New Soap Packaging

Huzzah! My beautiful 100% recycled soap boxes FINALLY arrived last week and I have been working on my packaging design ever since! At first, I was thinking about simply printing a sticker out and sticking it on them and maybe a little ribbon to finish them off. I nixed the sticker idea as the main theme and got some individual letter stamps and some pretty neat image stamps and went to town on my boxes. I kept the ribbon idea, and chose a different ribbon for each soap type.

My only complaint with the boxes are some of my soaps are a little short for the hole and they swim around in the box a little. When this happens, I add a few cardboard strips into the box with the soap to help hold them in place and up to the cutout. I'll just have to start making my soap a little taller ;-)

Below are all my different soaps in their new and lovely packaging! I think I may tweak my boxes a little, perhaps add some more colors to my drawings or colored stamps, but I'm very happy with the look of them: handmade, unique, artistic, raw and totally my own! :-)

New Rasta Soap

Since I just got a new slab mold, Chris asked if I would make him a Rasta Soap with Green, Black, Red and Yellow all swirled around. Being that I love a request, I took him up on the challenge!

The soap is a saponified blend of Olive Pomace Oil, Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Shea Butter, Avocado Oil, Jojoba Oil, Fragrances of Egyptian Musk, Eastern Amber, Jasmine and Hinoki Wood.

The colors started to thicken as I poured them into the mold, so the top is a little chunky looking, but I bet when its cut it will look awesome inside! I think I may have added a little too much fragrance oil however because there was a decent amount of excess oil lining the top of the soap which I kinda patted dry a bit. Usually as it cures it will sweat a little bit, but this was puddling. This will be 12 bars 4oz bars, so 3 lbs, and I should have had more than 3 oz into the soap, however, I over poured and corrected a few times and ended up with about 4 oz, so I'm not surprised. I'm not too concerned at this point, but we'll wait to see how it all cuts tomorrow!!

Smells wonderful! :-)

Lavender Peach Soap

My new slab mold arrived today and I was so excited to try out my new oxide color pigments I received! I tried my first 4 color swirl: pink, orange, violet & natural. At first I was a little worried about how to mix the color correctly to not have any speckling, but I just added some hot water to the color and poured in my base at trace into each color.

Since I was doing 4 colors, I wanted to make sure I would have enough time to play with lining the colors and having fun making the swirls, so I tested 1 tbsp of oil with a few drops of fragrance to see if there would be any seizing. (Thank you Sweetflower soap, you have forever made me wary) Thankfully this fragrance was Seize Free and so I mixed my fragrance into my whole base and then poured a little soap into each color and stirred.

I lined my colors into my lovely new mold and then took a skewer and made some swirls!! I'm so happy with how it looks now, I just hope it looks as good all the way through! Will know for sure tomorrow!

Honeysuckle Rain

Still having fun with my new fragrance oils! My latest and greatest: Honeysuckle Rain.

Still not 100% sold on the name, but that's what I'm calling it for now. This is one CLEAN smelling soap! I'm probably going to have to send this one to my mother, along with a Green Tea soap, for Mother's Day. They're both right up her alley.

Ingredients: Olive Pomace, Coconut Oil, Avocado Oil, Palm Oil, Wheat Germ, Fragrances of Honeysuckle & Rain Orchid.

Ready for Use: 5/3/2010

Mint Chocolate Soap

"Not all Fragrance Oils are created equal."

I got in a new shipment of fragrance oils this last week and have been experimenting with them ever since. My last soap, the Sweetflower Soap, was my first "challenging" soap I've had due to fragrance oils, seizing and winding up with soap on a stick. My previous Green Tea soap however, did not have the same issue with seizing up and so I wasn't sure what to expect with my latest Mint Chocolate soap.

Thankfully this one had NO issues with seizing up. In fact, I probably could have beat my soap a little more with my stick blender, yet not knowing what to expect, I prepared for the worst which actually ended up working out in the end. Because I left my soap at such a light trace, the colors ended up swirling together quiet nicely! At least, what I can see of them. Can't wait until tomorrow to cut into it and see how the colors blended in the loaf! In the meantime, the smell is absolutely killing me... it's just like Girl Scout Thin Mints, only more chocolaty and more minty. Awesome.

