lavender Archives

Posted on February 19, 2017 by Vicki — 1 Comment

The Week in Soap: 19th Feb ’17

I have at least 6 draft posts half written, but somehow it’s got round to Sunday again and I’ve not managed to even think about finishing any of them…

It has, however, been a busy week… I’ve been busy wrapping and labelling the bars for the shop in Didsbury, all 150 of them. It’s a big order for me, but I’ve got a week or two to get it all together.

On Thursday I agreed to supply a local guest house with soap on an ongoing basis. It’s self catering accommodation, and they want to leave both full sized and mini bars for their guests. The first lot of regular bars has been delivered, and this coming week will see me cutting and wrapping the mini sized bars for delivery before the weekend.

I’ve made another five batches this week, three on Monday – First Kiss, Love Spell & Peace:

That little heart was added for Instagram as a nod to Valentine’s Day, as I didn’t get around to making any Valentine’s specials this year.

And two batches of Tutti Frutti on Friday – I’ve been waiting on more fragrance oil for this one for quite a while, and I’m nearly sold out, so I got a couple of batches done at once.

The colours on the top of the finished batches look a little muddy, but I’m hopeful it’ll be fine inside *crosses fingers*

And tonight I made more bathbombs – I literally finished cleaning up 10 minutes ago, so these are very rough and ready photos, but you get the first peek:

Bewitched:

I’ve not managed to take many soapy photos this week, but here’s the Blodau (Flowers) bar from last week:

The kids are off school for half term this coming week, so it’ll be interesting to see how much I get done (especially as we go away on Friday for a couple of nights) but hopefully I’ll get an update out on Sunday at the very least :-/

Posted on November 29, 2016 by Vicki — 1 Comment

Luscious Lavender Restocked – with a Twist

I found that photograph that I thought I’d deleted yesterday. Actually, I had deleted it, but discovered that my phone keeps a copy of recently deleted photos – who knew? (Many people, clearly, but not me 😉

So, just popping in and out quickly to finally share the third of last weeks batches:

Here it is in the mould:

And here it is freshly cut (and a little rough and ready). The twist (such as it is) is a slightly different shade of the darker purple – I’d run out of the regular mica so had to improvise:

That’s all for today folks!

Posted on November 28, 2016 by Vicki — 3 Comments

The Week in Soap: 27th Nov ’16

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):

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 — 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!)

The other soapy highlight of the week was a fabulous mica delivery from the awesome U-MakeitUp in Spain:

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:

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.

Posted on October 22, 2016 by Vicki — Leave a comment

Name that Soap! (Competition Time)

I have a brand new essential oil bar, and it needs a name… This bar is scented with lavender, lemon and lime EOs. Heavier on the lavender and lemon, lighter on the lime, but it’s definitely discernible.

Give me a name! — Please give me a name 🙂

I’m offering a free bar to the person who comes up with the name that I eventually select, and you can either enter below in the comments field, or on the competition post on my FB page. It’s open to anyone, wherever you are in the world – I’ll cover postage costs too (last time I did this it the bar went over the pond to the US). So don’t be shy – I know you’re a creative lot!!

FYI The other essential oil bars in my range are called Serenity, Clarity, Peace, Boho Baby, Flowers and Luscious Lavender.

PS – the winning name will be chosen on Saturday 29th October, 9pm UK time.

Go go go!!

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Vicki — 1 Comment

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:

Luscious Lavender #4 — Luscious Lavender #5

Luscious Lavender #5 — Luscious Lavender #6

Thanks for checking in – I really do hope to be back soon with those 2016 goals!

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.

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Vicki — 1 Comment

A second confetti soap

The second in a series of three confetti soaps:

These were inspired by the need to find a use for some really ugly soap – see the first one here, and I think they look really pretty.

This version is made with shades of pink and purple and is fragranced with a blend of Lavender essential oil and Marshmallow fragrance oil.

On sale 8th September from www.facebook.com/TheSoapMine

The final soap in the series will be posted very soon.