Another quickie today – a sneaky peek at the soap embeds for one of my Christmas specials…
![Star embeds](https://thesoapmine.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/fullsizerender-3.jpg?w=300)
More coming tomorrow – of course 😀
Another quickie today – a sneaky peek at the soap embeds for one of my Christmas specials…
More coming tomorrow – of course 😀
Did you know Wet Soap Wednesday is a thing? Certainly on Facebook and Instagram it is anyway. Today’s post is a quickie – the fruits of last night’s soaping session.
From left to right: Three Kings, Luscious Lavender & Christmas Tree
Back tomorrow 😀
I posted last year about the first bar of soap I ever made and I’ve shared the ‘how’ post again below. But WHY did I make that first batch of soap? It’s a question I’ve been asked many times and the answer is quite simple. Curiosity. A friend came to visit, and proudly showed me some soap that she’d made. I was intrigued. How on earth did one make soap at home? Up until that point I’d assumed that it was some kind of highly technical laboratory process and I don’t think I’d even wondered whether it was possible to make it at home. It was just there. Soap. From the shop.
Had I ever suffered from sensitive skin, or had problems using soap I may have looked into it earlier. It’s more likely however that I would have gone and bought soap ‘for sensitive skin’ and left it at that. Nor did I try soapmaking because of ecological or environmental concerns *blush* (yep, I know a whole lot more about that side of things now!) No, it was pure curiosity. I did a bit of internet research, and became more and more excited. There was a whole big soapmaking world out that and it was fascinating.
My very first attempt was with a soapmaking kit. With hindsight I could easily have bought what I needed separately and just got on with it, but if I’m honest I wanted to MAKE SOAP NOW and the kit sped things up for me a little. I made soap, and I loved it. So what next?
I bought some books. Okay, I’ve bought a lot of books. One of my first was Smart Soapmaking by Anne Watson. A great book, though I did find that I had to tweak the recipes slightly when I ran them through Soapcalc. In those early days I also bought The Everything Soapmaking Book by Alicia Grasso, The Natural Soap Book by Susan Miller Cavitch and The Handmade Soap Book by Melinda Coss. Since then I’ve bought many more – I’ll have to gather them together and write a round up of soaping books I think.
I also did a lot of internet research. I don’t recall too many forums or Facebook groups back then, but there were an awful lot of Internet articles offering their soapmaking advice.
So having made that first batch of soap out of pure curiosity, and doing a LOT of reading on the subject, I was hooked, and I’ve never looked back. (Well, apart from when I was pregnant with my second child. The smell of all fragrance oils made me feel so violently sick that I had to have all my soapmaking stuff – including ALL handmade soap – put away where there was no chance I’d catch smell of it – for months… They were dark days :-D)
Post by @TheSoapMine.
Source: The first step
I’m pretty sure I should be doing this every month – having a list of goals would probably lend focus to my work wouldn’t it? October is going to pretty busy even without this daily blogging malarkey, but this is what I’m hoping to achieve by October 31st.
So much to do, so much to learn!
Thank you for reading – I’m off now to make as start on that lot up there ⇑⇑⇑
When I woke up this morning, I reached for my phone (and my glasses – not sure when exactly THAT became a prerequisite for reading my phone screen but it’s now automatic – arghhh) and checked my Twitter feed. At 6.30am I had no idea that such a thing as Blogtober even existed but by 6.45, I was doing it.
The Blogtober Challenge is all about blogging every day, for a month. You may know that I recently committed to update the blog more often but I’m still struggling to do so, mostly due to time constraints. So how on earth I think I’m going to do this, I’m not really sure, but hey that’s what a challenge is all about eh?!
As far as I can tell, many, if not most, bloggers out there are following a set list of prompts for each day of October, but I didn’t want to be quite so constrained, so I’ve created my own list of potential blog post topics. So as well as the usual soapy stuff I’ll also be writing about more personal topics and day-to-day life. They may not be long posts (in fact, they’re very unlikely to be!) but If nothing else, you’ll get to know a little more about the person behind The Soap Mine!
If there’s anything particular from this list of topics that you’d absolutely like me to write about, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll be happy to oblige.
Anyone else committed to doing this or done it before? Please do share any tips, ideas or advice you may have (and leave a link so that I can follow you too)