Another quickie today – a sneaky peek at the soap embeds for one of my Christmas specials…
More coming tomorrow – of course 😀
Starry Starry Night… Blogtober Day 6
Category: Designs
Wait, March??
Um… Ooops! It would appear that it’s been five months since I last posted here. I knew it had been a while, but FIVE MONTHS?? In fairness I have been incredibly busy, and posting on the blog was one of things that I kept putting off until I had more time. Well, now I have more time. Today my youngest child started school. Only two hours a day this year, but that still gives me 10 WHOLE HOURS a week to ‘get stuff done’, and high on my list of priorities is to resurrect this blog and start posting much more often.
Since my last post I’ve standardised all of my range, including the seasonal bars. I may post more about these in the future, but here’s a quick peek:
Love Spell:
Cherry Blossom (Spring Special):
Afternoon at the Races (Summer Special – Strawberries & Champagne fragrance):
Criccieth Beach (Summer Special – Rockpool fragrance):
And, as there’s always an exception (or two) to the rule, there were also a couple of anomalies – one confetti bar which I made to use up all the bits of soap that I get when I bevel the bars, and one that seized badly when I added the fragrance so I had to simply do what I could with it to get it into the mould, and actually, it turned out ok:
Confetti Soap (Lemon Verbena fragrance):
Black Rock Sands (Beachy fragrance):
What else?
Well, I’ve gained two more wholesale accounts, bringing the total of retail outlets stocking my soap up to ten, and started supplying one-third sized bars to two businesses offering guest accommodation. Much of my time has been spent making, wrapping and labelling soap to keep up with demand. Generally this means working once the kids are in beds, so lots of late night soaping for me!
Every Thursday evening during the holiday season (April – Oct) I’ve been giving a soapmaking presentation to visitors staying in local Holiday Fellowship accommodation. I LOVE being able to share the process, and it’s always really well received – so much so that I’ve already been asked to go back next year 😀
During May and June I participated in a European soap swap with 20 other soapmakers from all over Europe. It involved making an all natural soap, without artificial colours or fragrances, and I was waaay out of my comfort zone. I’ll share more in another post.
We enjoyed a lot of fantastic family time over the school holidays, with long weekends camping, trips to the beach, geocaching and scavenger hunts (despite the weather not always playing ball – I’m fully expecting an Indian summer now that the kids have gone back to school!).
Plans for the near future include getting my bathbomb assessments organised in time for Christmas, making a facial bar, and experimenting further with sugar scrubs and lip balms before I decide on final recipes. Oh, and launch the website, but you’ve heard that one before 😉
Drop Swirls & Standardisation
I’ve been using a partial drop swirl for all my essential oil soaps for a long time but for my fragrance oil bars I’ve been using a mix of styles – In the Pot, Tiger stripe, Drop – whatever took my fancy at the time of making. As I’m now selling more wholesale soap than I am retail, I’ve slowly come to the realisation that my FO bars need to be of a uniform design too.
It took me a little while to settle into the idea. Soapmaking is such a creative process and half the fun is coming up with new designs and trying out new techniques. I reluctantly came to accept that I needed to choose a style and stick with it, making it synonymous with The Soap Mine brand and making my soaps (hopefully!) instantly recognisable.
I wanted to retain a link between my EO soaps and my FO soaps, while ensuring it was easy to tell them apart, so the obvious choice was to make my FO soaps using a full bar drop swirl.
I’ve been making soap with this technique for a long time – this was the first one I ever made (years ago!), fragranced with coconut FO.
And these are some more recent makes – this is what my FO soap bars will look like for the foreseeable future.
Delicious (Similar in scent to the DKNY designer fragrance Be Delicious)
Oatmeal Milk & Honey:
Welsh Rose:
Blue Belle (Similar in scent to Jo Malone’s ‘Wild Bluebell’ designer fragrance)
I guess the next thing to focus on is standardising the photography :-O
Thanks for reading – back soon!
