An Old Favorite

My all-time favorite scent...ever? Me think so...

 Black Raspberry Vanilla

I wish they made bubblegum in this flavor

I shall expand this scent throughout my product line

African Black Soap

 I've always been curious about African Black Soap. I read on all kinds of forums how wonderful it is for the skin, specifically, problem skin which I was born with it seems, so I decided that I wanted to make some. But when I read how the soap is actually made, I was like "How in the hell am I supposed to do that???" So I gave up....

Well lo and behold, one of my favorite suppliers, Elements Bath and Body offered an additive called coconut carbon, which is purportedly one of the active ingredients in the making of African black soap, I jumped on it. Of course, I was hoping my soap would look traditionally like this:

But this is my result:

Duh...of course, it's gonna be black. The coconut carbon is a fine, powdery substance, much like activated charcoal, and a little goes a long way. I scented this batch in a blend of eucalyptus and tea tree essential oils and sprinkled some dried calendula on top just because...I can't wait to personally test this soap. I love the medicinal smell of it. I wish I would have made these in my cubed mold though. Maybe next time...

So Yeah, It's Been Six Months...

I had no idea it's been this long since my last post! This blog was my baby for four years, and what turned into a mini hiatus turned into a missing persons alert. Seriously though, all this social media stuff made my head want to explode you know? I've all but given up Twitter and Facebook, and I've been creating sparingly. I need my mojo back!!! Come back mojo!!! Hope everyone had a happy Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan (If I missed something, sorry...). We survived the Mayan prediction of the "end" (But really, I think that can be interpreted in so many other ways-like the end of human kindness and compassion.) Let's all make soap and be happy!

Anyway, I did sneak some soap making into my life. Here are a few pics:

Black Raspberry Vanilla-My love for funneling has not grown tiresome yet

 

There's Beer In My Soap Soap: My first and probably last beer soap. I made it with MGD Lime beer and scented it with patchouli and lime EO. I love it, but it's not selling at all. Like my "hops"? They're dried calendula, lol!

Perfect Rose soap: No artificial colors or fragrances. I used French red clay and palmarosa EO

Goatmeal Soap: It's scented in Oatmeal Milk & Honey and made with powdered goat's milk and oats. I love this one! It's like taking a shower with an oatmeal mask, lol.

I Made Soap!

Okay, I actually made this soap about a month ago, but I just didn't feel like talking about it til now:) I call this soap: 99 Problems after this song. "If you got skin problems, I feel bad for you son. I got 99 problems, but this soap aint one..."

Why do I call it 99 Problems? Cause this is one of many new natural soaps that I'm working on. There are no artificial colors, flavors, or scents in this soap so you don't have to worry about "Am I going to break out (unless you're alergic to chocolate of course, then you would not want this soap.) It's scented purely in peppermint essential oil and cocoa absolute. The coloring is from the cocoa absolute. It smells just like a York Peppermint Patty...oh gawd...I have never lusted after a soap more than this one. It is beyond yummo. The oils are all organic and sustainable (yay!)-olive, coconut, palm, and soybean. This soap is so potent, that it will light your bathroom up for hours after you use it. It's making me hungry now. Available here now:)

Gittin' Down With The Swirl!

Funneling, funneling through the town, soapy bells are ring-ing…LMAO!

Okay, here are the next new batches I’ve made: Verbena of My Existence and Melting Pot, but for you plain folk: Lemon Verbena and Sandalwood and Musk.

When I make soap, there’s always a story to be told. It’s never a matter of choosing scents solely based on the description of the supplier. I must inhale and FEEL something. I don’t just make soap to sell soap. Okay, in part, but I make soap mainly because it’s cathartic and the scent I’ve chosen has or has had some type of impact on my life. So let’s get started:

Verbena Of My Existence:

I love all things lemon. Lemonheads, lemonade, lemon squares, lemon cake (my grandmother’s specialty), Mike’s Hard Lemonade… but this lemon is special. It’s so sophisticated and feminine and…soft for lack of a better description. I first became enamored of this scent when I visited a L’Occitane shop many moons ago. It blew me away. It smelled like paradise and transported me to some upscale resort on a private oasis.

