Aphrodisiac By Any Other Name

#blendingfragrances #Aromatherapy #coldprocesssoap

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Both Alison and I are knee deep in shopping, wrapping, mailing, shopping, baking, attending functions, shopping, baking, and well, you get the idea.  We're not making any Christmas excuses; it's THE TIME TO BE MERRY!!! (and, if you do any retail shopping, it has been (Christmas) since mid August (which we hate).  

We aren't making much soap, but if we do we will show you, and we will share our candle-making adventures and maybe even some baking in the next week or two. 

One last side note about shopping... Amazon. We all use it, we all (mostly) like it.  I use it quite often when looking for books, I particularly like the "bait" they use in the "if you like this then you might like these" section.  While perusing the book section the other night looking at soap related books, I was told I might like another selection. In fact, I took the bait and ordered The Aromatherapy Companion by Victoria H. Edwards.  The idea is to learn more about essential oils and look for essential oil mixture/blends that we can use in soap making.  (promise this relates to the soap we made!)

Now back to Thursday... Alison and I were sitting in the soap kitchen checking out the new Aromatherapy book. It's full of facts, recipes, and information about essential oils.  As we were ohhh-ing and ahhh-ing we noticed a blend for diffusers, specifically for an Aphrodisiac, using ylang ylang, patchouli, and neroli. It sounded great, and we had all but the ylang ylang oil, which we quickly substituted with Yuzu.  Now the fun part: how much of each scent do we use? 

Using nothing but the finest paper napkins, we blended the different scents a drop at a time.

One blend was heavy on the patchouli, another was heavy on the yuzu and yet another heavy on Neroli.  We went through about 6 or 7 napkins and numerous variations until we came up with one we loved:  1 part sweet patchouli to 2 parts yuzu and neroli,

Now what do we name it?

We flip-flopped all over the place. It was listed as an aphrodisiac....and we could have gone there, but we didn't.

Our first "name" was Thursday Morning Blend, figuring that would leave room for us to create blends for each day of the week. However Thursday afternoon while we delivered a soap order to one of our customers (and relayed our naming dilemma) the first thing she said was, "You should call it  Afternoon Delight!" 

It was perfect, and so this soap is officially called Afternoon Delight.

Thanks to Cat for the great idea.

We will do the daily blends next year.

We decided on mica colorants from www.rusticescentuals.com. Pictured above is the Aborigine Amber which we hope will be a nice shade of brown.

Also from +Rustic Escentuals is our second color, Cornflower Celebration Mica. 

Both of them have a bit of shimmer.

The three fragrances are described as follows:

from +Natures Garden 

Sweet Patchouli - An earthy blend of Patchouli and Green Grass intertwined with Fresh Lavender and hints of licorice with crisp notes of menthol softened by amber.  

Yuzu - Begins with top notes of mandarin, tangerine, lemon satsuma, and ruby red grapefruit, middle notes of bergamot, and base notes of oakmoss.

and from +Rustic Escentuals 

Neroli - A very true Mediterranean Orange Blossom

Since we are using the CP (cold process) method we mixed the scents into the batter when we reached light trace.  In the above picture we add the Yuzu.

This is the Neroli.

And last the Patchouli. We stick blended them all together.

The oils we used were Olive, Palm, Coconut, and Castor. W

e decided to add silk to the lye water to give the finished bars a silky sheen.

We removed 3 cups of batter and added the Cornflower Celebration Mica

Oh my, it is so beautiful

It looked light, but we hoped it would darken somewhat as the soap cured.

(it did)

Next we removed another 3 cups of batter and add the Aborigine Amber Mica. It was beautiful as well we just forgot to take a picture!

As the above picture shows, the soap was getting THICK; 

it wasn't unworkable yet, but we knew we had to move quickly.

We started pouring white batter, then added the brown and blue, all random, no design.

Here is another picture of the soap batter. 

It was getting thicker and thicker, and we were spooning the batter into the mold.

After 2 or 3 layers we tamped the batter, hoping we would rid the batter of air bubbles.

Next we used the hanger swirl technique.

You can't really see it above, but the hanger is in the batter swirling 

the colors together and - I hoped - creating a pleasing design.

Above you can see the hanger tool just under the surface of the soap batter. 

I am just about to remove the hanger - too much blending leaves no distinct colors.

We piled the remaining batter on the top.

And swirled. This is such fun, and I never know how it will turn out.

We loved the swirl pattern, but I wanted to mound up the top, so.....

bye, bye pretty swirl hello mounded top.

Above is what the soap looked like on Friday afternoon 

just before we cut the bars.

And here is Afternoon Delight. 

We love the colors and the swirl,

 and oh my goodness the smell is amazing!

The soap will cure for 6 weeks and be ready on January 22, 2015!

(have to get used to writing the new year)

A Soap Lily original scent!

Afternoon Delight