WSP FO Review #5 of 15 - Sun Ripened Strawberry

Sorry for the big gap in between posts...but photo taking has not been cooperative...and what's a blog post with no photos?? Right, no fun! So now on to the review...Who doesn't love the scent of summer-ripened strawberries blended delectably with a hint of green leaf? This fragrance is mouth watering out of the bottle.

I used WSP Stained Glass Strawberry Red Liquid Color and added poppy seeds for esthetics and exfoliation.

Another easy to soap, wonderfully smelling fragrance.

Now for the end result....

The smell stayed and is wonderful and sweet, the color though....

I am not happy with how the edges stayed pink, but the inside turned so pale.

I will definitely soap this fragrance again, but I believe I will choose a different colorant. What do you think?



WSP FO Review #4 of 15 - Fireside

Fireside scent description is...a warming blend of cedarwood, sandalwood and leather with rich amber and cashmere musk. When you open the bottle and take a sniff....it smells like a campfire. To be honest had I ordered this I would have said eww...and put on the shelf to never touch. But since I committed to review... I soaped it...I am in love! this smells just like the description and I think it is a wonderful manly scent.

 

For colorants I used WSP Sparkle Bronze Mica and TKB Antique Copper...boy was I a messy soaper today!!!
 

The scent behaved nice and gave me a lot of time to layer and swirl.
 

And the end result is a great looking bar that smells wonderful. I am so glad I soaped this! Will definitely soap again!!

Skunked Dog......Again

:(
*sigh*
Lil pup got hisself skunked, Stinky!!! I blogged this before, but since I had to scramble for the recipe...again...I thought a repost would be good. (so happy to have had everything on hand)

16oz bottle of peroxide
1/8 cup baking soda
1tsp Dawn liquid dish soap

Mix together and bathe. I have a lil Chihuahua, so this one batch gave me 3 scrubbings on him...yes all in the same bath... to be sure the smell was gone. If your dog is bigger you may want a double batch.

Tart burners are going with pumpkin scented tarts to help get the skunk smell out of The Hubs and my noses.

WSP FO Review #3 of 15 - Sugared Shortbread

Sugared Shortbread is a nice scent. Its fragrant of light brown sugar with vanilla extract, rich butter and sugar cookie. YUM!

I divided the batch 3 ways....using no additional colors I am going to use the fragrance oils for my colorants....
 

One has the fragrance oil, one the fragrance oil with vanilla stabilizer since the vanilla content of this fragrance is 17% (whoa!), and the last one has no fragrance. I just spoon layered and plopped in the mold.
 

And the end result is a wonderful trio of colors...the dark brown of the fragrance oil, a warm brown containing the vanilla stabilizer, and the off white of the natural soap.

This was a great fragrance to soap, no acceleration and smells great!

First Day off in Years

Its official... we sold our brick and mortar store. We will still have our business and will continue with online sales and occasional shows, but things have changed for us this year and we had the opportunity to sell the physical store and things just couldn't have worked out better for our needs right now.

So today was our first weekend day off together in literally... seriously... years!! Now what to do?? We did lots and had fun adventures!! First we visited our oldest at a show she was doing selling her Enchanted Wax Works candles and face painting.

 

 
Then I came home and made soap...I am a creature of habit...or is it more like addicted to soapmaking?! lol

I will blog next week about these fun new scents.

Then we went for a walk, as todays weather just could not have been more perfect.

 

Found this interesting guy on the trail, he is only the size of a quarter...and this is where The Hubs asks me if I have to take a picture of everything...why yes...yes I do. :)
 

 
Duck!....

Great viewpoint of the river...the leaves are starting to change. 

The Hubs and I. :) 

Then we came home and decided to enjoy our pizza while watching the sunset....

...Until an uninvited guest showed up...again The Hubs shakes his head at me taking yet another picture...and informed me if I got sprayed I was sleeping on the porch haha....
 

Thank goodness we had left the dogs inside...because otherwise our adventure would have concluded with dog washes.

So that was our adventurous day on our first day off together...in what felt like forever. Fabulous Day!!!!!!!!!!!

What did you do this weekend?

WSP FO Review #2 of 15 - Tangerine

Next up for our review is Tangerine....

