Fixed a beach scent I don't like

My daughter and son-in-law have been visiting this week, so there hasn't been time for making soap. I pack up some soap for them to take back to Germany tomorrow and unpacked an order that arrived today from Wholesale Supplies.

One of the items on the order was a new Fragrance Oil, beach, but it's definitely what I expected from a beach scent. I had an almost allergic reaction to it. It smells more floral out of the bottle than beachy. So I quickly did a toothpick fragrance blend test by dipping a toothpick in it and then dipping another toothpick in a Mango Papaya fragrance oil, put both toothpicks in an old, clean, prescription bottle and gave it a good shake, and the mixture of both is lovely. So that is what I will use for a spring, summer beachy scent.

For a beachy scent I was expecting something more tropical - something with coconut, tropical fruit, etc, than what was in that fragrance oil. And of course, after reading good reviews, I bought a 16 oz bottle! Fortunately, I am happy with the scent after being mixed with the Mango Papaya. In fact, I like it a lot.

Hopefully in another couple of days when I get the house back in order, get bills paid and some other paperwork out of the way, I can make more soap with that mixture.

A few day ago I got another, better liner for my 9 bar square mold. The one that came with the mold is rigid and I have a hard time getting the soap out of that mold without paper liner on the base. So, instead of struggling with that I bought the Brambleberry silicone one which is going to work a lot better.

Hope everyone is finding time to make some lovely soaps!

Some good ideas on free molds

Check the video below. He has some good ideas for creating your own molds with available materials, and a good source of inexpensive liner material.


Well, my mold has not arrived and I don't even think it's been mailed yet, so there goes my February spin swirl soap challenge.

Had a bad night last night, either food poisoning or lord knows what; but I'm going to take it super easy today and do absolutely nothing that can wait one more day. It will be a good day to watch soaping videos, and maybe try to edit my last soap making video.

I recently bought a new version of photoshop which has a video editing software, so I'll give that a try and see if I can make sense of it.

Delayed arrival of my slab mold

Looks like my new 9 bar slab mold with divider may not be arriving in time for me to have an entry in the swirling slab mold soap challenge this month. I only saw a note from the maker on Etsy Friday and ordered it immediately, but a followup on my part, found out that she was out of town Monday and said it she would be shipping orders sometime this week.

I would have to have my entry in before the 22nd, so it's doubtful that I can make it. Even though it's doesn't look like I will be able to make it in time, I will try that swirl when I get the mold.

My saved boxes that I use to cover some soap molds seemed to have gone walkies. So I will have to check my recycle bin and she if my cleaning lady thought they were trash and put them in there. There may be a slim chance that one of them can be lined and used as a mold.

This is my last day this week to have a warm, dry afternoon for planting, then we'll be back to rain and cooler temperatures for about five more days.  I'll head to the garden right after lunch and till then I will re-do my recipe for the 9 bar mold.

Someone on the soap forum who has the mold helped me out and said she uses 47 oz of oils, but since I want to cut the soap horizontally, I want to make the soap about 2 1/4" high instead of 2". If it looks like it will spill when spinning, then I always have some oval and other small molds ready to take any excess batter if necessary

Since this new mold is wood, I will have to line it, so I'll try to get the paper cut tomorrow and weigh out my oils and have everything ready to go in case the mold arrives in time. Once it's shipped it's only coming from Washington, which is just north of me, so I'll hope for the best.

Well, time to get out my recipe and load soap calc and get the recipe in there and printed out.

Black and white challenge

Last month I participated in a black and white soap challenge and here was my entry. I couldn't execute it precisely as I had planned, because I had difficulty estimating just how much of each color I would need to do it. I thought a 60/40 of white and black would work, but wound up not having enough black to reach the bottom of the black and white top, nor enough to make a more abundant black swirl in the white panel. Next time I'll do 50/50 or even do 55 black and 45 white.

I'm waiting for a 9 bar slab mold to be made. It should be ready sometime next week and  I'm hoping it arrives in time for a swirl challenge I signed up will take another week, I imagine, to arrive here. My entry for the swirl challenge is due in about two weeks, so it's going to be close. Also on order is a Bud, single bar wire soap cutter, which should be here around the same time or sooner.

Planting is taking to priority at the moment. These bare root plants don't like to hang around too long without getting planted. Two days ago, I planted 25 ever bearing strawberries. I have June bearing ones on order that should be arriving soon; and I have several berries, roses and perennials that I've bought the past two days, all bare root, that need to get planted in the next couple of days. Fortunately, we are due for about four or five sunny, days in the 60's, so I should get it all planted this week.

Happy New Year everyone!

Here's a little New Years present. They are giving away 3 free good, soap making books. It's a limited time, New Years Offer. One book is on herbal soap making, another is a several book soap making encyclopedia, and I believe the other one is a general soap making book.
The link I posted will have the link to Amazon where you can download each of these books on to any of your devices that have the kindle software. If you don't have a prime Amazon account you can read them for free, and I think if you do have the prime account they will download into your kindle library so you can access them whenever you want. Enjoy!


http://www.pubabook.com/art_craftebook.html

Life goes on

My husband Jim passed away 9 days ago after a long, 5 year battle with cancer, so there's been so much to deal with besides grieving.

The kitchen is still a mess (old cabinets removed and drywall a mess after some initial plumbing work). The new cabinets have been ready for weeks, but I had to call a halt to everything when Jim's condition took a turn for the worse.

I took advantage of moving sale that Be Scented had, a got a new small order of micas and fragrance oils in the mail yesterday, so I'll get those dated and cataloged and put away after breakfast.

Our son and family surprised me with a visit yesterday after their drive to the mountains to play in the snow, and left with several bars of my Nag Champa soap. Out of the 3 batches I had curing, they all liked the Nag Champa and the Cucumber Melon scent the best.

The Energy Fragrance Oil in my latest soap, seems to have faded after a few weeks. The in the bottle smell was great as well as when the soap was freshly made. I think I used 0.7 in soap calc; but I'll have to double check that, It's a lovely scent, but not something I will use in the future if it's going to fade that much before the soap is even fully cured. That's why I don't like to make a big batch when trying out a new recipe or a new fragrance! I'll have to see what peoples experience is with using it in candles or room sprays, etc.

Hidden Feather Swirl

Here's my entry for the SMF October challenge (hidden feather swirl). It's my first time joining in for one of the challenges and I enjoyed the whole process, so I will definitely participate in the future.

I liked the idea of figuring out the colors that I thought would add some punch in such a small design, and then had to figure out how much batter to designate for each color. I think that was the hardest part of the challenge for me.

A week ago I got a watercolor set and used that to create the color palette for the soap. I wanted a light, lime kind of green for the background and dark green, red, yellowish orange, and red orange at the color for the top and design.

Hopefully later this week I'll have the time and energy to make another soap. We had out of town friends visiting the past 5 days, so I was spending time entertaining and enjoying their wonderful company. They are now on their way back to Western North Carolina.

I'm still dealing with some intestinal bug that just doesn't want to go away, which has been sapping my energy, so I'm just doing what I absolutely have to do each day.

In two to two and a half weeks our new kitchen cabinets are scheduled to be finished, and once they come in an tear out the old cabinets it's going to be a month or so before the kitchen if finished.

Once the cabinets are in, then they have to make a pattern of the counter tops for the corian  and two weeks later, they tell me,  once that's done the plumber and electrician will have to connect all the faucets, hot water dispenser, garburetor, etc. etc. I'll be lucky if the kitchen is finished by Thanksgiving!