After a lovely couple of weeks off for Easter, the kids went back to school today and we’re almost back to normal. I say almost as today was the little one’s fourth birthday, so nothing normal about that :-D. We threw a party for her and her friends yesterday (Sunday) so today was a little more low key. I picked her up after her two hours at school this morning (she won’t be full-time until next September and neither of us can wait haha!) and went into town for some mum/daughter time and a BIG bowl of ice-cream. Do you think she enjoyed it?
The Birthday Girl
I usually get to go to work for an hour or two at four o’ clock when my husband finishes work, but today my mum came over with a birthday gift so we had some birthday cake and played with kinetic sand (that stuff is AMAZING – I wonder if the recipes on Pinterest are any good?). We’ve had lots of fun but tomorrow is definitely ‘back to normal’ day and I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of work again.
I only managed one evening of soapmaking this last week – a double batch of Tutti Frutti. It was these batches that I photographed to use in my rainbow drop swirl tutorial:
Tutti Frutti in the Mould
Tutti Frutti mid-cut:
Rainbow Drop Swirl mid-cut
In other news, I’ve finally found a novel to end my reading drought and I think I’ll actually be able to say I’ve read a whole book by the end of the month. Now this is a big, huge, MASSIVE deal for me given that I’ve been whingeing on to anyone who’ll listen about how much I miss reading, but what’s at the back of my mind? Oh, only the fact that I didn’t bother with that perennial ‘read a book’ goal this month – gah!! Anyway, I’m a bit late to the The Girl on the Train party, but I picked up a copy for pennies at a table-top sale recently and I’m LOVING it. It’s an easy read, but it has me hooked, and I find myself glancing over at it at various times of the day, wondering if I could get away with hiding in the corner for half an hour for another fix…
There’s been a lot of interest in my rainbow drop swirl (Tutti Frutti) soap recently, so I thought I’d put together a little pictorial tutorial for anyone who’s interested in how it’s done (I really, REALLY should start making videos shouldn’t I?).
Many of you will already know how big a fan I am of the drop swirl technique. Almost all of my core range is made using either a full or partial drop swirl, and Tutti Frutti is no exception. I made another couple of batches recently, and took some photographs along the way…
**Please make sure you’re familiar with the basics of soapmaking before you try any advanced swirls (Soap Queen is a good place to start) and always wear protective clothing / gloves / goggles. Safety first!!**
I generally make soap at room temperature, so I’ll mix up the lye solution in advance and put it to one side to cool down (I don’t discount the water for this one). I’ll also melt the hard oils and butters and combine them with the liquid oils and butters and allow them to cool down to room temp.
Next I measure out the seven different micas straight into the pouring jugs (actually here you’ll see six different micas and one liquid colourant. It’s notoriously difficult to get a good red in CP soap, but I use a liquid colour from Gracefruit which is rather good. They appear to be out of stock of the red at the moment, but hopefully it’ll be back in soon.)
colourants ready for mixing into the soap batter
Next I add my fragrance oil to the room temp oils and butters. Many people add their fragrance AFTER adding the lye and tracing the soap, but my preference is to add it before.
I then add a couple of teaspoons of the fragranced oils to each jug of mica and get them well blended. I know it’s common practice to skip this stage and simply add the traced lye batter directly onto the powdered mica (or add the powdered mica directly to jugs of traced batter), but I don’t always use a stick blender and this way I know I can get the colour incorporated well just by giving it a good mix with a spatula.
Pre-mixed colourants, oils and a jug of lye water
I get my moulds ready – notice my high-tech method of stopping the mould sides from bowing inwards 😀
Moulds prepared…
And then we’re ready to go… I mix the lye water into the tub of (already fragranced!) oils and butters, and share the soap batter out equally into the seven prepared jugs. It would appear I forgot to get a photo of that stage – sorry! What we’re looking for is a really light trace as the soap will thicken up during the pouring process. Personally I don’t stick-blend this soap AT ALL. I find that by the time I’ve mixed up all the colours thoroughly it’s already at a light trace, but this will very much depend on how quickly your particular soap recipe traces and which fragrance you’re using. I’ve even found that certain micas can inhibit trace, so there are many different factors involved. It’s a case of using your judgement and, to be honest, trial and error.
