Category: Soap

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Floral Soaps

Three new floral scents for your pleasure: Midnight Jasmine, Fresh Cut Roses, and English Tea Rose.
Three new floral scents for your pleasure: Midnight Jasmine, Fresh Cut Roses, and English Tea Rose.
.

Now, most people who know me personally would tell you that pretty floral scents aren’t my usual train of thought. I’m not what you’d call a girly girl and my preferences are to avoid overly sweet smells. I absolutely love our flowers out in the garden, have been inspired by many beautiful blooms, eventually took on that requested honeysuckle scent, and we have added many, many more real flowers to our green thumb experience. But to find me humming happily up to my elbows in all those long-awaited floral scents? Only if it’s something like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” or hubby would be checking my temperature again. But that was before a really cool and creative lady lit a fire under me lately….

Honeysuckle has been a running favorite for us for quite a while but I kept receiving requests for other fun floral scents. They were added to our idea list for me to play with when I got some down time or enough requests for that one scent for there to be a real demand. And yes, we got some seriously off the wall ideas from customers in addition to the more normal thoughts. Roses have always been popular but creating the “perfect” rose scent is a true challenge. There are so many components that make up a rose scent and everyone perceives smell a little differently. I also had to decide between keeping it completely natural, trying to work with only essential or fragrance oils, or whether we wanted to completely create our own from scratch scent. This made the floral soaps a little daunting until the perfect project came along that allowed me to go wild with that floral wish list. I owe so many thanks to our little pink haired friend who keeps that fire lit under me!

English Tea Rose and Fresh Cut Roses soaps
English Tea Rose and Fresh Cut Roses soaps

After much researching, trial and error, laughter and frustration, we have started bringing out the results to share with everyone. Please welcome to the website the first three of the additions to our shop: English Tea Rose, Fresh Cut Roses, and Midnight Jasmine. Each of these whisks me away to the garden when I sniff them- the soap room smells like a wonderful wild garden in full bloom! These two rose fragrance oils were voted the most true-to-life in our researching and I’m still in love with how this version of them looks (pink circle and rustic cut white one above.) The Midnight Jasmine has a hint of dew winding thru the background of a not too sweet jasmine and lily fragrance blend. The off white round shape was fun for this one but I really wanted to add some color when I remade this so the next batch was a little different. I will have an updated picture for your viewing pleasure very soon in the catalog. What do you think of the newbies? We would love to hear your feedback and if you have more ideas for our list. These are being added to our catalog as I type but this first release is very limited. Please be patient if you miss these here on the site as I will have them restocked here and in the booth in time for Fenske’s Market September 7th. Preorders will reserve your bars as usual and you are not billed for them until they are ready to ship.

I must now get back to the soap room and get to work again. Please stay tuned for more pictures and updates as I play catch up here on the website!

Happy Washing!
Dorothy

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Ending Summer

Hard to believe that summer is already ending. It’s still hot here in Houston and will be for a while yet but the rows of school buses lining up tell us that we should be turning our thoughts to fall again. This year has been another whirlwind for us here but we have truly enjoyed the time we have spent out there with you all. As we’re shifting gears for the fall events, it seemed a good time to sit down and take a look at what all has happened both on and offline for us this year. I apologise for those looking for my “only soap” posts but it’s time to step back and look at the entire creative tornado that is Texas Pioneer Creations. Although, admittedly, online for us is always fun- each new section of the website is a new challenge for me conquer or break! 🙂

We continued expanding our product lines, growing even more of our own soap ingredients in the garden, and adding more custom soap projects from the start this year. It is always a treat to make someone’s soapy dreams come true and this has been a great year for accomplishing that! From baby soaps to abuelita’s style to some crazy looking funky soaps, I would almost say we’ve covered all of our bases- but I really, really hope not!! It is so much fun to see someone’s face when they get their perfect creations that I can’t wait to try again and again. A few have challenged me to go outside of my soap box and incorporate scents, colors, and designs that may never have made it off the to do list otherwise. There are a few soap scents and looks that have become permanent additions and I think of those people every time I make “their soap.” I found so much inspiration during some of our road trips and time with family and friends that it should provide enough ideas to keep me out of trouble, at least for a little bit. Good thing there are more designs and markets scheduled on the calendar though because a bored soaper can be a dangerous thing……

This year we continued to come out and support local events and markets as much as we possibly could. Between making soaps, running the booth, hanging out talking soap with everyone, working on the website, doing our charity work, expanding into local stores, and lots of research time, I must admit my workaholic streak is probably an asset. We lost two family members earlier this year also in the midst of spring markets and I owe hubby a huge thanks forever for helping me keep everything together as we grieved while keeping the company in gear. There were four months that it seemed we were always on the road either for work, driving to say goodbye to a loved one, burying them, or spending some much needed time enjoying life with those left living. It did prove very difficult for me to maintain my desired blog posting goal for the year and that has been a bitter pill to swallow. In hindsight, I realize that it is more important to keep our work schedule on track, deliver orders & meetings when promised, and keep spending time with those around me. Next month restarts my blog posting goals and we’ll see if life allows me to meet it or if I’m just going to need to set a more realistic goal.

