fragranced Archives

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Vicki — 11 Comments

Name that Soap! (Competition time)

In my last post (so much longer ago than I realised – life is busy :-D) I shared a picture of an as yet unnamed soap in the mould. Well, here it is, cut, fully cured, and STILL nameless – please help me name it!

Citrussy unnamed soap — Name me – please!!

The fragrance is described as pink grapefruit, kumquat, orange and cranberry mingled with gardenia, jasmine, and freesia. To me it’s mostly citrussy – there’s a hint of background florals but the citrus notes are definitely dominant. It’s coloured with titanium dioxide and yellow and tangerine micas.

I’m offering a free bar to the person who comes up with the name that I eventually choose, and you can either enter below in the comments field or on the competition post on my facebook page here. It’s open to anyone, wherever you are in the world – I’ll cover postage costs too. So don’t be shy – I know you’re a creative lot!!

PS – the winning name will be chosen on Easter Monday, 6th April, after 9pm UK time.

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Vicki — 10 Comments

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.

'Delicious' Handmade Soap in the Mould'Delicious' Handmade Soap in the Mould — ‘Delicious’ Handmade Soap in the Mould

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.

'Tutti Frutti' handmade Soap in the Mould — ‘Tutti Frutti’ Handmade Soap in the Mould

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…

Cold Process Soap in the Mould — Soap in the Mould – name yet to be decided!

Cut pictures to follow just as soon as I get round to taking them 😀

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Vicki — Leave a comment

…and two months later…

Wow, I realised on Monday that it was exactly two months since I last posted on here. TWO MONTHS!! I knew I’d take a bit of time out while we packed up our home and made the move to Wales, but I didn’t realise I would neglect the blog so thoroughly – so sorry!

Anyway, we’ve left the big city and are now settling into a much more rural way of life. This is the amazing view from my bedroom window:

Not bad eh? We’re still staying with my mum, who has kindly allowed her peaceful home to be invaded by our family of four (thanks mum!) but we’re in the process of buying our new home – in the same village – yippee!

Needless to say the majority of our belongings are still boxed up and in storage and I’ve not been able to make soap BUT I decided last night that enough was enough – I had to get back to it. Mainly because a) I miss it, hugely and b)The Soap Mine is getting seriously low on stock…

So, I dug out all my soaping gear, whisked up a simple 3 colour ITP (in the pot) swirl (and oh oh oh loved every minute of it :-D):

Delicious is scented with a dupe of DKNY’s Be Delicious fragrance, and smells utterly gorgeous. Coloured with two shades of green mica and titanium dioxide. Cut pics to follow soon.

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Vicki — 28 Comments

I missed one…

I don’t know about you, but I go daft for reading Soapy blogs. I use bloglovin, which I love because even though I don’t always get to read posts as soon, and as often, as I would like, it keeps me up to date with all my fellow soapy bloggers and I never miss a thing. In fact, it was fellow soaper’s blog that reminded me last week that I had actually missed something – I’d forgotten to post about my most recent Lavender soap.

Ruth Esteves over at The Sirona Springs Blog posted a great tutorial on creating Mica Oil Swirls on the top of soaps, and invited readers to link their own attempts in the comments section. So I though I would. Only I didn’t have anything to link to, ‘cos I’ve not blogged about it. <Ahem…>

So here it is – a reincarnation of Luscious Lavender, but with a mica oil swirl. The soap itself is coloured with violet ultramarine, but the closest mica I had was ‘Patagonian Purple’, and it’s not really a good match colour-wise (at all, lol). Never mind – I love the effect anyway (and I’ve just placed an order for ‘Grape’ mica which I’m hoping will be closer to the ultramarine colour and more ‘lavender-like’ for future soaps 🙂

I didn’t take any photos of the process, but all I did was mix about half a teaspoon of mica in a small container with about a teaspoonful of olive oil, and then used a disposable pipette to drop the mixture all over the soap once it was in the mould. I then used a wooden skewer to create the swirls. Easy peasy 😀

If you have a soapy blog please feel free to share it in the comments below. If I don’t already follow you – I will!

Posted on November 29, 2013 by Vicki — 8 Comments

Recent Makes

A very quick update with some recent creations.

First up is a restock of Luscious Lavender – an ‘In the Pot’ swirl fragranced with Lavender Essential Oil and coloured with Titanium Dioxide and Violet Ultramarine. It always surprises me how popular Lavender still is – this one’s already sold out!

This next one is Orange Sherbert. The batter thickened up VERY quickly but I still managed to do an ‘In the Pot’ swirl. I really like the resulting folds, but I’m not sure I would ever be brave enough to try to replicate it as I was <this> close to getting the proverbial ‘Soap on a Stick’ :0) Fragranced with Orange Sherbet FO from Gracefruit and coloured with Titanium Dioxide and Orange Mica.

Finally for today: Parisian Flowers. A deliberately uneven layered soap, fragranced with a heady blend of Ylang Ylang, Rose Geranium and Lavender Essential Oils. Coloured with Titanium Dioxide and a range of pink micas, with a mica oil swirl on the top.