Next comes the pour. First in this time was yellow:
First pour – yellow
What’s crucial for a nice drop is the height from which you pour the soap in to the mould. At the early stages my jug is quite close to the bottom of the mould as I pour a line of soap along the length of it. Here’s the next couple of pours:
Red and orange poured next
Once the bottom of the mould has been covered with soap, I start to raise the jugs a little higher as I pour, so that the soap drops into the previous layer, rather than sit on the top of it. It’s very hard to give a precise height as it very much depends on how thick your soap batter is (the thicker it is, the higher you’ll need to drop it from)
More colours poured
I try to make sure I pour from the jugs in the same order on each round of pouring, and also try to make sure I’m not pouring a colour on top of the same colour in the mould.
I keep pouring until the moulds are full:
Filling up the mouldAlmost full…Full!
By this stage the batter is quite a bit thicker than when I started to pour, and looks none too tidy, but it doesn’t really matter once I start adding texture to the top:
Starting to tidy up the top
And the finished item:
Tutti Frutti in the mould
I generally leave soap in the mould for 48 hours before I unmould and cut:
Rainbow Drop Swirl mid-cut
And that’s it. It’s cured for 4 weeks, bevelled and tidied up, cured for another 2 weeks then released for sale.
Some time ago I started using the Instagram hashtag #dropsaretops for some of my photos – please use the tag to share your own drop swirls and make this drop swirl junkie very happy 😀
This is the core range of soaps. Each bar retails at £4.50, please contact me for wholesale prices. I have two main core ranges – soap fragranced with pure essential oils only, and soap made with fragrance oils.
Each bar weighs minimum of 100g, but in reality most are around the 110 – 120g mark.
Please be aware that as these are handmade items and no two bars will look alike. Fragrances will remain constant, but designs may vary slightly from bar to bar.
Essential Oil Soaps
Clarity
Fragranced with Lemongrass and Clary Sage essential oils, Clarity is a real unisex fragrance, and one of my best sellers.
Clarity
Blodau
A feminine, floral scent comprising of a blend of Lavender, Ylang Ylang and Rosewood essential oils.
Blodau (Flowers)
Botanica
The newest variety in the essential oil range, Botanica is fragranced with a gorgeous blend of Lavender, Lemon and Lime essential oils. A fresh scent, reminiscent of summer days.
Botanica
Luscious Lavender
Simply fragranced with pure Lavender essential oil, loved by all ages.
Serenity
‘The one that smells like a spa’. That’s how customers describe Serenity, and with good reason – the heady blend of Patchouli, Lemon, Orange and Ylang Ylang essential oils will have you relaxed in no time.
Serenity
Peppermint Scrub
Fragranced with pure Peppermint essential oil, and chock full of oatmeal (to soothe) and ground apricot stones (to scrub), this soap is PERFECT for gardeners or mechanics who might need a bit of extra oomph to get their hands clean. Also great for feet which need a little attention before sandal season!
Peppermint Scrub
Fragrance Oil Soaps
Sugar Drops
A sweet, warm, caramel, vanilla fragrance, reminiscent of Aquolina’s Pink Sugar designer perfume.
Sugar Drops
Bewitched
A fruity, floral fragrance with notes of peach, cherry blossom and white jasmine. Reminscent of Victoria Secret’s Love Spell perfume.
Bewitched
Oatmeal, Milk & Honey (OMH)
The ultimate comforting scent, OMH has strong almond notes with honey and creamy oats.
Oatmeal Milk & Honey
Tutti Frutti
Tutti Frutti is fragranced with a juicy jellybeans scent. Loved by children and adults alike.
Tutti Frutti
Welsh Rose
A classic fragrance, the luscious scent of fresh rose petals.
