Tag: plain soap

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Working in the background

I am lurking on the website this week as promised. It’s still frustrating to me how well I can mess up loading pictures to the site so that is high on the list to fix this week in addition to getting back into the swing of our blog after my absence. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get all of these pictures I’m staring at out where you can enjoy too! Cross fingers for me and it’s ok to laugh at me breaking this site- I laugh the hardest sometimes. Luckily, I don’t plan to try to make a living by computer work 🙂 Although I might totally rock at computer & website demolition, actually……

Across the street from our booth at Houston Beer Festival, June 8, 2013. Awesome time with you guys!
Across the street from our booth at Houston Beer Festival, June 8, 2013. Awesome time with you guys!

As mentioned before, we were at the Houston Beer Festival this past weekend. We had a blast and met a ton of great people. Always enjoy getting out there with you guys, Houston, and this was a great time! I must send a shout out to Maximus, one of our local bands, for some great music too. You made even this pathetic dancer start moving and grooving with those songs! Keep it up boys! Here are the only two shots hubby managed to get of the festival for us. The white tent you can barely see with the Beer Soap sign (thanks again Bob!) is ours and the second picture is from the back of the tent looking out. Angie’s Bits o’Glass is there on the left and my pasty white legs are on our side to the right in this picture. (Angie, forgive me for posting your butt online without warning lol) It was a very busy but fun day for us. We thank you again everyone for such a great time. And some new jokes for me- hooray!
Looking out towards crowd from behind the booth at Houston Beer Festival, June 8, 2013. Lots of fun!
Looking out towards crowd from behind the booth at Houston Beer Festival, June 8, 2013. Lots of fun!

I must now go back to my behind the scenes work and try to load pictures around soaping sessions. This week I’m making more of our Texas Suds Beer Soaps, another round of plain pioneer soap, and some of the Honeysuckle too. I’m plotting the Ginger Peach bars but pushed them back a few days so I could make sure I can get the colors I’m shooting for. More details later and I hope these pictures cooperate with me. See you around the website!

Happy Washing!

Dorothy

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Some new pictures

Just a few soap pictures from the past few weeks of work to brighten up your Monday morning! Enjoy!

Swirling practice with natural colorants April 2013
Swirling practice with natural colorants April 2013

Practicing my swirling and with the herb colorants more. This swirl was fun but not quite what I was looking for. The scent was a huge hit though and made it to the keeper list!

Olive and Castor Unscented Soap April 2013
Olive and Castor Unscented Soap April 2013

As requested by many, a plain olive and castor oil soap again. This one will be live in the catalog by the end of the month and also available at our booths this month. The plain pioneer style one will also be live again soon.

Freshly cut Raspberry and Chocolate soap
Freshly cut Raspberry and Chocolate soap

Made another run of the Raspberry and Chocolate also. This picture is freshly cut and shows how red it gets before the vanilla really kicks in and darkens it up. This is such a great smell in the bathroom!

More posts to come soon but wanted to share a little love with everyone on a Monday morning. I must return to the oils and finish whipping up a few more batches of soap. I will be lurking in the background around the site today so drop me a line if you have any questions or catch me on our Facebook page. We will be at both the CyFair Craft Show on Telge Road next weekend and at the Spring Crawfish Festival for the last two weekends of the month. Stop by and say hi! Guys only: don’t forget to email me at dorothy@texaspioneercreations.com if you were interested in joining the final round of feedback for two new men’s scents or adding a comment below! It is Monday so please make sure to be specific in your email- I’m finishing up the first cup of coffee still 🙂

Happy Washing!

Dorothy

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Zombies in the soap

I had planned a regular posting about some of the soaps that are curing right now but, as is normal around here, something came along that cracked me up.

This week I’m writing about the straight Olive Oil Castile soap that was made about three weeks ago. We used a blend of regular and pomace olive oils and avoided any scents or colorings this time to create a clean, gentle soap. (This was part of my inspiration from our brand new nephew Lex and my cute-baby-obsessed brain.) It is very mild, moisturizing, and is as well-loved by sensitive and mature skins as it is by the wee ones in our lives.

I had made a large batch this time in hopes that I might be able to stash some away for the holidays but was really, really unhappy with the texturing of the top when I unmolded it. Now, if you are a new reader, you may not know that I am one of those soapers who owns a block grater and is not afraid to use it. Luckily, this soap was still very young and I was able to chop it up quickly with my favorite big knife. Lots of little olive oil bits went back into the soaping pot for another round until they melted into submission. I remolded the entire batch and was very pleased once it came out the next morning. These were cut into large bars with a few sample scraps so I made them a home on the curing racks. Sure that I was once again the queen of my soapy domain, I lined up all my beautiful soap bars to cure. I admired their greenish gold tint and made myself swear I wouldn’t start putting any of them to use until they were fully cured, or maybe three weeks, or maybe just one for now…… I mentioned I can be impatient about waiting to quality control each batch, right?

I promise I behaved and left them alone until hubby came home that night. He was checking out everything I had cooked up that day and was intently staring at the olive oil soaps. Confidant I had totally rocked that batch, I waited to hear any questions, comments, or praise he might have. No worries, right? He floored me completely with his reply: “You know, this looks like zombie soap.” Huh?!?! It still makes me laugh but I had to agree once I heard him out.

Soapers can tell you how colors will morph some as they cure and certain oils will give you certain colors in your soap. This olive oil blend has a light green gold hue but as it was curing it made some slightly darker spots that had a brownish tinge too. Dunno how much your family is into zombies but this batch provided us a few giggles for about a week as it settled itself down. I am sad to say that I no longer see the zombie resemblance but now I have some inspiration for another batch of soap. If I can get it to work, we will add “Zombie Soap” to the silly soap line along with the “Cow Pattie” and “Mud Balls.” I’ll make a blog post about those another time; let me find some good pictures of them so I can put it in there, ok?

This batch of no-longer-zombie-looking soaps will be ready to go to new homes around September 25th. I hope to have some good pictures up soon of everything on the rack for all of us who enjoy staring at soap pics. If you are in the Houston area, you can catch us at Donna’s Market on October 13th. Please stop by and say hello, tell a good joke, or just have a chat! I shall sign off here for the week as the sky’s just opened up and the rain is pouring down. Time to go get dirty for an excuse to try out the new experiments!

Happy Washing!

Dorothy