The vanilla content is zero for this fragrance so we dont have to worry about any browning, and what better color to use but Brambleberry's "Tangerine Wow" colorant?!

 

 

There was no acceleration, in fact I was not prepared for the amount of time this fragrance afforded me. It is a very slow tracer, so I just did a simple in the pot swirl....

 



 

 

It came out nice, but I poured at a thin trace so the swirl isn't very defined, but it is still very pretty. The scent was light when I made the soap, but it seemed to become stronger a few days into the cure. It is a nice citrus fragrance.

WSP FO Review #1 - Strawberry Picnic

One of my suppliers, Wholesale Supplies Plus, put out an email looking for soapers to review some of their scents. I replied to the email thinking I wouldn't be chosen amongst so many talented soapers...well lucky me was chosen and I was sent 15 different fragrances to review...so lets get started shall we...First up is Strawberry Picnic.

I gathered all of my supplies, cooled oils, lye water, color is TKB Trading Queen Kathryn and I didn't know what the vanilla content of the fragrance oil is and since it has a vanilla note in the scent I decided to use vanilla stabilizer to keep it from browning.

I am always nervous soaping new scents that I have no idea how they will behave, but I was very happy to have no acceleration, in fact I had plenty of time to attempt some design here.

I just spoon plopped and layered, and then swirled the top.

I usually oven process my soaps, but decided to leave these out at room temperature...which today is a beautiful 73 degrees inside.



Within a couple of hours I saw the beginings of gel. Gel is a phase soap can go through when the temperature heats up...either by being forced to gel in a heated oven, being insulated with towels...or it can heat up on its own depending on the fragrance. Some soapers put their soaps in the freezer to keep the gel phase at bay. I normally like to gel my soaps...funny the rare time I try to not gel...and it does it on its own...oh well, what is meant to be right?

It will be interesting to see how this comes out, it appears the vanilla stabilizer has added a yellow hue to the soap, but I think it compliments the red colored portion.

The yellow color mellowed out very very nice. I am very happy with how this scent behaved. The scent is a little on the light side, but quite yummy smelling. I will be making a lotion in this scent this weekend.





2 Soaps and a Lotion

Busy day today with a couple soaps and a batch of lotion. The first soap is Cambrian Blue Clay.

Cambrian blue clay is a rare clay from Russia and is said to have the most powerful detoxifying properties of all clays. It comes from the Siberian lakes and is known for its clarifying and blemish fighting properties, and is also thought to be good for anti-aging and anti wrinkle. It has a rich source of trace minerals, and although it is very good for oily skin, it may be to drying for sensitive dry skin.

Next up is Patchouli. My family runs for the hills when I make this...but I quite like it. The scent of patchouli is a strong, heavy, earthy scent….If you remember the '60s, you remember the scent of patchouli.

Then I capped off the day with a batch of Eucalyptus Spearmint lotion.

Dead Sea Mud

Today we are soaping dead sea mud. I just love natural unscented soaps. To me they have a beautiful sweet fragrance to them even though there is no added scent, and I just love the uncomplicated naturalness to them.

We start our cold process soap batch with
Olive Oil
Coconut Oil
Palm Oil
Cocoa Butter
Castor Oil 
and then we add in a couple tablespoons of dead sea mud

Dead sea mud works great to cleanse and is known to have antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties and can refresh and regenerate the skin. This mineral-rich mud has been used for centuries for its cosmetic and health benefits.

Cider and Cranberry

Just a quick post today of a couple of soaps we made this week...Apple Cider...

 

 

and Cranberry Orange....

 

 

Spooky Fireplace

Aside from a Christmas tree I have never been one to decorate for Holidays...but now with Pinterest in existence I see so much (p)inspiration...and I really want to do something fun, so I have started with a spooky fireplace for Halloween. 

We don't get trick o treaters where we live...and we aren't popular for visitors either...life of living in the boonies...but we wouldn't change it. So we are basically decorating for ourselves.

This is the start of what I have, I still want to add a few things...like some "spooky books" on the right, the candles on the left are "bleeding" candles I need to burn down a bit and I think I want to put the potion bottles in a basket... or a cauldron would be fun? Any suggestions to help me out?

Do you decorate for Halloween? What is your favorite thing to do?