​The soap club challenge for July is to make either a realistic marble or river rock. I decided to do the river rock category. As far as I was concerned river rock is boring and bland mostly being browns and grays. I asked a friend of mine if she had any suggestions of a river rock that was actually pretty and she told me about Puddingstone! This rock is a conglamorant of rocks that through pressure and heat over time are formed all together. It is found all over the world both on land and in water including rivers. When I saw the pictures I was stunned! You can find out more info about puddingstone here https://jewelryjake.com/blogs/michigan-living/what-is-a-puddingstone-where-do-you-find-it
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The British called it puddingstone because it reminded them of Christmas pudding! I chose a color scheme of light gray base with orangey red, black and white for the rocks inside. I am doing soap dough so that I can “knead” the color chunks into the gray. Because the sponsor for this challenge is Mad Micas I decided to use as many of their micas as I could, so I used spicey red tomato, here comes the bride, wicked and satin grey pillow along with black oxide and red orange neon. The fragrance is from WSP, Black Salt and Cypress. I used my regular soap recipe and made the various colors and covered it all so the water wouldn't evaporate. Should have only did this with the grey hahaha.

This turned out to be a multi day process! I allowed the soap to sit in the molds for a few days before getting them out. I discovered that in order to cut the black white and orange ones into chunks I had to let those ones sit out and harden so I could cut them. UGH! So a couple of days sitting out and then I was able to cut and shred the soaps.

After another 2 days of allowing these to dry out, it was time for the forming of soap rocks. It is quite the arm work out to make these things! First softening the gray then adding and kneading in the various chunks. I also had to make sure that the chunks on the inside where evenly distributed through out the soap as I was cutting one of them open for pictures as this is where the magic is in the real stones.

After allowing the rocks to dry a couple of more days, I cleaned them up using a sponge to get the smooth river rock look and took pics! 
For more info on the Soap Challenge club check out Amy Warden's site ​soapchallengeclub.com

​Whether it's food borne or topical having allergies can either be a nuisance or deadly and for those of us who have them it’s a constant struggle. Coconut oil appears to be a allergen increasing in the population due to the exposure of coconut oil in many foods.
      Thanks to a brave customer, one who is very allergic to many nuts including coconut oil, she volunteered to do a patch test to see if she would react to babassu oil. After wearing the oil for more than 24 hours there was never a reaction.
     In our most recent soap we decided to replace the coconut oil with Babassu oil.  Babassu oil comes from the Brazilian rainforest and as with all of our Rainforest oils, is sustainably sourced by Paris Fragrances. The soap is colored with rose hip seed powder and pink Brazilian clay and scented with Rose Jam.  It has cranberry seeds for gentle exfoliation and rose hip seed oil. Rose hip seed oil is rich in vitamin A and C and is a "dry" oil which is readily absorbed into the skin without leaving a greasy feeling.

​Welcome to our new website and blog! We are really excited and hope you enjoy your experience!
In my blogs I will be telling you about the new soaps I am making, when they will be available and what is happening in the future.
Pumpkin Spice Latte soap is one of our most popular and requested soaps! This year’s version has a couple of new ingredients, jojoba beads and neon orange pigment. As you will see from the pictures this soap fluoresces under black light 😊. It is a fun aspect to our fall collection of soaps. The next 3 soaps are for Halloween and also fluoresce under black lights. They are also new fragrances, Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin, Blueberry Pumpkin and Spiced Pumpkin. Now you are probably thinking as we did, blueberry and pumpkin together??? As strange a combination as it is, it really does smell good! I also did some fun Halloween shapes which can be used at the sink or as a travel soap, these come 2 to a package. While the orange pumpkins don’t glow, the orange, green and black ones will. We will have all of these and more at the Celtic Faire at the Sherwood Forest Faire grounds Sept 8,2018. If you are in the area come and visit us, we will have 2 locations, our building by the jousting arena and our tent up by the Greenwood stage.

We are excited to launch our new website and look forward to being able to post about all new/upcoming batch of soaps and other bath goodies we have planned for the holidays and next years Sherwood season.