Happy Hump Day everyone! After a text heavy post yesterday, today I’m taking full advantage of #wetsoapwednesday and sharing a selection of favourite recent soap ‘in-the-mould’ tops. If you love wet soap as much as I do, you might find something you like here…
Thank you so much for still being here 😀 Back tomorrow…
Vickx
Back in mid-September I put out an appeal to you lovely people for questions to help me with topic ideas for Blogtober and I wasn’t disappointed. Rather than try to answer them all in one post, there will probably be three posts in total during Blogtober – this here being the first.
Question 1 came from Claire of Saponista, who asked ‘What is your favourite soapmaking oil, and why?’ Without a doubt, my favourite soapmaking oil isn’t actually an oil, it’s a butter – cocoa butter, and I can’t imagine making soap without it (that’s a bit of an exaggeration of course – I made castile recently, and there ain’t no cocoa in that, but as a general rule each batch I make contains 10% cocoa butter) Cocoa butter adds skin loving properties to soap, and because I choose not to use palm oil, it also helps a lot with making a nice hard bar.
Question 2 comes from Jo who asked what I do about soaps and bath bombs that aren’t perfect. I’ll be honest, I have my own idea of what a ‘perfect’ drop swirl is, and it’s very rare that I achieve what I see as perfection. Consequently, practically none of my soaps are perfect in my eyes and I’m always striving to make them better. Providing a soap is a good hard bar, even if the design isn’t my best, it’s made available for sale. (Having said that, I’ve just cut one this week that I’m really not happy with – 3kg of soap that is more than likely going to have to go on the reject shelf – but I’m keeping the details of that one for a post later on this month)
Bath bombs, on the other hand, don’t go out unless they’re pretty much perfect. It took me a while to be able to get the mixture to the right consistency every time, but I think I’ve cracked it and it’s rare that I get bombs that aren’t pretty good (but the odd one that doesn’t quite make the grade will always find a place in my kids’ bath!) Interestingly (and this was part of Jo’s question), although I live in a particularly wet part of the country, I haven’t found that the climate or weather conditions have any effect whatsoever on my bomb making abilities. This seems to go contrary to what I’ve heard so many others say about bath bomb making, but there you go, that’s my experience.
Jo – I will write up some of my top tips for bath bomb making in a near-future post – I promise!
Question 3 kind of leads on from the last question, and came from Barb of Scrub Me Down Soap who asked how the weather affects my soaping. This one’s easy – it doesn’t! I live in a mountainous area, but the climate is effectively wet, cloudy, windy and mild. We don’t experience great extremes of temperature, and the only time the weather has ever affected anything to do with my soapmaking was that time my coconut oil unexpectedly melted and made one hell of a mess in my storeroom. It’s ALWAYS solid at room temperature, but that one time – arrghhhhh we just don’t get that kind of heat here often…
Question 4 is another one from Barb – what music do I listen to when soaping? Actually, it’s not always music. I LOVE the radio, and I’m a big fan of BBC Radio 4. It keeps me up to date with current affairs and has the most insanely interesting programmes, on all subjects under the sun. When I do listen to music, it’s inevitably rock music; contemporary rock, 70s rock, or any era in between, including the occasional trip down memory lane to my uni days with 1990s indie rock.
Question 5 is the last one for today, and yet again comes from Barb – where do I buy my stash? I buy my oils and butters from a variety of companies, including LiveMoor, Mystic Moments, and the local Cash&Carry for olive oil. (Anyone else notice how expensive olive oil is at the moment?!!) I buy my soap colours (micas) from U-Makeitup , and my bath bomb colourants from Soaposh. As for fragrances, I buy most of my fragrance oils from the wonderful Gracefruit (who. by the way, have the BEST customer service) and essential oils, well I’m currently looking for a new supplier, so if you have any recommendations…
Thanks for reading – back tomorrow!
Vickx
It’s been a quieter week on the soaping front. I was grateful for that to be honest – we had family visiting for the first half of the week, and I’ve been getting into the swing of Blogtober. Day 9 today, almost a third of the way through the month already!!