Aside from the euphoric aroma this bar gives off, the other nice little perk is the Wheat Germ added at trace for superfatting! For those of you who are unfamiliar with Wheat Germ is packed with Vitamin E as well as promotes skin cell formation, which is great for nourishing and rejuvenating dry, mature, dehydrated skin, reducing scarring, stretch marks, sunburns, and damaged skin.

Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Olive Pomace, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Wheat Germ, Fragrances of Chocolate Mousse and Mocha Mint, Iron Oxide Pigments for coloring

Sweetflower Soap

This soap was such a pain in the butt!! I've never created such a soap that congeals SOO quickly. I have a lot against me in the solidifying soap world: castor oil, shea butter and fragrance oils=30 secs to get into the mold or your soap will be shaped like your pot!

Because I wanted this soap to have both green and yellow tones, I had to have an extra set hands in order to do this recipe or else only I'd have been limited to only 1 color.

After I combined my oils and lye, I only gave 1 quick spin of the stick blender (usually at least a min, but this was literally less than 5 secs) then I added my Sweet Almond Oil, cross my fingers and added my fragrances. I had Chris, my boyfriend, waiting for me to pour him some of the soap into his parsley dusted container and stir it together quickly. I poured my yellow base down into the mold and by the time I took his container to add to the top it was already chunking up! (less than 30 secs since I poured in the fragrance oil).

I used the back end of my spatula and pressed the green chunks down on top of the yellow base, which had already solidified into it's own separate bar and then got my fork and started pressing down on the green chunks like you would on peanut butter cookies, breaking them up and squishing them down to a flat surface. (The pic you see posted)

After this, I waited a few minutes and went back to my mold to see if the saponification process helped to warm up and combine the two layers. I pressed my fork on the soap again and this time my fork almost went through to the middle! It's softening up and combining to each other! Groovy.

Now just have to wait 24 hours and hopefully when I cut it, each bar will be 1 solid piece and not split in half at the color mark. I don't think it will though. *hopeful* :-)

In any case, if all works out in the end, this will be one fantastic bar of soap! It smells sooo sweet, clean and light and the nourishing properties of the Parley Powder, Shea Butter and Sweet Almond Oil are so good for your skin!

Parley is packed with Vitamin C and is a powerful antioxidant. Vitamin C helps regulate sebaceous glands to keep skin from drying out which also helps prevent wrinkles and spider veins.

Shea Butter is a particularly effective moisturizer because it contains so many fatty acids, which are needed to retain skin moisture and elasticity. It contains both Vitamin A and E and has shown both antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties.

Sweet Almond Oil is easily absorbable and serves as a great emollient, by lending a soft glowing beautiful touch to the skin. It balances the moisture in the body. In case of loss of moisture, it helps to restore it. It also aids in combating itching and inflammation.

Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Castor Oil, Olive Pomace, Shea Butter, Palm Oil, Sweet Almond Oil (added at Trace), Parsley Powder (green coloring), Fragrances of Sunflower, Sweetgrass and White Sage.

Botched Batched - Bollucks!!

Last night I tried to make a new soap with some new fragrance oils I just received. I never used these oils before and so I didn't kn0w what to expect with them. When it came time to blend my fragrance, I was working with two colors, so I poured it in the first color and stirred it around, then poured it into my 2nd color and stirred it around.

By the time I went back to my 1st color it had become SOLID. They call this seizing. I tried to remelt my oils but they were not having it. The saponification process had become too disrupted and I lost my soap! :-(

This is the FIRST time this ever happened, but I knew it would happen eventually. Today, I'm going to try to remake my soap, only I'm going to force my boyfriend to help me with the stirring process so the oils don't congeal as quickly and I'm going to not blend up the lye and base oils as much before hand. I had a pretty good trace when I tried to do it last night, I think if I lessen the trace before I add my fragrance oils, I will have a better chance.

I also read that if I add my fragrance oils to a little base oil before adding it entirely, I will have a better chance of it not seizing up.

Wish me luck on my 2nd try!! Will post my results shortly!