As I’m finishing up for this posting, I see that the FAQ page has now reappeared on our site but I will need to figure out where the questions in it went. Coming this week will be more posting in our catalog to finally get those great new booth items listed here online. There is a review of some great soap molds, fun pictures, and a preview of fall scents. Also, the listing of our fall market dates along with what stores you can get your soapy fix in for instant gratification should work too. Feel free to drop us a line below in the comments or email us directly. As always, you can also find us thru our Facebook page. I must now return to the waiting soap molds and logs. I’m restocking the Lavender and Sage again this week and working on more of those sweet florals for our flower nuts! If you haven’t smelled the new ones- you are seriously missing out. And that’s from a girl who isn’t a fan of flowery smells- although I am still in love with the oatmeal and honey. What is your favorite bar produced by us? Let me know. I’d love to hear your opinion. For now, just grab a bar of your favorite soap today and go have some fun!

Happy Washing!
Dorothy

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Mixing Soap Techniques Again

I confess, I did it again. Couldn’t help it really. Had a great, simple, straight forward soap idea to make but I just couldn’t behave. As most of our followers have learned, I love to experiment in the soap kitchen. It’s just too much fun to try new shapes, scents, molds, and off the wall ideas for me to resist. My favorite soaps are the old fashioned cold process style but it is a lot of fun to play with the other styles as projects allow me. Luckily, this one let me go crazy.

Uncut Fruit Smoothie Soap
Uncut Fruit Smoothie Soap

There had been multiple requests from customers (and begging from my kids) for me to give a fruity fragrance oil a whirl. It has a blast of so many yummy fruits like raspberries, citrus, kiwis, strawberries, bananas, and apples. I knew it would be fun and expected a kid’s soap from the batch. A simple log soap that could be shared among us all, maybe one swirl or something, standard recipe even. Nothing too crazy, maybe even somewhat boring compared to the other projects that week. It was a busy week too and I knew I would have two sets of sad little eyeballs looking at me if I mentioned maybe waiting until the following week to make their soap. Ahhh, what a parent will do to avoid disappointing their kids at times. So I decided to whip it up real quick while my visiting sister-in-law hung out with me in the kitchen. No pressure anywhere in this, right? Exit my sanity and enter Murphy’s Law. I knew as soon as I unmolded them that there was trouble with the batch. Sure enough, it failed my tests (don’t think Angie’s ever gonna forget lye testing lol) and I had a loaf of soap that the kids were swooning over but couldn’t touch. Time to grab my favorite knife!

Fruit Smoothie uncut in the paper
Fruit Smoothie uncut in the paper

I had enough extra of the fragrance that I decided to chop the batch up and pop it into the double boiler for a milled light green soap. I tweaked it a bit to fix it to my specs (I am known to be picky about them- another way I drive hubby crazy some days) and then the mad scientist light bulb clicked on over my head. I had wanted to try mixing some more soap techiniques and here, lying so innocently in front of me, was the perfect opportunity. Happy dance! I let it finish its cooking while I mixed up a regular soap base which I dyed with annatto seed powder for an orangey red color to make a big contrast in the bases. I combined the raw cold process soap with the hot process soap and did my best to mix them together without overdoing it. I wanted a definite contrast in the soap styles like when we do some of the confetti soaps instead of a completely smooth mix, I had thought. For those soapers thinking of trying this, plan to work quickly. The temp differences make it tricky to completely combine. It couldn’t decide whether it wanted to stay put or separate in the mold. Hot process wants to clump as it cools and its texture differences are immediately obvious, even to those who don’t really understand the difference in them. The fruity scent didn’t accelerate either soap, luckily, and hasn’t discolored any of it. It was a lot of fun to make though and I’d do it again. The look of this run is most often compared to slices of lava when people see it. What do you think? I love the texture differences on the tops of these too. We’re still debating if I’ll make this the official look for our Fruit Smoothie soap so please chime in if you have a thought on it!

Side and top view of Fruit Smoothie soap
Fruit Smoothie soap- Mixing soap techniques

Please welcome Fruit Smoothie to our catalog as of today. Sorry I never put out a teaser on this one but I kept this batch aside for special monitoring. It has passed all of its tests every time and is finally old enough to be shared with our friends and followers. Truth be told, I was curious enough about this run that I kept it beyond its usual confinement time 🙂 You’re going to love the fruity smell of this one and the bubbles are awesome! I was surprised at the response to this scent from all ages; it appears that this one won’t be for just the kids. Drop me an email or comment here about your thoughts or find us on Facebook too. We love hearing your input and ideas. I must now get back to tweaking the website in the background. Hope your weekend goes well and we’ll see you at our booth again soon!

Happy Washing!
Dorothy