Oil & Glycerin Swirl Challenge

This is my second try at the Oil & Glycerin Swirl Challenge...my first try did not go as planned, so here we go again.

This time I am using Bramble Berry's Sunny Herb Garden fragrance oil and I am NOT using glycerin. I put my mica and titanium oxide in oil this time...hoping for better success.
 

These are my swirl and base colors.
 

To try something new again I added aloe vera liquid as part of my water phase...interesting how it changed my lye water to a golden yellow.
 

I poured my base color and laid the yellow on top.
 

Then I sprinkled the mica/oil and titanium oxide/oil mixtures on the top of the 2 colors.
 

Then I swirled everything about.
 

Isn't that sparkle gorgeous!? 

 

The dividers are in.
 

Now we wait and cross our fingers that is batch comes out better than the last trial.
 

TADA!!! I say SUCCESS!!!
 

I love how this came out, I think it is gorgeous in color and swirl. The mica sparkle is so fun (even thought it wont last past the first wash)

What do you think?

My Salt Bars - Sunny Herb Garden Scent Review

Here are my salt bars unmolded. LOVE the color and smoothness of the bars, cannot wait to try them out in a few weeks.
(I do need to work on my photo skills someday)

 

The scent I used is Sunny Herb Garden from Bramble Berry.
I bought this scent on a whim as it was their scent of the month for May. The description reads:

Sunny Herb Garden: There's nothing better than the smell of fresh picked herbs. This fragrance combines the fresh aromas of rosemary, thyme, sage, and basil with a soft lavender undertone. 

I love this scent. It is fresh and herbal...which I adore in fragrances. There is no discoloration or acceleration...great fragrance to work with! I bought a small bottle and have already used it all up in this project and the one you will see next week....so I need to buy more ASAP to keep on hand.

My First Go at Salt Bars

I tried making salt bars for the first time. If I made them correctly...interesting! I say interesting because...that was it?? What have I been afraid of? It was certainly quite easy to make.

First the recipe. I have been reading about them for 7 years, so I gathered all my notes and here is my summary....

• Use a high % of coconut oil
• Salt should be 50% - 100% of your oil weight
• Use regular salt or sea salt DO NOT use dead sea salt
• Superfat at 20%

So my recipe is:
80% coconut oil
15% olive oil
5% castor oil

75% my oils in salt (I used regular table salt)

I colored my salt...my theory was my colored salt would show through my non colored soap....hahaha...ok...I had a good laugh at myself as I stirred in my salt at trace....

My theory didn't pan out....BUT...I absolutely LOVE the color I ended up with!!

So here are my beautys poured into their molds. Thankfully I grabbed an extra mold (the flowers) just in case I had extra soap, because I wasn't sure how much this new mold held, and I knew the salt would add volume as well. I went with 20 ounce oil weight, so I can cut that back next time.

Come back in a few days and see how they came out.

New Scent to Try

Just received my newest Bramble Berry order. Trying their scent of the month "Sunny Herb Garden". Hoping to redeem myself with a better oil glycerin swirl soap with this scent. In the order was a free sample of carnation...may try that one too! :)

Then I ordered a new mold...I know, like I don't have enough molds...but I have always wanted to make salt bars and this is the perfect mold for that, so that is next on the agenda to try!

Stay Tuned...

Great Cakes Soapworks Challenge - Oil & Glycerin Swirl Soap Tutorial

Due to health issues we have closed down the business portion of Luster Canyon. Hoping this will be temporary, but for now this was the best decision for us. So I really haven't made anything for a couple of months now, and this week I felt the urge to soap for fun, and I come home to find over on Facebook Great Cakes Soapworks posted their new challenge...and that was all I needed to jump in.

This months challenge is an oil and glycerin swirled soap....cold-process soap with beautiful oil and/or glycerin swirls on top. I chose to use both oil and glycerin. Months ago I attempted an oil/mica swirl and I thought it came out pretty nice, and this time I chose to also add the titanium oxide/glycerin swirl.  In the tutorial Amy used the taiwan soap swirl, which is something I haven't done before so I stuck with that idea.

Since I am making for fun I decided to add a touch of luxe to the batch and put in some Tussah Silk which will add a "silky" feel to it.

You add it to your lye water, where it slowly just "melts" right in....

...And after stirring a bit the silk is completely dissolved.
 