Makeovers (5. Lavender)
New Year is generally a time for looking forward for me (I’m still working on those 2016 business goals I touched on in my last post) but last week I was browsing and sorting (supposedly – I’m easily distracted 😉 ) through my HUGE collection of soapy photographs and I came across some from the early days. I can remember being SO proud of this one – my first every straight lavender essential oil soap:
Note the rounded corners – I hadn’t yet discovered the joys of silicone liners lol… You can also see the signs of a partial gel here too.
It wasn’t long before I began standardising (and simplifying) the swirls, and this was the next incarnation – an In The Pot (ITP) swirl:
I went through a phase of experimenting with mica in oil swirls on the top of the bars – though I’m not sure why I thought this was a complementary colour for the top-swirl…
When it came to developing a cohesive range I decided to make all my essential oil soaps with a drop swirl, and so came up with this two colour lavender drop in a white base:
The colours have remained the same ever since – I use titanium dioxide for the base and two micas called ‘grape’ and ‘lilac beauty’ for the drops:
Thanks for checking in – I really do hope to be back soon with those 2016 goals!
Makeovers (4: Delicious)
One of my best sellers is, quite literally, ‘Delicious’. It’s fragranced with a dupe of the DKNY fragrance ‘Be Delicious’ which has the fresh scent of apples blended with floral / woody fragrances. To date I’ve always made it with a simple ITP swirl (with apologies for the lighting on the bottom bar):
When I’m against the clock and frantically trying to get my stock levels back up, an ITP swirl is mercifully quick to execute. But, for me at least, they are unpredictable, and the colour distribution isn’t always as I would like. So I decided to try using the same colours but with a drop swirl, and this is how it came out:
I LOVE it! So that’s me with one less ‘quickie’ during busy stocking-up soapmaking sessions, but I reckon it’s worth it 🙂
It has though brought to mind an ongoing dilemma I have about what’s most important when it comes to the soaps that I create. I put a lot of thought into what oils and butters go into my bars to give them skin-loving, super-lathering properties, but then I hear people say that they look too pretty to use. It’s a phrase I’ve heard at every single craft fair / Christmas market I’ve ever sold at. I know people are being complimentary but – Noooooooooooo! Use them! Use them, then buy more 😀
Christmas 2015 Soaps
Last year I made just one batch of soap specifically for the holiday season. I swapped the usual raffia for a seasonal ribbon, and it sold out within a couple of days. I posted at the time that it was a case of bad planning, but by then it was too late to do anything about it, and I vowed to do better this year.
I was super-organised, and ordered my Christmas fragrances in August (!!). I decided to make four different Christmas soaps. Four different designs made with four different fragrances. If I’m totally honest, I have mixed feelings about this lot, but judge for yourselves:
First up was Candy Cane – a mouthwatering fragrance which blends peppermint and vanilla. I liked this one so much I made a second batch, and good thing too, as it’s proving very popular and the first batch is already sold out.
Next I had a plan to create a stylised Christmas Tree design, complete with baubles. My main disappointment with this one is that I somehow had a brain freeze while rolling the ‘baubles’ and I made them two small. To me they should be the same diameter as the baubles on the top of the soap. I also tried to get clever and create some variation in the colours/designs of the baubles themselves by rolling different colours together, but it didn’t work as well as I hoped. Perhaps they would have looked better had they been larger. Anyway, they may look a bit quirky, but they certainly smell like a Christmas tree – the fragrance oil has top notes of pine needles and and spicy, woodsy middle and base notes.
The third fragrance was called ‘Yule Log’ which, predictably, is a sweet chocolate scent, with notes of bitter almonds, cinnamon, ginger and vanilla. I planned to use this fragrance oil to make my ‘Clyde Slide’ entry for the September Greatcakes Soapworks challenge and used colours which are reminiscent of a Christmas Yule Log:
Sadly I was focusing so much on mastering the technique that I forgot to add the fragrance oil – arrrgghhhh! Never mind, I made it again and now have a scented and an unscented version 😀
My final Christmas design for 2015 is a second Clyde Slide – Moonlit Mistletoe – in grey, silver and green. It’s a true unisex fragrance, the top notes are herbal, green and fruity, balanced with spices, amber and patchouli.