Welsh Rose
Locally Themed Soaps
Eryri (Snowdonia)
A stylised representation of the hills and mountains of Snowdonia, under blue skies and whispy white clouds. It’s fragranced with my own blend of pure essential oils, including rosemary, peppermint, lime, patchouli and a touch of eucalyptus, which give a fresh, outdoorsy scent to the bar:
Eryri
Traeth Craig Du (Black Rock Sands)
As well as the mountains, Snowdonia has plenty of coastline and beaches too. Traeth Craig Du is named after the beach closest to where the soaps are made – Black Rock Sands. It’s scented with a marine, sea-salty fragrance, with hints of ozone and salt encrusted driftwood. The bottom third of the bar contains ground apricot stone, to replicate the exfoliating benefits one gets from walking barefoot on sand:
Excuse me… where did that week go? March flew by in the blink of an eye, and this last week seems to have done so too. Thursday evening saw the first of this season’s weekly soaping presentations at Craflwyn Hall. I’ll be there every Thursday evening from now until the start of November, describing the process of soapmaking and enthusing about my obsession. It’s always a pleasure to get out and spread the word about handmade soap.
That was really the only remarkable thing about this week in soap. I managed two soaping sessions – firstly making a double batch of Welsh Rose and a double batch of Castile:
Welsh Rose & Castile
and secondly making double batches of Blodau (Flowers) and Delicious:
Blodau & Delicious
And a closer look at the Castile in its mould, just because…
Castile in the Mould
Tutti Frutti has been out of stock for a couple of weeks thanks to a couple of large wholesale orders a last month, but this week it came off the curing rack and I made a start on wrapping and labelling. Not before taking this photograph though –
Tutti Frutti, fully cured
which proved to be the most popular of all the photos I posted to Instagram this week.
You may have noticed a few recipe / review posts sneaking onto the blog occasionally, and you’ll definitely see more in the future. It’s just my way of expanding the focus of the blog a little, to include more of my day-to-day life, but don’t worry, it will remain predominantly a soapy blog 😉
And that’s it for today. I’ve got quite a few posts lined up (in my head) so I hope to be back very soon. Thanks for reading!
Yesterday (Saturday) brought the first craft fair of the year, and a lot of last week was spent wrapping and labelling in preparation. It also saw the first outing for my bathbombs, which are FINALLY available for sale. I’ve been so busy dispatching wholesale orders and restocking the curing shelves that creating labels for my bathbombs was never a priority – until the night before the craft fair 😮 I took just four varieties – Clarity, Serenity, Lavender and Bewitched (was LoveSpell):
Bathbombs, all wrapped up
I was busy Mon, Tues, Wed evenings this week, so couldn’t make soap until Thursday night, and then realised that I was so low on Olive Oil I could only make a two batches of Boho Baby (fragranced with Patchouli & Orange essential oils):
Boho Baby
Friday evening was spent wrapping bathbombs for the fair on Saturday, so I wasn’t able to make more until this evening, but I made up with it with two double batches of Serenity (Patchouli, Ylang Ylang, Orange & Lemon essential oils) and Botanica (Lavender, Lemon & Lime essential oils):
Serenity (left) & Botanica
I now officially a yellow belt kickboxer! I went through my first ever grading on Monday evening. I had no idea what to expect and it was intense – I arrived home bruised, exhausted and ravenous, but I absolutely loved it, and I’m ridiculously proud of my yellow belt:
I almost didn’t post a weekly update this week as it’s been a strange one, work-wise. The children have been off school for half term, and although the youngest only goes for two hours a day, I’ve still missed that time to ‘get stuff done’. Days have been spent entertaining the children, and evenings have been mostly spent wrapping and labelling for a couple of BIG wholesale orders I have going out this week. Then we had a weekend away visiting family, so I have very to share on the soapy front.
But then I remembered that I needed to show you the cut of the Tutti Frutti that I made last week:
The children start back at school tomorrow, so I’m hoping this coming week will be far more productive on the soaping front, and keep an eye out for my February update coming up in the next couple of days.
…that is, what goes into my soap, and why. I’m often asked what my soaps are made from. Well, the ingredients in my soaps are no secret – they’re clearly labelled on each and every bar that’s sold, so here goes 😀
Fact is, you only need THREE ingredients to make soap. A vegetable or animal fat of some kind, sodium hydroxide (NaOH) (aka Lye) and water. The sodium hydroxide is combined with the water to create a lye solution, which is then mixed with the oils or butters. The sodium hydroxide combines and reacts with the fatty acids in the oils and/or butters and hey presto, you get soap, (plus, by the way, glycerine. I’ll come to that later).
