#wisteriaandlilac #flowersoap #pinksoap
March 6, 2015 (day soap was made)
March 19, 2015 - the post I forgot to post! (the day post was written)
The pictures for this post have been waiting for me (Kathy) to write about them for weeks. Since today is the day before spring officially arrives I decided to be proactive and bring a brightly colored spring flower to you a day early. It's pouring rain and 42 degrees outside, so a touch of spring will bring a little cheer into an otherwise gloomy Thursday.
A friend of mine called and asked if we could make soap to go in a swag bag to be given out at the spring retreat the Women of the Church are having on April 17th. Without missing a beat I said, "Absolutely!" Then we talked about the details.
The theme of the retreat is "Bloom," so the soap had to tie in with that. My friend, her name is Kathy too, had a list: the soap should smell like flowers (no problem); it had to be a pretty good size bar of soap, not a "guest room" size (no problem); she wanted it to look like a flower (slight problem, but manageable); and they had a budget (no problem).
We wrapped up our phone conversation, and Alison and I put our heads together. We almost called it our church soap challenge, but actually it wasn't too hard to figure out. We knew ahead of time that to do any type of design on the soap it would have to be CP, so we checked the curing dates and it was perfect timing. The soap would be 6 weeks old and cured on the 17th of April!
We got to work making the soap - we actually were planning and making the soap at the same time!
The FO we chose from The Lebermuth Co. is called Wisteria & Lilac. We love it and have used it several times, and it SMELLS like flowers.
Lebermuth describes it as follows:
"A fragrance with sparkling fruity top notes and at the heart of the fragrance a melodious floral bouquet. Top notes of juicy grape, crisp apple, melon, clean ozone and nuances of banana. Mid notes of lingering lilac, wisteria, classic rose, jasmine, gardenia and a touch of camphor. Warm woody base notes with powder and musk."
We used TD to make the batter lighter and Fired Up Fuchsia (for the flowers) from Brambleberry
The Enchanted Forest and Icicle Micas came from Rustic Escentuals.
We mixed up our colors, using the Icicle Mica in the Fired Up Fuchsia to soften the pink.
The TD went right into the oils as we want a white bar for our pink flowers!
I strained the lye/water as I added it to the oil mixture (coconut, palm, olive, and castor oils). We added silk to the lye/water and have found it's better if we strain the water as we pour it into the oils.
The heavenly Wisteria and Lilac FO is added to the batter.
We removed two separate cups of batter and colored them with our Enchanted Forest Green and Fired Up Fuchsia.
Then we evenly divided the remaining batter into two 18 bar molds.
The bars would be full size in shape but not as thick as our normal bars.
After inserting our 18 bar dividers in each of the molds we got busy.
We split up; I put the pink gobs of batter on each one
while Alison was doing the stems. Then we switched out, I got a little ahead as gobs are much easier than stems.
Once all the gobs were done, I tried my best to swirl a "pink bloom" on each bar. At the same time Alison was still doing stems - too bad we didn't have the video camera set up.
I finished blooms and helped her wrap up the stems, thankfully the batter was still fairly workable.
And before we knew it, we had 36 bars of soap with pink flowers on them!
We think they are pretty, and we are hopeful that the ladies at the retreat will enjoy them as well.
We had a bit of left over batter.....
so of course we made more flowers and a couple of butterflies!
Like I said at the beginning of this post, it's pouring rain and 40 (the temperature has dropped) degrees outside, but this picture makes me think SPRING!
Our Bloom soap will be cured and ready for swag bags by April 17th.
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