On Monday I made two double batches, both restocks, of Welsh Rose and Blodau:
The Welsh Rose wasn’t my best – it accelerated a little and the colours weren’t as bright as they usually are, but it’ll be fine. The Blodau on the other hand, turned out great – this is a closeup of it in the mould which proved to be really popular on Instagram:
On Tuesday I made more restocks – double batches of Clarity and Traeth Craig Du (Black Rock Sands):
The new wire for my cutter arrived on Tuesday, and it would appear I ordered the wrong one again. AARRGGHHH It was a coiled string (?) and slightly thicker than I expected it to be. Well, we fitted it onto the cutter anyway (taking a bit of a risk but by Wednesday morning I had 12kg of soap to cut and I couldn’t risk it getting too hard) and although it IS a little too thick, it did the trick. I did a bit of research and discovered that I probably need 20 gauge wire, so I’ve ordered some and it should be here soon. What a flippin’ palaver!
On Wednesday evening I gave my regular weekly soapmaking presentation. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy giving these. It often turns into a bit of a conversation rather than a ‘talk’ and I get to indulge in waffling on about my favourite subject to a captive audience. AND then I get to sell them soap too! I’ve only got another two or three weeks to go before they stop for the winter, but the manager has already asked me to go back next season – hurrah!
Thursday was another completely soap free day, and Friday was spent in the office, cutting soap, labelling soap, wrapping soap, photographing soap etc etc….
I took some better pictures of my Christmas specials, which I’ll be sharing with you this week, and of the mountain soap (from yesterday’s post) and this one – the Blodau from earlier this week:
I realised that the reason I don’t get round to sharing cut pictures as much as the ones in the mould is that I don’t usually tidy them up until they’ve been curing for a couple of weeks, so I made and effort to try to tidy up the freshly cut bar and take a picture, and it worked ok I think:
Towards Friday evening I started to develop a sore throat which worsened as the evening went on and meant I got very little sleep on Friday night. Saturday was spent feeling ill, lethargic, weak and sorry for myself generally, and Sunday was mostly spent in bed, trying desperately to kick whatever it was that was making me feel so rubbish…
I’ll be back tomorrow, come what may, hopefully with a clearer head and body that’s more willing to co-operate!!
Vickx
For the last few months I’ve been working on a mountain design. I live in the heart of Snowdonia, practically at the foot of Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) itself, and wanted to make a bar of soap that might appeal to the many walkers and climbers who are drawn to the area.
The last version of Yr Wyddfa looked like this:
Although they proved to be really popular (and I sold all 30 bars in record time) I wasn’t happy with the design. Firstly, Snowdon doesn’t look like that. Secondly, (faint of heart look away now) it looked like a big ole pile of dog s**t. Not what I want people to be thinking when they look at a bar of my soap!!
So, anyway, a few weeks ago I made another attempt using the sculpted layers method. (I need to make another batch soon so I’ll try to do a tutorial at that point, but in the meantime there’s a great tutorial here by Danica of Seife & Anderes. I had thought that this method would give me uniform bars, all with a similar looking mountain scene, but nope, I think I need a fair bit more practice for that to be the case…
Although these mountains look much more realistic, they still don’t look like Yr Wyddfa, and are clearly not uniform. Pondering this dilemma I had a lightbulb moment. I’ll just change the name of the bar from Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) to Eryri (Snowdonia). We have so many mountains in Snowdonia, why limit myself to trying to reproduce one peak when I could potentially represent them all? 😀
The colours aren’t quite right in these, I think I need to revert to my dog s**t colours!!
So, introducing Eryri (Snowdonia). It’s fragranced with a blend of peppermint, rosemary, eucalyptus, patchouli and lime essential oils – a fresh, outdoorsy scent.
Thanks for reading, back tomorrow!
Vickx
For the last few months I’ve been working on a mountain design. I live in the heart of Snowdonia, practically at the foot of Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) itself, and wanted to make a bar of soap that might appeal to the many walkers and climbers who are drawn to the area.
The last version of Yr Wyddfa looked like this:
Although they proved to be really popular (and I sold all 30 bars in record time) I wasn’t happy with the design. Firstly, Snowdon doesn’t look like that. Secondly, (faint of heart look away now) it looked like a big ole pile of dog s**t. Not what I want people to be thinking when they look at a bar of my soap!!