Clarity
Take, for example, a bar of my Clarity essential oil soap (above). The ingredients, as they appear on the label, are as follows:
All my bars contain six different oils and butters: Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Shea Butter, Avocado Oil, Cocoa Butter and Castor Oil. Bear with me here – small chemistry lesson coming up. If the soap is made properly, there will never everbe any sodium hydroxide present in the final bar, and so it isn’t necessary to put it on the ingredients label. However, the sodium hydroxide has caused the oils and butters to change – into soap – or, chemically speaking, into ‘salts’. This is why the first six items on the ingredients list are all ‘Sodium (insert name of oil)ate’ ie, they are all salts formed from the original six oils/butters combined with sodium hydroxide.
So why those particular six oils and butters? I use coconut for it’s ability to give soap a great, abundant lather, but it can be drying to some people’s skins and so I temper it with plenty of olive oil which produces a mild, gentle soap. Cocoa butter contributes to the hardness of the bar, whilst also being moisturising. Avocado oil and shea butter are considered to be luxury additives – they don’t contribute to the lather or the hardness of the bar, but they are extremely moisturing. They’re probably the reason my customers say they don’t need hand cream after washing with my soap!
I decided long ago not to use animal fats in my soap. I don’t have a problem with animal fats per se – I’m not vegetarian, and I know from my early days of soapmaking and experimentation that lard makes wonderful soap. It was just a decision I made early on in my recipe development, and I’ve stuck with it. Similarly with palm oil, I used it in my early soapmaking, but haven’t done for years. I have no problem with other producers using palm oil – each to their own – but it’s not for me.
Next on the list you’ll see glycerine. Glycerine is a by-product of that chemical reaction between the NaOH and the oils/butters. It’s often extracted during the commercial soapmaking process, as it’s a valuable commodity and can be sold on to other manufacturers. In handmade soaps though, it goes nowhere. It stays within the soap and acts as a humectant, drawing moisture to the skin and helping skin retain moisture. (Note, it is NOT a moisturiser, as I’ve seen claimed elsewhere)
Next comes Aqua (water). Water is needed to create a solution of the NaOH. That’s its only purpose. Once the soap is made, we soapmakers leave the soap to cure for weeks on end, drying out the soap and trying to get rid of as much of the moisture as possible.
The next two items on the list are simply the fragrance – Sage essential oil and Lemongrass essential oil. Some soapmakers claim that essential oils added to soaps have therapeutic properties above and beyond the fragrance, but there is some doubt as to where these properties survive the chemical process. Anyway, without extensive and expensive laboratory testing, making such claims is misleading.
The next three ingredients – Activated Charcoal, Titanium Dioxide (Ci 77891) & Micas – are colourants. The first two are natural, the mica has colour added to it in a lab, so can’t be considered natural.
Finally we come to the last two starred items: *linalool *citral (*naturally present in essential oils). The EU Cosmetic Regulation 1223/2009 lists the 26 most allergenic (ie most likely to cause an allergic reaction) substances and states that if your soap (or other wash off product) contains more than 0.01% of that substance then it needs to be declared. Many essential oils contain one or more of these substances, and it’s very rare that they cause any problem whatsoever. But rules is rules :-)!
Thanks for reading, I’ll be back soon! If you have any questions about my ingredients, or anything else for that matter, please comment below.
So that was January! Four and a half weeks of my least favourite time of year, but you know what? It’s been pretty productive. Back on the 3rd January I posted my goals for the month, and I’m really happy with what’s been achieved since then.
I completed my tax return. Deadline was today, 31st January, but I made sure it was one of the first things I ticked off my list. Missing that deadline was not an option!
I finally got round to making some Castile soap – something that had been on my list of things to do for aaaages. I’ll be posting an update on the cure is progressing towards the end of next month:
Castile Soap, first attempt
I’ve done a fair bit of research for my facial bar. I’m planning on making two – a charcoal bar for younger / combination skin, and a bar aimed at older skin. I have a good idea of the recipes now, and hope to make some trial bars next month.
