#oceanmist #amazinglygrace #hotprocesssoap #bestsellers
June 18, 2015
We check our soap supplies all the time so you'd think when we got dangerously low on a couple of our best sellers we would realize it....well, we had been so busy that we didn't. Yesterday one of our customers completely cleaned us out of Ocean Mist (A good thing), so today it was replenish the top sellers day! I started making Amazingly Grace about 30 minutes before Alison got started on Ocean Mist.
Both of these FO's come from +Natures Garden, I think we ordered them in our very first order. No telling how many batches of soap we have produced using them. Our customers love them, we love them; day in, day out, and through all seasons these fragrances sell. We can't recommend them highly enough.
+Natures Garden describes Amazingly Grace as follows: "Italian bergamot and sparkling lemon are sweetened with freshly picked citron and neroli. A white floral jasmine, orange blossom and rose are blended with sheer musk and cedarwood."
Ocean Mist is described as "a complex bouquet of carnations, lily of the valley, and hyacinth; underlined by oakmoss and white musk." Seriously, with floral combinations like that, it's no wonder these are so popular.
We are kind of seeing a trend with our customers. They seems to like the idea that if the soap is "hand made" and "hand crafted" then it should look that way, too. Most often that means they like the look of HP soap. CP tends to look much more sophisticated and polished even though, in the long and short of it, the soap is the same. How it looks and is perceived by the public, though, is a big deal, and that makes it important to us.
The soaps we made today are good examples of two favorites that fly off the shelves faster when they are HP rather than CP (and why we are using the HP method to make them today).
Without further ado, here is the making of Amazingly Grace HP soap ------
Once the soap has finished cooking, I will remove a couple of cups of batter for each color and add Enchanted Forest to one and Cornflower Celebration to the other. Both are from +Rustic Escentuals. To the remaining batter I will add a mixture of TD (from +Bramble Berry) and Icicle Mica (from +Rustic Escentuals) which should keep the base color of the batter nice and light.
An in the pot swirl with the green and blue mixed into white batter is the ultimate goal.
The oils in this recipe are olive, palm, coconut and castor. We added Tussah silk to make the soap even more luxurious.
When the soap was done, we were ready to add the fragrance and color. After pouring in the Amazingly Grace FO, I stirred like crazy to make sure it was thoroughly mixed into the soap batter.
I removed about 1-1/2 cups batter for each color and mixed them thoroughly. When working with HP soap batter, we have to remember that as soon as we remove the soap from the crock it begins to cool and harden, so working fast is pretty important at this point.
Once the colors were mixed I added the TD/Icicle Mica mixture to the remaining batter and stirred it quickly.
Then I plopped the blue and green batter back into the crock and gently folded the colors together. The end result should be a white soap with green and blue swirls.
I put the batter into the mold, added the dividers and set it in the curing area until tomorrow.
total time about 2 hours.
Lovely soap, and for sure smells "amazingly" wonderful. It's no wonder this is one of our best sellers!
We were both pleased to see the nice mix of the blue and green in all the bars.
Amazingly Grace Hot Process soap.
**********************************
Next we move on to the Ocean Mist batch that Alison was making
The colors are pretty simple, white and blue. For the blue we used +Bramble Berry's 1982 Blue Mica, and the white will be a combination of TD from BB and Icicle Mica from +Rustic Escentuals.
We mixed the oils with the lye/water/and cooked the batch for one hour and 30 minutes. We cooked it on high and stirred approximately every 30 minutes.
First the Ocean Mist FO goes in, (heavenly smell).
Then we removed about 3 - 4 cups of batter and mixed into the 1982 Blue Mica.
Above you can see the mixed 1982 Mica batter just before we added it back into the remaining white batter in the crock.
The Icicle Mica and TD mix goes into the remaining batter in the crock.
The remaining batter after the white was added.
Blue batter added back, now Alison is ready to gently fold them together.
Soap in the mold with dividers in place. After 24 hours it will be ready.
As Alison was cleaning up she put water into the crock to clean it, these bubbles are strictly from the left over Ocean Mist soap batter in the crock!
And now a few pictures of the finished Ocean Mist Soap
We were both happy to see such a mix of the white and blue.
Bars are approximately 4 - 5 ounces each.
Ocean Mist - ready to use in a week.
***************************************
And are a few pictures of the two soaps together.
Amazingly Grace on left, Ocean Mist on right.