So, anyway, a few weeks ago I made another attempt using the sculpted layers method. (I need to make another batch soon so I’ll try to do a tutorial at that point, but in the meantime there’s a great tutorial here by Danica of Seife & Anderes. I had thought that this method would give me uniform bars, all with a similar looking mountain scene, but nope, I think I need a fair bit more practice for that to be the case…
Although these mountains look much more realistic, they still don’t look like Yr Wyddfa, and are clearly not uniform. Pondering this dilemma I had a lightbulb moment. I’ll just change the name of the bar from Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) to Eryri (Snowdonia). We have so many mountains in Snowdonia, why limit myself to trying to reproduce one peak when I could potentially represent them all? 😀
The colours aren’t quite right in these, I think I need to revert to my dog s**t colours!!
So, introducing Eryri (Snowdonia). It’s fragranced with a blend of peppermint, rosemary, eucalyptus, patchouli and lime essential oils – a fresh, outdoorsy scent.
Thanks for reading, back tomorrow!
Vickx
Every time I cut a loaf of soap – I always have a fair sized chunk left over at the end of the loaf. Not so thick as to be a saleable bar but perfect to cut into four and use as sample bars. Their uses, as a general rule, are twofold
1. As free samples to be popped in the box when anyone places an order and
2. To be given out to retail outlets with each wholesale order, one per fragrance ordered, so that customers can get a good idea of the fragrance
I ALSO have left over the very thin end piece that I slice off the loaf when I begin cutting it:
and recently I started wondering how I could use them. A couple of years back, at Christmas time, I had bundled up various end pieces, wrapped them up in raffia and sold them as sample packs at market:
But I wanted something a little ‘neater’, and then I remembered this blog post by Emily at Soap & Restless, and went on the hunt in the kitchen for a suitably sized cookie cutter. This was the result:
I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to do with them. Maybe cut a hole in each one and string them onto some ribbon or raffia? Or just use them as prettier free samples? It would be an easy enough process to continue slicing that last chunk into thinnish slices, so I should still be able to get four samples out of each end chunk… What do you think? Which sample would you prefer to get with your order?
Back tomorrow,
Vickx
Goals. Goals, goals goals… Why do I set them? Do I achieve more in the months that I set proper goals than I do in the months that I don’t? Yes, yes I do. Granted, I’ve not done any empirical research to back up this assertion, so perhaps I should say “I think I do” or “I’m pretty sure I do“, but to be honest, I don’t really care. I’m a listaholic and I like little more than to tick things off lists. Goals are REALLY up my street, so let’s crack on with the goals for this month.
The Website
I really, really want to get the website finished this month, however I’ve not idea how long that’s going to take, and I want this to be a measurable goal. I need to spend some time taking some more photographs (one day I’ll get some professionally done but until then, it’s diy all the way baby…) I also need to move the blog over to the new website, but I’m hoping my other half can do that – there has to be some perks to being married to an IT professional eh? So, I’m going to commit to working on the website for at least eight hours this month – that’s a measurable goal that I think is achievable, so we’ll see how close to launch that takes us.
The Blog
It’s Blogtober don’t you know?! There will be 31 more posts on the blog at the end of the month than there was at the beginning of the month. That’s a goal and a half I reckon!!
Make a Lotion or Cream.
Back in August, I was honoured to be gifted an amazing book on making skin care – Luscious Lotions, Decadent Creams & Nourishing Conditioners: 30 Emulsified Lotion Recipes and Detailed Instructions. The giver was none other than the author herself, Lisa of Aquarian Soap, and I’ve been itching to try something out of the book since I received it. So, this month I’ll be making at least one recipe out of Lisa’s book and of course, sharing the results in a post.
So there we go. Three main goals. I also need to make more Christmas soaps, wrap and label a shed load of Christmas soaps, keep up with regular soap restocks, design and make up a selection of gift sets and make LOTS of bath bombs. Throw into the mix a Craft Show that I’m organising in my village for Saturday 21st October and it’s probably a good thing that I like being busy 😀
Oh, and one little one personal one for the road – I want, need, to get back into running. So, despite the fact that I’ve not run a single metre for a couple of months, I’m planning on running 50km this month (shoot me now).
Back tomorrow,
Vickx
I had three goals for September:
Website
I’ve made a lot of progress, but it’s still not there. I’m really been struggling to find the time to sit down and focus on getting it ready for launch (just see yesterday’s post for how busy I was last week) but I can’t fret too much about it, I just need to keep going. It’ll get there.