 
I also added some Aloe Extract from Majestic Mountain Sage to my oils.

Now for my colors...looks like I am using something from just about every one of my suppliers on this batch lol....I used from TKB Trading Red Basics and Blueberry Pop and from Bramble Berry Titanium Oxide.
 

 
 My fragrance is Strawberry Jam from Bittercreek Candle Supply and since I am pretty sure there is vanilla content and I don't want this batch to brown I added Vanilla Color Stabilizer from Wholesale Supplies Plus.

I have my base and swirl colors ready....
 

And grrrr, just as Amy mentioned in the tutorial the yellow of the fragrance oil "greened" out my blue color a bit, so I am glad I added that extra smidgeon of blue mica and luckily this is still a blue shade I can be happy with.
 

The base color is poured...I am using my favorite birchwood mold from Bramble Berry.
 

...and my swirl colors glop/poured...because as you can see they thickened on me, but no worries, all is still good.
 

 
Now my oil and glycerin colors are poured about...

...and everything is swirled about. I probably should have made tighter passes for my swirls...something to remember next time.
 

 

 

So pretty!! I got a little heavy handed in pouring the mica/oil on this edge, but I think it will still be ok.

 

 

I put my dividers in... 

 

...and so far it is looking good.

 

They recommend not spraying the top with alcohol which I always do to prevent ash...so I am braving it and not using alcohol...and hoping the soap fairies are kind to me and keep the ash away!

Check back in a few days and see what we ended up with.

Bramble Berry Fragrance Review - Beau Brummel

Today I soaped Beau Brummel from Bramble Berry. The scent is described as...

 

Tobacco and black tea are the dominate notes with hints

of fruit and spice. This fragrance is heady, masculine and

evokes images of the classic well dressed gentleman

 

I made this the day we were going on a hike, and I guess I was excited for that...I forgot to take pictures as I went, but here it is in the mold.

 



I used my guest sized mold as this batch was for a custom order.

I love this scent! My nose isn't the best at always picking up all the notes of fragrance oils...but I just know I like what I like. To me at first sniff...this scent is honeylicious!! Then I do pick out the other notes. This fragrance oil is wonderful to soap, no acceleration and no discoloration....two huge plus' in me liking a fragrance oil and wanting to use it again.  

Here I have pictured 3 different sizes, regular bar (center), half sized bars (left) and guest sized bars (right).

In our shop you will find it listed as Arizona Moonlight as we used to embed a "moon" into the soap log...maybe someday we will bring that back.

Avocado Oil with Sea Clay Facial Soap

As I said in a post earlier this week, I was straightening up my fragrance oil shelf...it is easy to lose track of what you have...and I came across a bottle of geranium essential oil...hmmm what did I buy this for...and how can I use it. Then I had a "AHA" moment. I recently bought sea clay and I remembered that there was a a tutorial on the Soap Queen's Blog for a facial bar...that uses geranium essential oil....so now I get to use 2 of my "impulse buy" products into one project, SCORE!
So I wrote down the posted recipe and changed some stuff around...a lil less of this oil, a lil more of that oil....and soon I was mixing and pouring....

The soap smells wonderful with the blend of Tea Tree, Lavender and Geranium essential oils...and it has a beautiful soft green hue from the sea clay.

Sea clay originated as mud created in the sea millions of years ago. It acts as a great detox and mild exfoliant.

Tea Tree essential oil is a great antiseptic, Lavender essential oil is very soothing and Geranium essential oil is great for skin problems and also lends a beautiful soft floral scent to the mix.

Look for this soap to hit both the store in Prescott and our Etsy shop in a couple weeks after its cure.

Arctic Snow

I have a lot of fragrance oil sample bottles...some are pretty small so they are good to use in melt & pour soap because you can work in smaller batches and use very little fragrance at one time. Cold process soap takes more fragrance oil at one time, even a small batch could need an ounce, and the samples are usually much smaller. 

As I was straightening my fragrance oil shelves and seeing what I have on hand I discovered that there were two 1/2 ounce sample bottles of "Fresh Snow" from Bramble Berry, and that is the perfect amount I need to use my small mold...so it was goof off time again....

Now sadly you cannot tell I used two different kinds of blue mica. I used Blueberry POP mica and neon blue mica...but it all looks the same...nonetheless...I still love what I ended up with....Arctic Snow!