Thanks for reading, I’ll be back again soon!
The ‘Clyde Slide’ Challenge Soap
This month’s challenge for Amy Warden’s monthly Soap Challenge Club over at Great Cakes Soapworks is to create a soap using the ‘Clyde Slide’ technique. The Clyde Slide is named after Clyde of Vibrant Soaps, who uses this technique to create beautiful (and exquisitely coloured) soaps – do check out his videos on YouTube if you get the opportunity.
As I’ve just started production of this year’s Christmas soaps, I decided to design my challenge soap around a fragrance oil called ‘Yule Log’. It’s a chocolately, almondy, cakey fragrance, with notes of cinnamon, ginger, vanilla and musk and is delicious out of the bottle. How does it smell in soap? I’d love to tell you but, um, well, I forgot to add it. Oh well, sensitive noses deserve pretty soap too don’t they?
I used a light brown mica as the base colour, to represent the sponge, and dark brown mica, titanium dioxide (white) and red liquid colourant for the cream, chocolate and holly berries elements. I did consider using a little green too for the holly leaves, but in the end I’m glad I didn’t.
I prepped the soap batter and added the colours, making sure I kept the batter at a light trace:
Then I poured the white, red and dark brown soap batters into the bowl containing the lighter brown soap. I completely forgot to take a photo of this stage, but I used exactly this pattern (this was my second attempt):
Usually, when I use the ‘In the Pot’ technique, I would now give the pot a quick stir, just once or twice, but I always stir before pouring. For a Clyde Slide, you DO NOT stir. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to stir!!
Here it is mid-pour:
Then I swirled the top:
And two days later, Ta Da!! My unscented Yule Log Clyde Slide:
And here’s a close up to show the trademark ‘Clyde Slide’ feathering – it’s not a blurred photo, honest :-D:
Many thanks to Amy for her major feat of organisation (apparently there are over 180 entrants this month!), I’m really looking forward to seeing all the other entries. Good luck if you’ve entered!
Two months later…
Yep, it really has been almost 2 months since my last post. The summer season has been incredibly busy, and it’s been as much as I can do to keep up with demand on the soaping front. Days have been spent keeping the children occupied during what seems to have been the wettest summer on record, and evenings have been spent making, wrapping and labelling soaps to supply the eleven local retailers that now stock The Soap Mine soaps. Since April I’ve also been doing twice monthly soapy talks for a local holiday company, and have done a couple of soapmaking demonstrations for the Women’s Institute – something I’d really like to do more of.
Needless to say there isn’t much innovation or new designs to share from the last couple of months, but I do have one new one to share. Now I do love my colours and swirls, but my mum has long expressed a preference for a plain, white, citrussy bar, and I finally got round to making one for her. The only colourant is a touch of titanium dioxide, and it’s fragranced with a smidgen of lemon & grapefruit essential oils. (The prototype was fragranced with lemon & lime, but I much prefer lemon & grapefruit combo).
I’ve named it ‘Peace’ and it’s proved a hit with customers as well as mum, so I’ve added it to the regular line-up.