Christmas Soaps
YES! 60 bars each of Candy Cane, Frosted Christmas Tree and Warm Gingerbread made last month. Last year I only made 30 bars of each, which wasn’t quite enough, so I was aiming to double that this year – boom! BUT there’s been so much interest thus far that I’ve decided to go for 90 bars of each. It’s a bit of a leap of faith, but considering the big Christmas fair I have the first weekend in December, I’d rather have too many than not enough. I’m lucky that I started making them early enough that it won’t be a problem to make more during the next couple of weeks and still have them ready for the start of the festive season.
I still haven’t taken ‘proper’ photographs of these three, but this is what I do have so far in case you’ve not seen them yet:
Publish 8-10 Blog Posts
I published 7 posts last month. Didn’t quite hit my target, but, if I’m completely honest, I was holding back a little, knowing that I would be trying to post 31 times this month. There were a few times I thought, “Ooh, that would make a good blog post” and then immediately thought “Ah, no, I should save that for next month…” Basically self-sabotage, ha!!
Back tomorrow with my goals for October – no prizes for guessing what at least two of them will be 😀
This last week has been incredibly tiring, if I’m honest. I’ve had busy days and evenings, and I’ve really seen the effect on my energy levels. I’m hoping that adding Blogtober into the mix for the next month isn’t the crazy idea that I’m currently thinking it might be…
Monday has been become my regular soaping day (as I need to have a loaf ready to cut on Wednesday evenings for my Soapmaking presentation) and last Monday was no exception. I made three double batches of Bewitched, Lemon Verbena Confetti & Christmas tree:
And a close up of the Bewitched, because I can’t resist those swirls…
On Tuesday I was out and about delivering stock to local shops and doing a bank run, then spent the rest of the day wrapping and labelling bars. I’ve recently bought some shrink wrap bags to try, as I’m still not happy with my packaging, so I had a bit of a play with them too. During the evening I was out at a meeting of the local Village Hall Committee meeting (of which I’m the Secretary)
Wednesday saw me at the day job in a local Pre-School, and in the evening I was out giving my weekly soapmaking presentation at a local hotel, and then on Thursday I was back at the day job again, and in the evening I had another meeting, this time for the Annual General Meeting of the Pre-School committee (of which I’m Treasurer)
Friday was again spent wrapping and labelling soaps and bathbombs, as I had the monthly Porthmadog Craft Fair the following day, and I’d realised that I didn’t have nearly enough stock ready to take. I also needed to cut all the soap which I made on Monday (which I really should have cut on Wednesday!) but I got halfway through and the wire snapped on my cutter. Arrgghhh… Never mind, I was well prepared and had some replacement E strings ready for precisely this eventuality. Except I’d bought E 1st strings, instead of E 6th strings. Who knew that there are two DIFFERENT E strings on a guitar? Double arrgghhh… . I swiftly ordered some of the correct ones, but they won’t be delivered until next week, and I have soap to cut, so I asked Dean to fit one of the thin ones with the idea of giving it a try the next day when I could get back to the office.
I did manage to get the Lemon Verbena Confetti cut before the wire snapped:
THEN I remembered that I needed to print some new name/price cards for the fair, so Friday evening was spent wrestling with my printer. I have an intense love / hate relationship with my super-duper wireless printer. When it works, I absolutely flippin’ love it, but I’m essentially a hardware technophobe and when it doesn’t work, I’m screwed. On Friday night it didn’t work, I was tired and frustrated and about to have a meltdown when my other half stepped in and sorted it out. Meltdown averted….
Saturday was the craft fair. A fairly early start which didn’t help my tired state, and not a particularly busy day, but hey ho, you win some you lose some… I don’t think the weather helped:
While I was there I took some photographs of all the other crafters’ stalls – there’ll be a post coming up about this local monthly event as part of Blogtober but for now here’s a little peek at my stall:
I got home around 3pm, and spent the rest of the day preparing for a visit from Dean’s parents who were coming the following morning and staying a few days.
Those six days were the busiest I’ve been in a long time, and I can’t even blame the business! Sunday, by comparison, was a joy. A lovely family day – breakfast out with the in-laws, a bit of biscuit making (Viennese fingers – recipe to follow) a relaxed afternoon in front of the fire, rounded off with a roast chicken dinner. Even the pounding rain couldn’t put a damper on it. Bliss.
