


Christmas Soaps



Baskets of Soap

Wistow Markets - Adelaide Hills

Table Front





Centre Tray





Christmas Soaps





Salt Bars

Murray Bridge Showground Market

Table Front





Soap Saks




Beer Soaps



Soap Tray

Aussie Myrtle Soap

Made with olive, coconut, rice bran and castor oils and cocoa butter. These soaps have lemon myrtle essential oil and colourings added to them.

A spicy lemon soap, that is refreshing, uplifting and invigorating. Ideal for dry and sensitive skin.

SoapTravel

I'm excited ... I've registered with Cocobong to be a member of the SoapTravel Project!

If you want to find out more, please read SoapTravel and SoapTravel Project.

More soapers are welcome to join this Project! 

Make Your Own Owl Calendar!

  My daughter loves Owls! 

This looks like a great idea, plus this site is fantastic for anyone who loves owls.

Good Morning - Coffee Soap

Instead of distilled water, this soap is make from a strongly brewed coffee.  The coffee smells strong after it's made, so I leave the coffee maker jug outside to smell for the neigbourhood while it cools.  Then after measuring the amount of liquid I need, the coffee is put in the freezer until it's semi frozen.  This allows for it to be used safely and without any ghastly smell caused by the 'extreme' heating that results when the caustic soda comes into contact with the coffee.

The top of the coffee soap has some colouring swirled in it and a small amount of the coffee grounds added to exfoliate.  After the caustic soda has 'made' soap, all the smell from the coffee water is gone.  To get a coffee smell a coffee fragrant oil is added.

Good Morning Coffee Soap – 48 hours after unmoulding




Good Morning Coffee – after a few weeks of curing!  Lovely colour!

Frugally Sustainable: Homemade Probiotic Deodorant - That Really Works!

Frugally Sustainable: Homemade Probiotic Deodorant - That Really Works!: Probiotics. A buzzword within the natural health community. And rightfully so! Most health conscious individuals understand the positive ...

Cool Wave

Made with olive, coconut, rice bran and castor oils and cocoa butter. These soaps have Cool Water fragrant oil and colourings.

A wonderful, rich and complex sea blend, based on the popular men's fragance by Davidoff - 'Cool Water'.   This perfect men's fragrance has a crisp scent that is also adored by women.Top notes of lavender, rosemary and menthe are freshened by bergamot.  Middle notes of jasmine, geranium, sandalwood, iris and oakmoss lead to a manly bottom of musk and ambergris.   

This fragrance is like navigating a kayak through icy waters - brisk and fresh but casual enough not to overwhelm the senses.

In the mould



Bars

No Calories

No Calories is a Chocolate Soap

I took part in a swap on the ‘Soap Making Forum’. It was an Aussie Autumn Swap … and my first soap swap. It was so exciting and I loved all the soaps I received. One of them was scented with ‘Italian Spiced Chocolate’ and looked like an iced mud cake. I contacted the person who made it and asked if it was ok for me to make soap the same … and she said yes!

Here is my take on a chocolate soap, which is called No Calories, as even though it smells divinely of chocolate, it can't be eaten!  Damn!

The bottom of this soap has dark chocolate added … and the colour is amazing.

The Italian spiced chocolate fragrance oil is divine and provides a great showering experience!

Lavender Salt Soap

I love using salt in oil to clean my hands and remove dry skin and I was curious to find out how salt soap worked. 

After considerable research, I decided to make a coconut oil soap with a high superfat.  I chose to add 70% table salt and a swirl of colour.  Plus ... the night before, I added colour to some sea salt and let that dry, to add decoration to the top of my soap.

Making the soap was straight forward, but it set quickly and about four hours after putting the salt soap in the moulds I removed it (still warm) to cut it.  The bars didn't cut smoothly, but the salt soaps in the muffin moulds looked great ... note to self ... in future make salt soap in individual moulds, to prevent the need to 'watch' it so closely.

Beer Soap

I’m a regular on a soap forum and was reading posts from people who were making soap using beer. This was interesting, as I’m sure if my husband was still alive he’d ‘boo boo’ that idea, as beer was for drinking, not soaping!

I researched more and decided that beer soap would be a great idea for Father’s Day … so decided it was time to give it a go.

A friend gave me bottles of beer that were brewed by her husband. First I took the lids off two bottles and poured them into a jug. Then left it in the fridge for a few days, so that it would go completely flat. Next I put it in the freezer for a few hours and used it when it was half frozen. The reason for this, is that the lye heats liquid quickly and the lye would ‘burn’ the beer if it wasn’t at least chilled. Apparently the smell of ‘burned’ beer is disgusting! Making sure the beer is flat is also important, as otherwise the lye and beer could result in a volcano. So it’s important to be a little more careful when making soap using beer.

Beer does not add any fragrance, so you need to add some EO’s or FO’s or a mix of both. In my soap I use Bramble Berry’s Oatmeal Stout FO and added a little oat bran for some soothing qualities.