There was one other exciting soap related event over the summer. I was honoured to be able to host an international soap swap between myself and 11 other amazing soapmakers from the US, Canada and Europe. I’ve got a couple of posts coming up soon just about the soap swap, but here, to whet your appetite, is a little teaser of my haul, If you’re a fan of handmade artisan soaps you may well recognise some of these brands…
Thanks for reading, I’ll be back soon 🙂
Taming the Vanilla
I’m going to quickly gloss over how long it’s been since I last posted and share a soapy pic – ‘cos that’s what you’re here for right? 😉
Soap fragrance oils containing vanilla are often considered tiresome because of their propensity to discolour and potentially ruin a carefully designed soap. But they smell so good! I absolutely love the smell of ‘Pink Kisses’ from Gracefruit, but my first attempt at using it was a complete disaster. It was early on in my soaping career, and discolouration wasn’t even on my radar. I used a selection of pretty pink colours and was so excited to see what it would look like, so imagine my disappointment…
Every failure’s a learning opportunity eh? 😀
Four (!!) years on and I decided to give it another go – this time I was a little more careful with my design. Splitting the batter into two, I coloured one half with Orchid Pink Mica, and added the fragrance oil to the other other portion only, adding a little Titanium Dioxide to mitigate the effect of the vanilla. This was the result:
Needless to say I’m so much happier with this one. I think the browning effect of the vanilla actually improves the look of the bar and gives it some depth and interest.
I hope you’ll agree that my photography skills have improved a little too 😀 😀 😀
Spinning Swirl Challenge Soap
Despite signing up for them at every opportunity, it’s been an awfully long time since I’ve managed to get round to make a soap for Amy Warden’s monthly Soap Challenge Club over at Great Cakes Soapworks. This month’s challenge really piqued my interest though, and I was determined to give it a go. The challenge was to create a soap using the Spinning Swirl technique (which I hadn’t come across before) and, after months of making nothing but restocks, I was keen to try something a bit different. This technique involves pouring very fluid soap batter into a slab mould and then spinning the mould itself. Amy provided a great video tutorial, and this one of the soaps that she made to illustrate the technique:
One of the stipulations of the challenge was that the soap had to made in a slab mould, which I don’t own. So my first challenge was to improvise a slab mold. A shoe box did the trick:
I prepared my colourants. The fragrance oil is described as a creamy, powdery, honey fragrance, and I wanted warm colours to reflect that. I used Radiant Gold mica, Sicilian Orange mica and Red iron oxide and mixed them with a little of the oils (to which I’d already added the fragrance).
I added the lye to my usual oils and butters, and then poured the batter equally into the three jugs, stirred well then stick blended very VERY briefly (as I needed it to stay fluid for as long as possible):
I poured the soap into the mould, alternating colours in a faux-funnel type pour:
Once the soap was all poured, I gritted my teeth, gripped the mould with both hands, and started to rotate the mould as quickly and as firmly as I dared while praying that it wouldn’t all slosh out onto my table. After making probably about 20 full rotations, I swirled the top with a skewer and put it aside to firm up. A couple of days later I unmolded and found this left behind in the diy mould:
THAT is why I love my silicone moulds so much 😀 Anyway – the unmolded soap didn’t look too promising:
Not only do I not have a slab mould, I also don’t have a cutter that can cope with a big ole slab of soap, so I had to make the first cuts with a Very Big Knife. Needless to say, I wasn’t particularly accurate:
And THAT is why I love my single wire Bud cutter 😀 Anyway, I was able to use my beloved cutter for the rest of the cuts:
And, after a little love and attention, I’m really happy with the result:
Many thanks Amy for organising the challenge! It was a real pleasure to try something new and I’m looking forward to seeing what the other entrants come up with.
Soap in the Mould
Freshly made soap, in the mould, has such a vibrancy and gloss about it, I can’t help but take a photograph every. Single. Time. Here are some of my recent favourites:
‘Delicious’ is fragranced with a dupe of a DKNY fragrance and is described as ‘A fresh, green floral fragrance of crisp green apple, watermelon, cassis and a hint of cucumber’ and underneath those green waves is an In The Pot swirl.
I wrote about the redesign of Tutti Frutti in my last post here. It’s scented with a very fruity Jellybeans fragrance oil, and this time I’ve kept the same design but have tried to intensify the colours somewhat so that they’re brighter in the finished bars. The soap batter was very slow to trace this time (not sure why – same recipe, same fragrance :-s) so rather than attempt to texture the top I just swirled the colours together, and I love the effect it gives.
