A Nice Mix - Lily of the Valley & Clove Bud

Thursday September 24, 2015 (made the soap)

Wednesday October 28, 2015 (posted this blog)

Wow, we just realized that we made this soap a whole month ago. How can a month go by so fast??? Ok, we know at this point it seems like a whole year can speed by that fast, but we digress.  This is supposed to be about making soap not whining about time passing!

One of my (Kathy's) all time favorite scents and flowers is Lily of the Valley. There is probably some deep seated psychological reason why - maybe my mom grew it, maybe it reminds me of a perfume I liked, who knows? Today Lily of the Valley was the scent du jour!

We knew from previous forays with LOV that it isn't a strong scent, in fact we found that it faded easily. So today we decided to mix a smidge of Clove Bud EO with the LOV and see where that takes us and if it will help to make the scent stronger.  I got all artistic and decided to use colorants that would resemble the Lily of the Valley plant and flower.

Please enjoy the following video we put together showing the creation of the Lily of the Valley and Clove Bud soap.  The Lily of the Valley FO came from +Lebermuth Co and the Clove Bud EO is from +Natures Garden.

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Final Shots

This soap will be ready on November 5th, 2015

Carrots and ginger with a little orange tea - alternative liquids in soap making

#carrotandgingersoap #powderedginger #alternativeliquid #soapchallenge

Monday, October 12, 2015

We recently entered a challenge in Amy Warden's Soap Challenge Club in which we were to make a soap using alternative liquids - in other words no water! We've used some "alternative liquids" like honey water, goats milk, almond milk, coffee, wine etc. but we had not yet used a fresh juice.  

Not knowing how the soap would turn out, we actually created two different batches on the same day -  an Orange Ginger soap and a Carrot Ginger soap.  Ultimately we decided to enter the Orange & Ginger Juice soap in the challenge which you can read about here.

In the end, BOTH soaps turned out far better than we had imagined, so let us share the Carrot & Ginger soap process with you, too. 

First we juiced about 8 large carrots, then we peeled a "hand" of fresh ginger and juiced that, adding the ginger juice into the carrot juice to give us our liquid.  We used the left over ginger pulp and stick blended it right into our oils before we added the lye/juice.

During our discussion about what to use, we researched many sites regarding the benefits of carrots.  I was always told (as a little kid) that carrots help you see in the dark...Self Growth had a great article about carrot juice, some of the benefits for the skin are:  antioxidant benefits, helps with eczema, dermatitis and rashes, natural sunblock and helps with sunburn.  The vitamin C helps promote skin elasticity with collagen production, it also helps improve uneven skin tones and promotes smooth, soft and supple skin.  Seriously, what isn't to love about carrots!!

We started reading about ginger and were blown away at how beneficial it is.  Style Craze has a great article about the goodness found in ginger, just a few benefits for skin are:  skin toning, soothes burns, clears blemishes and acne, and the all important anti-aging.  After reading the article both of us decided to add more ginger to our diets.  

We decided to add Bentonite clay with a little bit of Orange Spice tea. We figured that the batter mixed with the clay would be lighter and would give us some variation in color. It didn't help very much, but there was some difference.  We didn't have any Carrot EO so we mixed our own blend of Rosemary, Litsea Cubeba, and Clove Bud essential oils. The combination is great, and we may have a new EO blend to use.

Once we mixed the batter, we layered the lighter color in the mold first then sprinkled powdered ginger across the top, then we added a layer of batter colored with the Bentonite clay, sprinkled ginger again, then finished up by adding the remaining batter.  We used the hanger tool and did a simple hanger swirl, then we swirled the top of the soap with left over light and dark batter.

Please enjoy our YouTube video as we make our batch of alternative liquid - Carrot and Ginger soap.

Final pictures of the soap:

This soap will be cured on November 23.

Orange + Ginger makes a great soap, add orange peel, orange tea and wow!

#orangejuicesoap #gingerjuice #soapchallenge #orangepeel #ginger pulp

Monday, October 12, 2015

It's October and time for us to try another of Amy Warden's Soap Challenges.  This time the challenge is ingredients - we have to use alternative liquids to make this soap!  We have made soap with coffee, and we have made soap with wine, but we wanted to try something different for this challenge.

Alison and I put on our thinking caps and after much discussion, visits to the juice section at our local market, and more discussions, we decided to try orange juice. I grew up in Florida and had orange trees in my yard, and we both love orange juice, but it had never occurred to us to use it in soap!

We picked up about 10 oranges and juiced them for our liquid. Oranges contain about 88% vitamin C, and we knew it was good for us. One of the sites we researched, Style Craze, had an extensive article listing the benefits of Vitamin C for the whole body (we should all be drinking it every day!!).  We were primarily interested in the benefits to the skin which include:  moisturizing, anti-aging, improves skin texture, helps with dark spots and blemishes, rejuvenates dull skin, treats acne.  All these years we've heard an apple a day.....you can add an orange a day to that one!

We juiced a hand of fresh ginger and added the juice to the orange juice.  Once we finished juicing we stick blended the left over ginger pulp into the oils to beef up the benefits of this great spice. We researched the benefits of ginger and were amazed at its goodness.  The Health Site had a great article extolling the benefits of ginger on the skin, they include the following:  a natural moisturizer, known to improve circulation, facial and skin cleanser, anti-aging and helps with acne and blemishes.  Ginger by it's self is full of great properties and both of us decided to start eating ginger much more often. 