I’ll be back tomorrow with a roundup of September’s goals…
Vickx
Just a quick catch up this week. Posts have been fairly few and fair between over the last couple of weeks because I’m gearing up for Blogtober – every time I think ‘Ooh, that might make a good blog post’ I decide to save it for next month…
I was waiting for supplies to arrive last week so I only made one main batch of soap – a remake of ‘Yr Wyddfa’ (Snowdon):
I’ve been trying to find a better way to create this design – this was the previous version which, while it sold really well, has, to me, more than a passing resemblance to *ahem* dog mess :-/
and when I saw the lovely designs created and document by Danica on her blog Seife und anderes, I realised that the sculpted layers technique might just be the way forward. There’s a great description of the technique on Danica’s blog, so I won’t go into details here (and anyway, I forgot to take any photos of the process, I was so anxious to get on with it – next time I will definitely document it better) so here’s the final result:
The colours aren’t quite right this time – the mountain needs to be more grey, and the greenery needs to be more, well, green… but I’m getting there. It’s fragranced with a blend of essential oils including rosemary, peppermint, eucalyptus, lemon and patchouli.
I also made another batch of dinosaurs and more stars for the next batches of Frosted Christmas Tree (which I still need to photograph to show you – oops!)
A couple of weeks ago I ordered a selection of green mica samples from U-Makeitup and this week they arrived – a lovely collection:
Oh, and the Christmas ribbons have started to arrive – I know it probably still feels a bit early but I’ve already had a wholesale order for my Christmas range for delivery by 22nd October, so there’s no time to be to complacent…
Thanks for reading – my next post will be the first of this year’s Blogtober posts on the 1st of the month (next Sunday – eek!)
It would appear that Autumn is well and truly here. There’s a chill in the air in the mornings, and we’re lighting the fire every evening. It’s also a reminder that Christmas is coming, and with it that big, three day Christmas Fair I’ve committed myself to at the beginning of December – eek! To that end, this week’s soapmaking was all holiday based: Double batches of Candy Cane, Frosted Christmas Tree and Warm Gingerbread:
I’ve not taken ‘proper’ photographs of the cuts yet, but here’s a sneaky peek at the Frosted Christmas Tree:
And a quick (and rather rubbish – sorry!!) snap of the Warm Gingerbread (this is the previous weeks batch – this week’s moved even more quickly and I didn’t even attempt the drop!)
I had a bit of a mishap with the Candy Cane – there was a knock on the door mid-pour, and instead of ignoring it I went to answer it, thinking that the soap batter was nice and fluid and I could leave it a moment or two… There’s a lesson learnt – I was away from the soap just that little bit too long and when I came back it had thickened up too much to finish off the drop swirl, arrghhhhh….
Bath bombs are a relatively new thing for me and I’ve always found them a little tedious to make to be honest. Last Friday I made 90 of them, and I seemed to be quicker this time. I guess practice does make perfect (still need a LOT of practice though :-D) They were pretty trouble free, except for one variety, but that’s a story for another day…
I also packaged up another 100 guest soaps, and bevelled a load more – there’s confetti soap on the horizon I reckon:
On a personal note, the highlight of the week was earning my green belt in kickboxing on Monday night:
Unfortunately I didn’t feel quite so kickass when I got to training on Wednesday night and discovered exactly what I’m going to have to do to earn my blue belt – there’s some hard work ahead of me!!
If you have a soap (or bath & body) blog, please do join our Soapmaking Bloggers facebook page (and maybe even consider taking part in Blogtober Soapers? ;-D)
Have a great week everyone, I’ll be back soon.
One of my soaps used to make me a little sad. It smelled divine (no, I know I say that about all of them, but trust me on this one…) but it just didn’t sell well. It’s fragranced with a dupe of Aquolina’s Pink Sugar perfume: think candy floss, caramel, vanilla blended with strawberry jam and musk with top notes of lemon drops and brown sugar. It really is lovely.