And last (for now!) is a batch made with a new-to-me fragrance – a zingy, citrussy scent with pink grapefruit, kumquat, orange, and cranberry – I’ll soon be running a little competition to come up with a fitting name so get your thinking caps on…
Cut pictures to follow just as soon as I get round to taking them 😀
Makeovers (3: Tutti Frutti)
Tutti Frutti is one of the soaps from my fragrance oil range and is particularly popular with children and young people Scented with a fruity fragrance oil, it has both berry and citrus notes on a sweet vanilla base and is reminiscent of jelly beans. When I first started using it in soap, I wanted a design that reflected the complex fruity gragrance, and came up with this four colour bar:
When I decided to standardise my designs last year, I chose the In The Pot (ITP) swirl from my fragrance oil soaps. I wanted to keep the multicoloured idea, and so this is what happened:
It sold ok, but to me it looked messy, and not particularly appealing, so I had to think again. This is the current Tutti Frutti design. I’m much happier with it, despite it being a little more time consuming to make, and doesn’t really fit, design-wise, with the rest of the range (but rules are made to be broken eh?!).
Makeovers (2: Wake Up!)
Wake Up! was the first soap that I ever made using a blend of essential oils, way back in early 2010. Up until then I’d used fragrance oils in soap but, despite having an interest in aromatherapy, I’d never tried blending oils myself. Oh how things change! It’s a simple but refreshing mix of Peppermint and Rosemary essential oils – perfect for waking up the senses in the morning shower. While the fragrance blend has stayed the same since that time, it was a couple of years before it got its true name. Up until some point in 2012 it went by the predictable, if uninspiring, ‘Peppermint & Rosemary’.
This is the very first :
I quite like the sprig of mint used there as a prop, but the least said about the background the better!
It wasn’t long after the above photo above was taken that I acquired my very first loaf mould (from The Moulds Shop – highly recommended btw), and my soaps became a more uniform shape and size. For a while I was obsessed with the Tiger Swirl, and Wake Up! looked like this:
Interestingly, it’s only now that I realise that I hadn’t started bevelling the edges at this point – something I always do these days.
These days Wake Up! looks something like this:
Currently all my essential oil soaps are made using the Drop Swirl technique, as I wrote about here. Sometimes they have textured tops, sometimes mica swirls, but they are always (for now!) Drop Swirls.
I’m really enjoying looking back over old designs, so please bear with me in the short term while I indulge myself with these makeover posts – I will try to intersperse them with some other stuff as well 😀 Thanks for popping by!
Makeovers (1: Serenity)
Quite a few of my soaps have had a makeover recently. No matter that I have (more or less) a set range of fragrances & designs, there’s always room to improve and to flex those creative muscles.
One of the most popular essential oil soaps that I sell is Serenity. The fragrance is a blend of Bergamot, Patchouli, Orange and Ylang Ylang essential oils. The very first time I made a full batch of this one I carefully weighed out the appropriate amount of essential oil blend for the amount of soaping oils used, then put it to one side. I then split my batter into three, coloured one white and two different shades of blue, then poured the soap into the mold, creating what I fully expected to be an awesome drop swirl. Except I’d forgotten to the add the fragrance. Argghhhh! There was nothing to do but scoop it all out, thoroughly mix in the essential oils, and put the whole lot back into the mould. Of course I ended up with a very plain, pale blue bar of soap which smelled amazing but looked nothing like my original plan:
The next few times I made Serenity, I decided to go with a single colour drop in a paler background. Most of my drop swirls up to this point had been a white soap with coloured drops, but I wanted to try something a little different. Here I used Icelandic Blue mica for the base colour and Denim Blue mica for the drop:
I used that design for a while, and it sold well enough, but it didn’t wow me, and last year I decided it needed updating. The current Serenity has a base of Icelandic Blue mica, and drops coloured with Titanium Dioxide and Blue Dragon mica. I think it’s rather pretty and goes well with the name, so this design will be staying (for now anyway :-D)