Finally I hoped to post on this blog at least 8 times. Well, this post is the eighth of the month, so a big fat tick for that one too…
I was gentle with myself as far as the personal goals went – I wanted to run 30km, and read a book, any book, just to try to get back into the habit of reading again. Well, I smashed the running – I’ve run 65.5km (!!) during January, and it would have been more had I not picked up a bug which morphed into a cold towards the end of the month which meant I only really ran for the first three weeks or so. I’ve also started kickboxing once a week, which is hard work but amazing fun.
The reading went pretty well too. I finished the book that I’d been crawling through for the last three months of 2016 – Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages by Gaston Dorren It’s an extraordinarily interesting book (if you’re as fascinated by languages as I am) and a very easy read. Each stand alone chapter is only a few pages long but packed with facts that made me ooohh and aaahhh with delight as I learned about the vast similarities and differences that exist within the languages of Europe. I also got halfway through a novel – The Magicians (Book 1) by Lev Grossman. I enjoyed it enough at the beggining, but I had a nagging feeling that it was aimed at a younger readership – maybe a YA novel? Turns out it’s not, but I can’t get excited about the characters, and have decided life’s too short, and reading time too precious, to continue with something that I’m not ABSOLUTELY loving. I only found out today that it’s been made into a TV series in the US. Have you seen it? Is it any good? Anyway, I now need to find a better book to read for February, ‘cos it’s going on that goals list again 🙂
So there we go – January goals smashed… I was going to include my February goals in this post but it’s got a bit longer than planned, so I’ll leave them for tomorrow – which gives me a little longer to think about them too 😉
Don’t forget to comment below if there’s a particular novel that you would absolutely, definitely recommend I read – I’m open to all and any suggestions and genres (except horror – I don’t do horror)
Thank you if you’ve read this far – the fact that someone might actually read what I write is definitely an incentive to stick to my plans.
Ok, so I made soap too, but I’m more excited about the marmalade.
I was given 2lbs of Seville oranges last week – the perfect opportunity to indulge in a bit of preserving. I used a Delia recipe (can’t beat a bit of Delia!) and it proved to be extraordinarily easy: 2lbs of Seville oranges, 1 lemon, 4 pints of water and 4lbs of granulated sugar. It’s identical to this recipe here, except I took it out of my rather ancient copy of Delia Smith’s Illustrated Cookery Course, which has been my go-to recipe book for years…
Slicing the peelBoilingA motley collection of jars
I’m ridiculously pleased with it – it’s really tasty.
Last week’s adventures in soapmaking was a couple of custom batches – I first made these last year for a local retailer, and they requested more of the same:
Ar Lan Y Mor / Potter’s Soap
I’ll have some cut photos to show you next week, but in the meantime, here’s a photo of the Potter’s Soap just before cutting – it’s been one of my all time most popular photos on Instagram:
Potter’s Soap
Other than the day job I didn’t get much more done this week – I spent a few days under the weather – a bug which turned into a cold – and then I was away over the weekend (hence the late post). Oh, but more wholesale enquiries have come in this week – hopefully I’ll have some good news to share soon.
I’ll be back very soon with a roundup of January’s goals, and a plan for February – thanks for reading!
Where did the week go? The first week of January has come and gone, and it’s time for me to get back into the habit of weekly updates – it’s been a whole month since I last did one of these!
It’s been a fairly quiet week, but I have managed to make a start on restocking the shelves – last Monday saw me making the first two batches of the year, Oatmeal Milk & Honey (OMH) and Serenity:
Oatmeal Milk & Honey / Serenity
I had this crazy idea that I’d try the Thermal Transfer method for the OMH, and as I could have predicted had I thought about it for longer than a couple of seconds, it didn’t go so well (keep an eye out for another post on that little adventure very soon). These have now been cut but I’ve not got round to taking any photographs yet (and to be honest, I’m not sure I want to take photographs of the OMH – seriously, it’s a bit of a hot mess…) but there’ll be some up on my Instagram (@thesoapmine) account soon enough.
Tonight I made another three batches. The left hand one is a brand new (to me) Fragrance Oil called Flora, which I’ve done in white, yellow and green (thoughts of spring already…), then we have restocks of First Kiss and Clarity.