Melting Pot:

This soap got its name because it’s scented with a modge podge of international flavors. Soft, powdery Indian musk, alluring African Sandalwood, and cedarwood. Swirled like Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key of Life, this soap is how I envision a world with no prejudices, no wars, no political strife…One can only hope…

I utilized the funneling technique to achieve the design these soaps. I discovered an easy peasy technique from The Soap Queen’s blog. You take an old plastic container (I used a margarine tub) and poke a hole through bottom.  The key is you have to have a container that’s wide enough to rest on the walls of your soap mold or it’s basically fruitless. You could have someone hold the funnel for you while you pour or try the chopstick method where you criss-cross them then tape them down and let your funnel rest in the middle. You could also do the faux funnel pour. Been there. Done that. Don’t work for me… You also need to have a very thin trace in order to achieve this swirl. Really you only need to emulsify your oils to the point where everything is mixed. By the time you pour your last or next to the last bit, your soap batter is beginning to thicken if it hasn’t already. Ask me how I know these things…

So this concludes batches 4 and 5. Next up…Black Coffee.

 

The Remixes!

I think that little pity post I gave myself the other day has sparked a fire in my arse! Over the MLK weekend, I cranked out 7, count em, 7 batches of  CPOP soap! Three were re-makes and four are new additions. First, I'll just post pics of the re-makes, then I'll break the new ones down into their own posts (I need something to talk about...ha ha...)

The Original

 

The Remix

First up is Sh*tfaced. I didn't change the design much. I like that this soap looks a little disheveled because it is called sh*tfaced after all, and I have yet to meet anyone who didn't look disheveled after getting, well, sh*tfaced. The only I changes I made was for the "rocks", I chopped up some ugly black raspberry vanilla soap, so they have a slightly berry sweet aroma on top, and the bars are noticeably bigger than past versions. I really need to invest in a real soap cutter-the ones where you can slice a log in one swoop so they'll all be uniform and even.

The Original

The Remix

 Next, there's Yuzu Crazy. After four years of making soap, I'm still crazy about cranberry yuzu. It's not too sweet with just a hint of tart. I swear I don't smell any cranberry, but that's what they tell me is in there...The only real changes I made was cutting them with a smooth blade and making the colors a little bit brighter.

The Original

The Remix

And lastly, a new fan favorite: Go The F*ck To Sleep. I can't keep this one in stock. I wonder why? Hmmmm...Anyway, I've decided to now make these in these cute, little cubes that I cannot get enough of! I'll be converting more of my soaps to these cubes. One there so stinkin' cute. Two, there's no cutting involved (BONUS). And tres, they weigh a ton by soap standards. These come in at 5+ oz! And, I am embracing the soda ash (that white, pasty residue that forms on the tops and sometimes sides of soap...) It gives the soap character. Okay, I'm lying. I don't have the time or energy to fight it anymore....


That's it for now. Next up, getting down with the swirl.....!!

The Evolution of Vanilla Almond Milk...Soap

 

Happy Week-After-Thankgiving-Black-Friday-Madness! Did you get pepper-sprayed? Or did you trample somebody trying to snatch up one of the three big-screen TVs in stock at Wal-Mart? teehee...

I have a love/hate relationship with vanilla-based fragrances, and if you're a soapmaker, then you know where I'm coming from. No matter how intricate your design or swirl may be, it all goes to sh... in the end because it ends up turning brown. Not just brown, but a deep, dark, murky, "protein stain" brown that borders on dog turds.You could avoid all that by using a stabilizer, but that stuff stinks all to be damned, and I really don't like using unnecessary additives for the sake of vanity-unless I'm putting on make up of course!

So here is my latest creation. I actually made this soap about a month ago, and I need to list it.It's called Vanilla Almond Milk because I blended French vanilla, bourbon vanilla, and almond marzipan altogether to get this nose hair-singeing aroma. I always go a little heavy on the almond when you literally only need a drop-that stuff is very powerful! Check out how it looked when I first sliced it. The edges are dog turd-brown (okay, I need to stop saying that or no one will want to buy it!) and the middle is a light tan.

 

Within hours, if that long, after I sliced these, they ended up looking like this-deep, dark, and delicious!

Have I mentioned how absolutely delicioso these smell? Yes, they do! The almond has really mellowed out, and it's like this buttery fusion of vanilla pound cake with slivered almonds on top. Those shavings are my lame attempt at slivered "soap" almonds.The milk in these is goat's milk. I really like goat's milk in my soaps now. All the hype about it creating these creamy, luxurious bars of soap is so true! Now, to take better pics and list these babies. I'm excited for you to try them!