The color of the soap is natural orange from the juice and the 5x orange EO we used.  The only other "colorant" we added was Bentonite clay which we mixed using a small amount of Orange spice tea.  We hoped that the clay would give us a dramatic color difference - it didn't, well at least not a dramatic difference.  But our use of dried orange peel did give us a little definition.  We tried using a mortar and pestle to grind the peelings into a fine powder, didn't work.  Then we tried the trusty Cuisinart, didn't work.  What finally did give us a little powder was our coffee grinder.  We sifted the dried orange peel powder between the layers of the soap then did a quick hanger swirl, and that's what gave us our design (we think it looks like prehistoric cave artwork found in France).  We sprinkled the remaining coarser pieces of orange peel on the top of the soap.

We hope you enjoy our video as we put together our Alternative Liquid soap for this month's Challenge.  Once again we've tried something we probably never would have and found it to be interesting and fun.

Final photos of the soap:

12/29/2015

We've had a question regarding how well this soap lathered up 

so tonight I grabbed a bar and fired it up.

Great lather and bubbles and a very silky smooth feeling left on my skin after I rinsed the soap off!

Soaping with Basil Essential Oil

#basilessentialoil #basilscentedsoap #soapexperiments

September 11, 2015

Basil....we both love it in tomato sauce, in a salad, just rubbing our hands on a plant. The smell and taste are intoxicating.  What is our natural progression with basil? Yep, you guessed it - in soap!  

Alison and I took the plunge and bought some Basil Essential Oil from New Directions Aromatics. Out of the bottle it is pretty strong and leaned a little towards Anise or Licorice. The Basil smell is there, it just doesn't smell like the plant in my yard.  Ok, we figure it will probably change somewhat when we make a batch of soap with it, but (isn't there always a but) what to mix it with?

We jumped online and found suggestions on what smells good with basil EO in several places; we made a list of the ones we actually had and then the fun started.

We had bottles of EOs and FOs all over the place,  and we tried all sorts of combinations.

If it was something we kind of liked we used cut up paper towels and dropped scent combinations on them.  1 drop of basil to 2 drops of peppercorn or 2 drops of basil to two drops of peppercorn, honestly it was crazy.

We let the fragrance combos dry out, smelled them again and finally narrowed it down to 4 combinations that we would try in test batches.

We got busy and mixed up our oils and lye/water, mixing to just emulsified, a really, really light trace.  Then we divided the batter into four separate containers; Alison and I both made two batches.

Below we will show you how each scent combination turned out from picking the colors to finished pictures.

We are hopeful that we won't confuse you to much.

Mixed the lye water and oils

First:  Basil & Lemon Verbena

#1 Basil EO mixed with Lemon Verbena FO from +Rustic Escentuals, 

for color we decided on Pistachio and Buttercup Micas also from Rustic.

We figured lemon (yellow) basil (green) duh!

freshly poured into the mold and swirled a bit

24 hours later, yes we had ash

what it looked like after we steamed the ash off

Here are the 4 cut bars. They do have a swirly thing going on, but it sure wasn't what I had planned.

It smells great, but it's a little Basil-heavy. We will wait and see if it morphs out as it cures, but if not we probably won't use as much basil next time.

We put the left over batter in some of our silicone molds to get the butterfly and rose.

Second:  Basil and Peppercorn

#2 is Basil EO mixed with Peppercorn FO

Obviously the Aborigine Amber Mica from +Rustic Escentuals is the brown of the pepper. The Caribbean Kiss Mica (from Rustic) is the, well, we just liked the combination.

Freshly poured, I swirled the inside and then added the remaining soap and did a little foo foo swirl on the top.

After 24 hours, ash again

After we steamed the ash off

And here are the 4 bars of Basil Peppercorn soap

Here are the "overflow" pieces for this one.

I was happy to see my inner swirling kind of worked. It made for an interesting soap.

Third:  Basil, Litsea Cubeba and Tangerine

#3 is a combination of 3 EOs, Basil, Litsea Cubeba from +Lebermuth Co.  and Tangerine from +Bramble Berry.  You are probably wondering, "How in the world did they come up with that combination???" Go back and look at the first picture!

We decided against using the green in this one. There was too much going on, and the soap was thickening too fast.

This is what it looked like freshly poured and after Alison had layered the inside and swirled the top.

Once again ash after 24 hours curing.

And after we steamed and right before we cut it.

Nice bright bars of soap, once again the Basil is the dominant smell. We hope with time it will calm down. 

Overflow batter pieces.

I think it looks pretty even if we skipped the green.

Fourth:  Basil and Clove Bud 

#4 - We went back to two EOs, the Basil mixed with Clove Bud from +Natures Garden, the colors are Moss Green Mica from Nurture Soaps to represent the basil and  Passionata Mica from +Rustic Escentuals to represent the clove bud. 

Alison left some of her batter uncolored and designed her soap with swirling in mind.

Once again ash, easily removed with steam.

How Alison's soap looked after curing 24 hours and after we steamed it.

Beautifully swirled soap.

Once again we discovered that a little Basil goes a long way.  Next time we will use a lot less Basil, but these bars are still lovely and smell terrific.

They will be cured October 23, 2015

Basil - not just for Caprese Salads!