Soap in the mould
The soaping gremlins were well and truly out to play tonight. The only one to behave properly was First Kiss. Clarity really surprised me by thickening up super-quick. Not sure why – same recipe, same colours and same ratio of eo’s, although the lye water was possibly cooler than usual so it’s likely that was the cause. Anyway, I can usually get wispy drops in this one, but tonight it was a bit, hmmmm, ‘ploppy’. And Flora…well, it’s a floral fragrance, notoriously bad for acceleration, so I wasn’t entirely unprepared. I used extra water with the lye, and tried not to over mix but it was still thicker than I would have liked, so my dropswirl was a bit, well, ploppy again. Ho hum, these two won’t be perfect but they WILL smell flippin’ gorgeous!!! 😀
In other news I’ve confirmed a new customer with a sizeable order for my mini guest bars, and I’ve taken a booking to do one of my soap talks in a few months time, so all in all it’s been a productive week.
Hope you’ve all had a great week. Thanks for reading – back soon!
I took some time off. I hadn’t planned to, but the kitchen refurb necessitated a halt in soapmaking, and once the last Christmas fair was done I decided to step back completely and take a proper break. And it’s been fabulous. But I’m ready, no, ITCHING to get going again. Today I masterbatched 10 lots of oils and butters, and soapmaking resumes on Monday – woo hoo!!
I fully intend to get back onto my twice weekly posting schedule, and I’ll be kicking off this week with a round up of the successes (and otherwise!) of last year’s goals, and setting down my goals for 2017 – from both a personal and a business perspective. I’ll also be setting monthly business goals to keep me more focused.
All that remains is to wish each and every one of you a VERY Happy New Year, and a peaceful, prosperous and healthy 2017. Thank you so much for following and reading my scribbles – I hope you’ll continue to do so next year. I’ll leave you with a montage of photos from this year. These were my 16 most popular photos on Instagram during 2016:
Last week was a pretty quiet one on the making front. On Tuesday evening I made three batches – Luscious Lavender, Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) & Blodau (Flowers):
Soap in the Mould
The Lavender restock has a slight twist as I’d run out of one of my micas and had to improvise. I’ll share a picture very soon – I did take one of the cut but I seem to have deleted it – gah!
I shared the cut and the story behind Yr Wyddfa in this post last week.
And this is the cut of ‘Blodau’. Blodau is Welsh for ‘flowers’, and the fragrance is a lovely blend of lavender and ylang ylang essential oils, balanced with a touch of rosewood to give depth. Please forgive the rough and ready appearance – this was taken five minutes after it was cut:
Blodau – freshly cut
Much of the week was spent preparing for the Porthmadog craft fair on Saturday. This is the only regular market/fair that I do. I could easily do more – I’m often asked – but to be honest I started this business to be able to work from home, and spend more time with the family, so I’m really not inclined to spend every weekend away from them. Nevertheless I do happily join my crafty family on the last Saturday of every month, and I get a lot of pleasure from catching up with my fellow stallholders and regular (and new!) customers.
The Dinosoaps proved to be very popular (this was the basket I transported them in by the way, they weren’t displayed like that!)
Dinosoaps
The other soapy highlight of the week was a fabulous mica delivery from the awesome U-MakeitUp in Spain:
Mica samples
This was the second lot I’ve ordered from them, and I’m so impressed with their range of colours and great customer service. This was the first selection I received, a few months back:
More mica
Lots and LOTS of colours to play with!
In other news, this week the children wrote their letters to Santa, and I made a start on the Christmas shopping. This coming weekend we head down to south Wales for the weekend to visit my husband’s family, so we need to have all their Christmas gifts wrapped and ready to take with us.
I’ll leave you with this view from my office window last Saturday morning, 8am, just after loading up the car for the fair – gorgeously clear and crisp.
As winter inexorably approaches, the tourist season here has more or less come to an end for the year. The only visitors we’ll see for the next few months will be hardy, well wrapped walker and mountain climbers, and many of the gift shops have closed or drastically reduced their opening hours while the owners take a well earned rest. A good time, then, for me to take stock and consider what sold well during this last year. It’s clear to me (and it’s no real surprise) that the bars which sold the best here in the village were those with a Welsh element to their name (eg Welsh Rose and Blodau (Flowers)) or a link to the local area (eg Black Rock Sands and Traeth Criccieth (Criccieth Beach)).