The high vanilla content in the fragrance oil means that it will naturally turn the soap brown, so while I use my regular drop swirl design, I only add FO to two thirds of the soap batter (one third with Titanium Dioxide, one third with no colour) and leave the pink portion fragrance free:
I became convinced that the reason it wasn’t selling was because of its name: First Kiss (so called because it’s so sweet, *groan*) It was cheesy, and the feedback was that it wasn’t something that older people would want to buy as a gift, even if they liked the scent.
I needed some help to come up with something better, so I asked the good folk of Instagram, and was lucky enough to be given load of great suggestions. The one I went with was Sugar Drops, suggested by @nightwingbeth. I liked that it still implied sweetness, and also referenced the Drop Swirl design.
So there we go – First Kiss has been relegated to history, step forward Sugar Drops.
Thanks for reading, back soon!
It’s Tuesday eve, and I think I’m pushing the time limit for posting a round-up of last week, so I’m going to make this a quickie…
The main focus of the beginning of last week was ‘Back to School’, which didn’t actually happen until Tuesday, when both kids headed into school with a quick kiss and barely a look back. I gave a little jump for joy, and headed straight into the soap kitchen to make soap. Mostly restocks (double batches of Bewitched & Luscious Lavender) but also made some progress on the Christmas stock – a double batch of Warm Gingerbread which, as per the test batch, moved really quickly, but I managed to get a small drop element in there. Cut photos to come next week I hope…
I added a little mica swirl on the top of the Warm Gingerbread, just for some added interest:
Wednesday and Thursday I was at the (part-time) day job, but managed to find some time to start on cutting, bevelling, wrapping and labelling a big order of mini guest bars.
The rest of the week was spent doing the usual soapy stuff, including spending as much time as I could uploading info and photos to the website – I think I’m still on track to launch at the beginning of October *crosses fingers*
Friday… Friday was kind of special, and had been planned for a while. Before having children my husband and I used to do a lot of hill / mountain walking, but we’d not been to the top of a mountain for about eight years. With both kids in school, we packed a lunch and off we went. The weather wasn’t great and we got a good soaking on the way up, but the weather cleared at the summit and we were rewarded with a lovely view. We descended in sunshine and were dry before we got home. It was absolute heaven, and we’re already planning the next one…
It’s Tuesday eve, and I think I’m pushing the time limit for posting a round-up of last week, so I’m going to make this a quickie…
The main focus of the beginning of last week was ‘Back to School’, which didn’t actually happen until Tuesday, when both kids headed into school with a quick kiss and barely a look back. I gave a little jump for joy, and headed straight into the soap kitchen to make soap. Mostly restocks (double batches of Bewitched & Luscious Lavender) but also made some progress on the Christmas stock – a double batch of Warm Gingerbread which, as per the test batch, moved really quickly, but I managed to get a small drop element in there. Cut photos to come next week I hope…
I added a little mica swirl on the top of the Warm Gingerbread, just for some added interest:
Wednesday and Thursday I was at the (part-time) day job, but managed to find some time to start on cutting, bevelling, wrapping and labelling a big order of mini guest bars.
The rest of the week was spent doing the usual soapy stuff, including spending as much time as I could uploading info and photos to the website – I think I’m still on track to launch at the beginning of October *crosses fingers*
Friday… Friday was kind of special, and had been planned for a while. Before having children my husband and I used to do a lot of hill / mountain walking, but we’d not been to the top of a mountain for about eight years. With both kids in school, we packed a lunch and off we went. The weather wasn’t great and we got a good soaking on the way up, but the weather cleared at the summit and we were rewarded with a lovely view. We descended in sunshine and were dry before we got home. It was absolute heaven, and we’re already planning the next one…
The last week of the school holidays didn’t give me much time to devote to the business. I made some soap, wrapped a few bars and uploaded a few items to the pending website and had one, massive, disaster. But more of that later.
I didn’t make a lot of soap this week but I did make a double batch of Tutti Frutti. Here it’s in the mould, before and after the top swirl:
And the cut. I think I tried to be a bit too clever this time. I wanted the colours to more strictly follow the order of the colours of the rainbow (so how did I get red next to green lol?) but to do that I had to be a little more ordered in the pouring. I think I prefer the more randomly poured swirl so. Apologies for the rubbish photograph…
I also learnt my lesson and made a TEST batch using a new fragrance. Warm Gingerbread FO is one I’m hoping to use for Christmas, and I planned small batch with a simple design just to see how it handles. I’m glad I did – the website testing notes said it would accelerate, and accelerate it did. This pic is immediately after the cut – the two bottom layers should turn a lot darker over the next few weeks because of the vanilla in the fragrance oil. I left the top layer fragrance free:
It smells delicious, and I really want to use this FO to make a drop swirl bar for Christmas, so I’m going to have to use all the acceleration-reducing tools in my arsenal – and keep my fingers crossed!!
