Two more for the shop...

Hi. I'm listing two new soaps to the shop this evening and I hope you like them.  This first one is a White Ginger & Amber, which is a warm amber blended with a hint of ginger and light florals.

This next one begs you to remember the taste of childhood sugared lemonhead candy. It is scented with a fragrance that takes it up a notch with citrus top notes of real lemon, and warm base notes of vanilla and sugar.  Citrusy and sweet.  :)  I also added a sweet sparkly daisy just for fun.

They'll be available tonight.  Thanks for reading! :)

Multisoaping...

I haven't soaped in a while so instead of one batch, I made two....well almost two.  The first batch is a customer request of a dupe of Aquolina's popular Blue Sugar.  It's more of a men's scent, but not SO manly that women can't wear it as well.  It has vanilla (more on that in a minute), caramelized sugar, cedar, tonka bean, licorice,  patchouli, lavender, coriander, bergamot, mandarin and star anise.

I used coconut oil, avocado oil, cocoa butter, rice bran oil, castor, and olive with 100% GM.

I went lighter on the color in this batch and wish I had goosed it a little more, but....ah whaddya gonna do?!  Creamy colored base and some light azure colored swirls.  Nothin' too fancy.  Here it is in the mold:

Trouble is, my son was home from college for the night, and he and his friends came in right when I was mixing things up and completely forgot about the vanilla content.  This sucker'll probably end up a nice yucky brown.  Oy. So much for my multitasking skills.

For my next trick, I wanted to do a layered soap with a dupe of LUSH's "Rockstar".  No vanilla stabilizer in this one either, because apparently my brain has left the building.  The supplier says that it only discolors to a "creamy peach"   (wha'?!) so hopefully the color will mask it enough.  I've only poured one layer so far.  LabColor's Royal  Purple.   The blue family is almost always a differen't color than the final result when it's poured, so think purple, people.  :)  Right now, it's more of a....ummm....NOT purple. ;o)

This will probably change a thousand times, but I'm thinking maybe a layer of a lime-y green and a layer of orange or hot pink or something.  We'll see how it goes.

So what's everyone else soaping?  Also, if anyone has soaped Daystar's Blue Kisses and have experience with the level of discoloration, please post in the comments below.  Stay warm everybody.  It's crazy cold here in Michigan!  Brrr!

UPDATE:

It's gellin' like a felon now and looking slightly less blue so maybe I'll get purple after all.  Serious glare in the pic.  Sorry.  :)

Update #2...

Poured another layer. One of my soapbuddies (Thanks, Salty) assured me that he's soaped this scent before and it didn't discolor.  Whew.  I hope it stays this funky lime color.  :)

UPDATE #3

I decided to go with orange for the final layer.  I toyed with pouring a 4th, but they'd never fit in my soap boxes...lol. 

Then I sprinkled some soap safe magic sparkle and put it to bed. :)

These will be ready to be sold in about 4 weeks.  I wasn't sure I was going to like this scent when I heard about so many people going bananas over it - because  you are so overpowered with scents when you walk into a LUSH store, it's all just too much - but this is really super yummy!

I'm tryingto kickstart a line of aromatherapy bath oils, and maybe I'll get to that today.  If I do, I'll post more later.  Have a great day, all. 

Thanks for reading!

New product launch...

Well, I've been threatening to list these on my Etsy for some time now, and tonight I messed with them at great length to tweak them to where I think I have a winner.  These are my new herbal bath teas.  All natural ingredients, and they smell just absolutely incredible.  They'll come in a set of three differen't kinds - Muscle Relief, Pamper Me and Sleepy Time.  The paper tea bags didn't hold up as well as I'd have liked so I switched to muslin and they're great.  The packaging may change yet - still not sure what will work best for shipping etc.  I really hope you guys like them.  :)  January has been slow for sales because Christmas just passed, so maybe these will spark some interest.  :)

Honey, I think we're better off separated...

Ugh.

I hate when I lose a batch of soap. All the work, all the expensive oils and ingredients wasted. Makes me a crazy person. I'm also a giant moron, because this one could have been prevented. Months back, I got a bad lot of sodium hydroxide. At the same exact time, my digital scale battery was on the verge of dying and causing some wonky measurements. After a couple of failed batches, I checked the battery, replaced it and all was right in the world again. I figured there was more of a chance that the mismeasurements from the scale caused the batch failures than the likelihood of several pounds of bad lye so I set the cans off to the side, bought new lye and carried on with successful soap. Why I didn't throw them away right then is a testament to my inner goober but also a glaring example of my cheap-assedness. :)

Yesterday, I ran out of lye again, and thought "Ahh what the hell - the lye is probably okay, and it was just the bad battery before" and proceeded to use it in my soap tonight. Yeah, you can probably guess what happened, eh?

Total separation. .  Notice the layer of clear liquid floating on the top of the soap, glimmering my the light of my dining room chandelier.  Ahhhh ambiance.

I've tilted the mold to one side in this next picture so you can see just how much liquid rolled to the back side of the mold. 

So....this batch is a bust.  Damn.  Lesson learned, but I still cringe that it happened because I know better.  I should have 86'd that lye months ago but I  was too cheap to just toss it. 

So how many of you have gotten bad lye and soap disasters because of it?  Share your horror stories in the comments section.
Thanks for reading...

::plays a haunting rendition of Taps:::

It's time to pick a winner!

I wanna thank everybody who entered the soap naming contest!  There were so many creative (and sometimes hilarious) names and it was really difficult to choose between them.  So tough, in fact - that I had to call in reinforcements!  I decided to use a cool little program that virtually picks a name out of a hat!  I just typed all of the entries into the program, hit shuffle, and the name is chosen with a click. 

So, without further adieu -  the winning contest name issssssss..... 

LOVESICK!!

So congratulations to Holly!!! Please send me your contact information at aldsoapco@att.net and I'll be getting your free soap out to you! :)







Thanks for helping me out everybody.  From time to time, I'll be hosting more contests and giveaways so check back here often!  As always, thanks for reading!

Strawberries dipped in chocolate!

Coming soon...

I'm a winner! Squeeee!! :)