I’ve decided that there needs to be a few additions to the regular range – soaps which reference the local area – and the first of those will be Yr Wyddfa, our name for Snowdon, the highest mountain in England & Wales. Yr Wyddfa has always been close to my heart. As I child I lived literally at the foot of this majestic mountain, and now I live just 10 minutes away from the bottom of 4 different routes up (depending on which direction I drive). I’ve walked (and run, with a team of women, carrying (an occupied!) wheelchair – but that’s another story :-D) to the top many times, but I’ve never taken the train up… Anyway, I digress…
On Tuesday night I made my first attempt. Even while it was still in the mould I knew that there were things I would do differently next time:
Yr Wyddfa in the mould
See that blue on the top? That’s supposed to represent the sky, but sadly it’s the wrong shade of blue. Easily fixed – next time…
And the cut:
Yr Wyddfa, cut
Clearly I’ve not gone with one of my regular drop swirls here – I’ve gone a little more literal, with greenery (two colours of green), rock, snowy mountain top and sky. I need to alter the colours of the rock and the sky, and perhaps have a little more greenery than rock, but I’m really happy with it as a first attempt.
I only flippin’ went and did it! Participation in the Blogtober 2016 challenge was such a random, hasty and last minute decision that, in all honesty, it was highly likely that I would fail. I realised, after mentally committing myself, that many of the other participants had been (sensibly!) planning ahead, preparing and scheduling posts beforehand. I didn’t have that luxury, having decided approximately 8 hours into the first day of October that this was something I could/should/would do.
Decision made, I had to be clear on what on earth I was going to write about every day. I didn’t think I would have enough ‘soapy’ topics to cover, so I made sure I had a rough list of other possible topics. As it turned out, I didn’t need to use many of those off-topic ideas – turns out there is an awful lot to share / write about in the soapy world!
Now, here I am, 31 days later with 31 more blog posts under my belt than I had at the beginning of the month. I did it (!) and it’s been an extremely useful experience – primarily because it’s got me back into the habit of blogging on a regular basis. I’ve discovered during the last month that I really do enjoy writing, but that doing so within such narrow time constraints doesn’t do anything for the standard of what I produce. It has without a doubt been a case of quantity over quality (sorry about that 😉 ) Some of the topics I’ve covered have been done hurriedly and I’ll probably revisit them in greater detail at a later date.
Coincidentally, this post is also my 100th on the blog and I’m determined to keep blogging on a regular basis from now on. More soap pics, more tutorials, more reviews and more personal ‘meet the maker’ posts (Ooh – they scare me :-D).
Thank you SO much if you’ve stuck with me over the last month, and a double/triple thank you to those of you who’ve rewarded me with the odd ‘like’ or ‘comment’. It really has helped spur me on, knowing that there is somebody, anybody, out there reading every now and then. Thank you, thank you, and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
The soap that I’ve long called ‘Love Spell’ is scented with a fragrance oil that is a copy of the designer perfume ‘Love Spell’ by Victoria’s Secret. Having recently applied for my bath bomb assessment, which includes bombs fragranced with the same fragrance oil, I was reminded that I can’t call them (or my soap!) Love Spell as it contravenes copyright. I knew this, and I should have changed it ages ago, but to be honest I just didn’t spend the time to come up with a replacement. As it was, when I received the message from my assessor, the new name came to me within a minute or two. Typical! Anyway, it will henceforth be known as Bewitched.
I first made it back in the summer of 2014. You can clearly see where the top portion, coloured with titanium dioxide, shrank more than the rest of the bar during the curing process. The top was simply spattered with leftover soap batter:
Bewitched V1
Soon after that I got into tiger stripe pouring, which I initially made with a flat top (and experimented with some black stripes):
Bewitched V2Bewitched V3
And later with a textured top:
Bewitched V4
Finally I brought it in line with the rest of the range i.e. with a full bar drop swirl:
Bewitched V5
Day 23 of Blogtober 2016. I’m starting to believe I can actually do this 😀
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