And Now...A "Bastile" Soap

About Face-A Bastard Soap

It's only fair that I give this bastardized Castile soap some love. This is actually my 2nd batch of my About Face soap. The first one was done totally on a whim, and it was purely experimental. The response I've received has been very positive, and it sold out completely. The first batch, too, was bastardized (I'm loving this word, so you'll see it a lot), made with olive and coconut oils. This time, I upped the ante and made the soap with 85% olive oil and 15% shea butter! Ah....lovely, pungent shea butter. I say pungent because I only use the unrefined variety. In its raw form, unrefined shea butter has a sulfuric odor to me (Anybody remembers Sulfur 8 hair grease?), but once you melt it down and scent it, the odor is completely gone (thank goodness!!)

Face is scented in pure essential oils of tea tree and eucalyptus. It's very medicinal-smelling, but not a complete turnoff. I liken it to a solid astringent-except it won't strip your skin bare of its natural oils. The color you see in the soap is actually French red clay. It's a drawing clay, but used in this soap, it's drawing powers are very subtle. I used it mainly for color. These particular bars are also sliced thinner than my others because I really designed this soap to be a "specialty" bar. Although it's perfectly good to be used all over every day, I personally like to reserve this one for "special" occasions-like, uh, washing my face. I CPOP'ed these so they'll be ready in a mere 3 weeks:)

Bitch Post #12: You Call It Castile, I Call It Baloney!

Time for a new pic...I look nothing like this anymore, lol!

I haven’t done a bitch post in a long time, and I’m long overdue! Bitching is so therapeutic, and one of my biggest pet peeves is misinformation (or misleading information)-of any kind. When I see listings for Castile soap, the first thing I look at are the ingredients, and guess what? Eight times out of ten, I’ll see something like this:

Olive oil, coconut oil….

Wrong. WRONG. WRONG!

A true Castile soap has only one oil: Olive. If a soap has filler oils even in the most minute amounts, then it cannot be called a true Castile soap. Amy from The Olde Crone has a good word for those soaps: Bastile, or bastardized Castile soap. One thing about Castile soaps that I like but others may find a real turnoff, is the lather. The lather is dense and creamy-not very bubbly-although I’ve seen some Castile soaps that have cured for up to a year (I personally can barely wait 3-4 weeks, yet alone a year for a soap to cure) and the lather was sick-as in frothy and abundant. 

Stone Washed Denim

 I have made only 2 Castile soaps in my three years of making cold and hot processed soaps. The first one I made back in late 2008? I called it Stone Washed Denim, and it was scented in a clean cotton scent. I did notice that the bars were still kind of soft even after about a month, so I let them sit. And sit. And sit.  I would say these bars did not fully cure until about month 3. I sold the last bar probably about 6 months after I listed it, and it was rock hard. That experience deterred me from making another Castile soap-until now.

Castile My Beating Heart

Castile My Beating Heart

This new batch of Castile soap I call Castile My Beating Heart (after Sting’s Be Still My Beating Heart). It’s colorless and scented in a blend of chamomile, neroli, and sweet orange essential oils. I’m not a big fan of chamomile, so I wanted to get rid of what I had. It’s a little too strong for my liking, so I cut it with the sweet orange, but it didn’t do much good. It might as well be chamomile soap. Any way, I CPOP’ed this batch, and it’s made a noticeable difference in the cutting and curing time. I waited a day to actually un-mold and slice the soap, and my knife glided (Why did I almost type glode as in ride/rode?) right through it. There was no sticky residual soap left on my knife. After 3 weeks, the soap is about 90% firm, but I’m going to let this one cure for at least another month. I sprinkled the tops with calendula, cut lemongrass, and poppy seeds because it was just too naked. So….

I know there are varying opinions on this subject, and I welcome your thoughts.

Side Bar: Speaking of long overdue, this blog was long overdue for a makeover. I'm a colorful person (Absolutely no pun intended), and I needed my blog to reflect that, so KA-BLAMMO!!!  I told my new graphics designer to go buck wild-like Skittles on acid. I not only wanted you to taste the rainbow, but swallow it...You like?