As I’d already made a start on the Christmas bars during the previous week, Candy Cane, Star embeds for the Christmas Tree bars, and a couple of batches of Dinosoaps, I’m confident that I’m on track time-wise.
And that disaster. Urgh… I was making more of the Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) soap. The last version was ok, but the bars weren’t uniform enough and the mountain itself didn’t really reflect reality. I intended to use the sculping soap technique (I was recently reminded of it by the incredibly creative Danica of Seife und anderes – if you like soap blogs you really should check it out), but the soap batter riced on me in seconds. I’ve used this fragrance before (and besides, the testing notes say no acceleration) so I REALLY wasn’t being reckless.
Anyway, just for the giggles :-/ I decided to try to squish it into the mould anyway. I actually had to get my hands in there to mix in the colours and colour squishing IS now a technical term. Was there the slightest possibility that it would come out acceptably rustic looking? NO. No, no no NOPE!! The soapy gremlins were well and truly esconced in my kitchen that day lol:
No, I didn’t rebatch it. Yes, I trashed it. I know, I know, one of these days I’ll have to give rebatching a go but I don’t currently have spare a slow cooker that I could do it in, and, really, I just don’t feel the rebatching love…
Thanks for reading, back very soon!
I had an inkling August would be busy. I hadn’t planned on posting often on the blog, but abandoning it for a whole month really wasn’t on the agenda either. The kids have been on holiday of course, but the soap business doesn’t stop for the summer (if anything it is busier than any other time, bar Christmas) and I’ve been frantically juggling childcare and keeping on top of the business for the last month.
I won’t dwell on it here, but the weather during August was utter pants. Seriously, it was rubbish. I had so many plans for picnics by the river, and lazy days on the beach, but it just wasn’t going to happen. We took walks in the rain, visited castles in the drizzle, and went geocaching under stormy clouds. The kids even climbed their first (small!) mountain, and loved it. Ha! Take that, weather! We had fun anyway…
As well as keeping retailers stocked up, I’ve made 330 bars of soap during August. Not as many as I would have liked, but with BOTH (finally!!) kids back at school all day as of next Tuesday, I’ll able to get back on track fairly quickly. I’m not making any Halloween bars, so it’s restocks and Christmas soaps all the way… Candy Cane proved very popular last year, so that’s what I started with:
I’ve also started on the star embeds for the Christmas Tree bars:
And Dinosoaps are back!
It really doesn’t seem right thinking about Christmas in August but last year I got caught out when retailers wanted Christmas stock in store right after Halloween (eek!) so this year I’ll be better prepared.
Oh, and do you remember that marmalade I made back in January? I entered it into our village show a couple of weeks ago, and it only went and won first prize! I knew it tasted good but absolutely didn’t expect to win anything. These aren’t the best photos but I also won firsts for my Viennese fingers, Melting Moments and Swiss Roll plus second prizes for my Victoria Sponge and Coconut & Lime Loaf:
These are the Viennese Fingers, which get their own photo because, frankly, they were bloomin’ delicious. Excuse the wonky one – only three were entered – that wasn’t one of them! If anyone wants the recipe let me know and I’ll post it – it’ll give me a great excuse to make more!!
It’s been a great month, but things will be getting back to normal here over the next few days and I’ll be glad to get back into a routine – the blogging schedule will be back on track – I promise!
Thanks for reading – all being well I’ll be back tomorrow with my goals for September.
Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you – school holidays have totally messed with my blogging schedule (never mind my soaping schedule!!). This time last week I was most likely in the middle of a field playing swingball, or sitting on the beach in blazing sunshine, watching the kids building sandcastles, or eating fish & chips – the specifics don’t matter. The point is we spent a long weekend camping on the coast, in the most glorious sunshine, with no phone signal and certainly no wifi, and blogging was quite far from my mind. Our tent and the view from the front of it:
We were SO lucky with the weather – the cloud you see here is just early morning cloud (took the photo just after 7am) and it soon cleared and we had three glorious days of sunshine.