Beery Oats – freshly out of the moulds


Home brewed beer that was used for this soap

Beery Oats – 48 hours after unmoulding


Beery Oats – after a few weeks of curing! Love the colour!

Wordle

Found this interesting program being use on Celine's blog 'I am Handmade'.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

Soap philosophies can change

I started buying homemade soap many years ago and as a purest I only bought soap fragranced with essential oils.

When I started making soap it was important to me to follow my philosophy of using only essential oils, natural colourings, no animal products and no palm oil, even if it’s from a sustainable source.

These ideals lasted for about a year, the ‘no animal products’ and ‘no palm oil’ haven’t changed, but I kept seeing pictures of beautiful soaps with amazing colours and read about some amazing fragrances … and these helped me to experience with colours and fragrances.

Soaping is loads more fun now that my ‘no no’ list has reduced and my soap is as good if not better than it was when I followed the ‘no no’ list.

Blue Wave ... just out of the moulds

Dragon's Spirit

Made with olive, coconut, rice bran and castor oils and cocoa butter. These soaps have Dragon Blood fragrant oil and colourings.

A mysterious, alluring blend with warming notes of amber, incense, Madagascar vanilla and patchouli. Followed by the romantic notes of rose, jasmine and lilac. Finally this blend is topped off with light touches of blood orange and grapefruit.

This soap will continue to darken in colour due to the vanilla in the fragrance.

Nature's Bloom

Made with olive, coconut, rice bran and castor oils and cocoa butter.  These soaps have Nature's Blush fragrant oil and colourings.

This floral fragrance has hints of rose petals, peony blossoms and lilac.  There is also a faint presence of fir balsam entwined with ylang ylang.

I used two micas and a liquid soap dye to colour this soap.  The colour is achieved by a simple 'in the post swirl' and saving most of the colour to decorate the top. 

A sprinkling of 'faerie dust' (soap glitter) has been added to the top for some *bling*.

Green Berry

Made with olive, coconut, rice bran and castor oils and cocoa butter. These soaps have Blackberry Sage fragrant oil and colourings.

This delicious, strong fruity fragrance has top notes of blackberries, a touch of orange zest and a base of fresh green sage leaves.

A perfect blend of juicy blackberries tempered with the cleaness of sage.

I used three different micas to add colour to this soap, two of them pop micas and one a lustre mica.  A little of the colours was added to my soap pot for an 'in the pot swirl', but most was kept to decorate the top.

The smell is divine!

My Dad

My Dad has been taken to Timaru hospital and his kidneys are failing!

I want to fly home ... NOW ... but I can't and it's hard.

I know my Mum and Merv will be with my Dad as he prepares for his final journey ... and I hope I can get home in time to talk to him in person one more time.  I will phone the hospital tomorrow and hopefull I can talk to him.

I usually phone my Dad (in Waimate) at least twice a week and last week I could tell he wasn't well.  He was finding talking difficult and he thought he had another lung infection.  X-rays at the hospital show his lungs are clear ... most unexpected, but his kidneys aren't processing the fluid in his body ... and that's what was affecting his breathing.

I love my Dad!  X

Why are you soaping?

I have allowed my beatiful dog Wilson to be my 'at home' best buddy, since my wonderful hubby died on the last day of Summer 2009 (28 February 2009) ... and then I wonder why he looks at me the way he does, as he watches me get my soaping gear organised. 

His look tells me he knows that shortly the laundry door will close ... blocking his access to his freedom, his dog flap in the outside laundry door.  Then he'll have to watch me go out the sliding doors to 'our' favourite deck area ... with my box ... alone.  Return, then go back out with two bowls and a stirrer ... alone.  Return, then go back out onto 'our' deck and bring the box back in ... all while he's being praised for not following, for staying where he is ... like he has a choice, his access to his door is blocked and he watches me disappear out to 'our' deck, closing the sliding door behind me each time.

I try to involve Wilson in my soapmaking, by telling him what I'm doing and telling him why I'm choosing certain colours and this or that design.  Sadly he never seems interested.

Saturday ... busy as ...

What a fun day!

Made my first batch of 'No Calorie' chocolate soap.  It's made with my favourite recipe of Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Rice Bran Oil, Castor Oil and Cocoa Butter.  The fragrance is 'Italian Spiced Chocolate', so added a little melted dark chocolate to the mix.  Smells divine!

Then I made my first batch of whipped soap.  I think I melted the hard oils too much, as it took ages to thicken, but it was exciting when it did.  I only have a hand held beater ... so I was starting to get over the idea when finally it thickened and the excitement returned.

When the soap was ready, the batch was split and one lot coloured with grape pop mica.  The coloured part was put in silicon cup cakes moulds and then came the fun of learning how to pipe happened!  I'm going to need loads of practise, but I was quite happy with the outcome.

Now the wait ... I'm looking forward to trying this again!