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OCEAN VIEW HI
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Feb soap challenge attempt 2

2/13/2021

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Today is my second attempt at the kiss pour for the Feb soap challenge. This one is using lavender eo and sensuous sandalwood fo.
28.5 oz distilled water
30 oz olive oil
27.55 oz coconut oil
12.25 oz rice bran oil
11.60 oz lye
4.05 oz shea butter
4.85 oz avocado oil
2.55 oz castor oil
2.4 oz sodium lactate
2 oz lavender eo
2 oz sensuous sandalwood (bramble berry)
1 oz blue tide
.5 oz mint julip
.5 oz crazy eyes
.5 oz iris purple
.5 of grape nehi
.01 oz tussah silk

For this soap I used a 9x17 slab mold which I feel worked a lot better than the 9x9 I used for the first attempt. Also, no black for this one, I used blue tide instead. My only big issue with this one is that there wasn’t enough difference between the crazy eyes and mint julip as I thought there would have been. I should have either used a darker green instead of the crazy eyes or added TD to the mint julip to get it lighter. I had to change my pour for the greens using the blue tide in between each of the greens instead of pouring them one after the other. Still, I really love the look of this one and this technique is a keeper! I am surprised however, these were regular micas not my enviro glitters but the soap looks like it is full of glitter! It will be interesting to see if that sparkle stays. 

This one is done and its gorgeous but for some reason I have little holes in the soap. I am guessing that I didn't tap the mold down hard enough to get the air bubbles out :(.
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All in all this was a fun challenge and there are  soooooo many ideas running in my head for different soaps!
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Feb Soap challenge attempt 1

2/13/2021

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Sooooo, today I am doing double duty 😊. I am making sandalwood soap, a highly requested soap, for Sherwood Forest Faire, but I am also doing it for the Feb soap challenge. The challenge is called a kiss pour, an acrylic painting technique that translates well to soap. For this technique, you need a slow tracing recipe with a slow tracing fragrance oil. The trick is to be able to pour multiple colors into 2 separate jugs and then pour them together into the mold so they “kiss” or create a waterfall of all the colors together.
I am using the recipe provided in the challenge:
27 oz distilled water
30 oz olive oil
27.55 oz coconut oil
12.15 oz rice bran oil
11.60 oz lye
4.05 oz shea butter
4.85 oz avocado oil
2.45 oz castor oil
2.4 oz sodium lactate
2 oz sandalwood fo (bescented)
2 oz senuous sandalwood (bramble berry)
1 oz nocturnal black
.5 oz silver mist
.5 oz harolds purple crayon
.5 oz peacock
.5 of shimmer gold
.01 oz tussah silk

So, I need to do a few things differently. Use a larger slab mold or less batter. This was a 9x9 but should have been a 12x12, I need to pour slower next time to see if I get a better pattern, I may need to use a white or grey base instead of black. This would be an awesome galaxy soap if I used the enviro glitters! It will be interesting to see what happens once this one is cut and cleaned. Once shaved the swirl should be more visible. At least I hope it is.

So, this one has been cut and cleaned up! This technique is fantastic and I plan on using it alot!
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January Soap Challenge

1/24/2021

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So this is a lesson in why you don't wait until the last minute to do soap for a soap challenge! Back in Dec Amy messaged me to ask if she could add a link to my original geode soap in IG and let me know that this was going to be part of the Jan soap challenge. Now a little back story..... when I made my 3 geode soaps it took me 3 days to complete 1 and I swore I would never make them again! Fast forward to this Jan soap challenge and I debated whether or not I was going to do it. I decided on Jan 22,2021 that I was going to do it, end of the challenge is Jan 26,2021 haha! I had in mind that I would create a full geode and embed it inside the soap. It did not go well! 

The first thing was to make the crystals out of melt and pour. I started with the darker colors and gradually ended up with clear and glitter. I used phoenix blend bio glitter from Fizz Fairy, hearts desire, shamrock silver, mystic red and starry night enviro glitters from Nurture soap, artic sparkle, dragons delight, chunky blue opal and chunky green opal from The Good Glitter, cascade pure bio glitter from Eco Star Dust, sparkle me blue, red and aqua bio glitters from Mad Micas and finally super sparkle diamond mica from WSP! A WHOLE LOT OF GLITTER! This will come back to bite me!
The next step was cutting the loaf and cutting them into crystals. These where cut in various sizes with the darker colors at the top.
I then formed the geode using the clear/glitter combo and dead sea salt as the base of the geode. Clearly I did not think that one through! Initially, the crystals were to tall so I had to take the crystals all apart and redo the geode, this turned out to be a good thing!  Once I cut the ends off of all the crystals, I redid the half geodes. 
I formed the full geode and sealed the sides. However, once it was done and I cut the ends off I quickly realized that the full geode idea wasn't going to work as once cut you couldn't see the crystals at all well :(.  So I cut the halves open at the seams and once again revamped my idea. 
My next idea was to use both halves in the soap. One half inside against the wall of the mold and the second one on the top opposite the inside one. I also wanted to use up all of the pieces I cut off of the crystals inside one part of the soap. I went with black pearl mica and silver mist from Nurture soap with the grey(note here silver mist is a strange mica, it morphs to purple, blue or silver and I never know which)  part having the crystal shreds inside it and scented it with Moonstone from Bramble Berry. I poured in black first but had to wait for the soap to thicken, but I put the side embed in to soon and had to get my husband to hold it in place while I worked the black in order to secure the side embed! Once the side was secured I poured the grey in then the rest of the black. At this point I put in the top embed and pushed the black onto the rounded part of the embed and mounded the rest of the black. This non embed side got the rest of the crystal shards. 
So, patience is not one of my strong suits! Lets just say making soap tests me REPEATEDLY hahaha. The next morning I took the soap out of the mold and was going to let it sit for a while before cutting. Also due to the fact that there is melt and pour throughout this soap I was going to hand cut the soap. After about an hour I decided to cut the soap with my wire cutter, I reasoned that at least I would know where to cut with the knife :) after I broke all my wires. Well surprise, surprise no wires broke! I did lose a couple of the crystals on top but was able to put them back on. This is where the glitter came back to bite me in the backside! All that chunky glitter in the melt and pour caused drag lines both from the wires cutting through AND while trying to clean the bars!  
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All in all I am happy with the way it turned out and will be calling this Black opal! The moral of this very long story.... DON'T WAIT TILL THE LAST MINUTE TO ENTER THE SOAP CHALLENGE hahahahaha lesson learned!
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July Soap Challenge

7/22/2020

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​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.
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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
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Seaside Collection of Fragrances

9/28/2018

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Today I finished Sea Salt the last of the fragrances from the Bramble Berry seaside collection. It has notes of black seaweed accord, cucumber water, Galia melon, green lily blossoms, dewy rose, and white tea leaves. This soap also contains 2 new ingredients for us, black Icelandic sand and a colorant called Jagua. The sand is a volcanic sand and really fine, and it makes a great exfoliate. The Jagua colorant is a natural extract from Genipa americana trees, which are native to tropical forests in North and South America. I hope you enjoy these new bars!
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Allergies!

9/12/2018

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​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.

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Fall Soaps

9/5/2018

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​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.
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New Wesbite

8/31/2018

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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.  
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