I didn’t manage to make any soap during the week before we went, and I suddenly realised when we got home on the Tuesday that I had nothing to cut during my regular Wednesday night demo the following evening. So I quickly whipped up a double batch of Serenity – too quickly as it turned out…
Once again I soaped at too high a temperature (the lye is usually at room temp) and it set up too quickly. It’s not awful, but it’s not as I would like it.
Remember the Clarity & Welsh Rose batches I made the previous week? I did actually take some photos as promised:
and
The rest of any child-free time I managed to wangle last week was spent wrapping soaps and bath bombs for my monthly craft fair in Porthmadog yesterday (Saturday):
This summer special proved to be the best seller by a country mile – Traeth Craig Du (Black Rock Sands) named after our nearest beach, about 20 minutes away:
It has ground apricot stone in the bottom portion to represent sand, and has a gorgeous beachy / ozoney scent.
Finally I made a couple of purchases this week that I’m very excited about. Firstly, I actually bought a stand thingummy and some lenses for my iphone so that I can think about making soaping videos soon AND I also bought and downloaded Jo Haslauer’s book on colouring soap naturally.
Jo has been a real inspiration recently (check out here IG feed here) the colours she manages to achieve from infusing botanicals are incredible, and I’m really keen to give them a go. Don’t ask me when though 😀
Thanks for reading. Bear with me during these school holidays, but I’ll be back soon!!
Just popping in really quickly to say that I was honoured recently to be interviewed by the fabulously talented Bee of Sorcery Soap. Check out this link to find out what we talked about!
Back soon with a full post 🙂
Erm… these weekly updates are getting later and later! The idea is to get these posted on the Sunday evening, but here I am tapping away at my keyboard late on Tuesday. Never mind, I suppose as long as I get it done before I forget what the heck I did last week it doesn’t really matter. Anyhow, last week was blessedly quiet – there was a bit of a lull between wholesale orders and I actually took a few evenings off, so in all honesty this is going to be a fairly quick update.
On Monday night I made a couple of double batches – one of ‘Delicious’ and one of ‘Oatmeal, Milk & Honey’
The ‘Delicious’ moved way too quickly. Entirely my fault – I had two batches of lye water – one cool, which I should have used, one still cooling, which I used in error, while it was still a bit too warm. A really silly and frustrating mistake – I wouldn’t say the whole batch is ruined but I don’t think I’ll be able to sell it at full price, which is an annoyance. I didn’t even have the heart to photograph it when I cut it, so I don’t have an image of it to share here. Maybe I’ll do a post dedicated to bloopers at some point!! I did photograph the Oatmeal, Milk & Honey though. I’ve given it a little colour make-over and swapped out the dark brown for gold – I think it better reflects the fragrance this way:
I spent some time during the week wrapping etc, but in all honesty nothing of any note happened soapy-wise until Sunday evening, when I made soap again, this time two double batches of Welsh Rose and Clarity:
I had thought to cut these today but things have picked up again and I’ve had a few wholesale orders to put together, so hopefully I’ll get some time tomorrow morning to cut and photograph them.
This is the last week of school before the summer holidays start, and I’m really looking forward to having six weeks of fun in the sun (fingers crossed!) with my two little monkeys. It shouldn’t affect my soapmaking capacity too much, as I’ve always soaped in the evenings, but we’ve got a few extended camping weekends planned which might put a spanner in the works (and will definitely affect my blogging routine) but hey ho, I’ll try to keep on top of things 😀
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Thanks for reading – back soon!
Ever since I started making soap, I’ve been asked why? Why do I bother making soap when it can be bought so cheaply in the supermarket? Clearly, first and foremost I love doing it. You know what they say – ‘Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life’. There’s much more to it than that though. Traditionally crafted, handmade soap like mine is superior to commercially made soap in so SO many ways.
*Please note, the reasons listed below apply specifically to MY soaps – they may apply to many other handmade soaps, but I can’t speak for the ingredients in anyone else’s handmade products
There you go, 10 really good reasons why I believe my soap is better than commercially produced soaps. Try some 😀
