Category: Soap

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DvisualArts Review and Soap Pictures

This post is not so much about making soap as to show some great pictures and review a local independent photographer in the Houston, TX area. Those who have followed the blog for awhile can tell you that my photography skills are, shall we honestly say, barely passable? Frankly, they’re pitiful so I spent some time looking for a good local photographer to take our soap pictures. Hubby told me about his coworker who runs a side business in photography and I added him to the pool of choices. The more I saw of his work, the more I loved it. He has a passion for sports photography but such a wonderful eye for color and perspectives! His wedding pictures are just beautiful. I was interested to see what he could do with our soaps. We challenged him with naked bars of soap and nothing more to go on but my request to keep it natural. I really wanted to see what he could do with the colors and textures if given free rein. We were thrilled when he gave us back the results. No kidding, I did a little dance and giggle. Just ask hubby; he was laughing at me. Vu, you must post more of your work to your Facebook page- soon! So without further ado, I’m going to post some of his work here. You’ll be able to spot his other pictures all over the website also- they’re much prettier ones lol If you are in the Houston, TX or surrounding areas and in need of a great photographer, DvisualArts does awesome work with a great turnaround time. Check him out at www.dvisualarts.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/DvisualArts to see more great pictures!

"Frosted" Chocolate Soap
“Frosted” Chocolate Soap
Oatmeal Milk and Honey Scrub Bar
Oatmeal Milk and Honey Scrub Bar
Green Tea Sand Soap on the Rocks
Green Tea Sand Soap on the Rocks
Ginger Peach Tea Soap
Ginger Peach Tea Soap

Chocolate Soap
Chocolate Soap

Most of these soaps have a few bars still left in stock in the catalog. Feel free to provide some feedback here on the post or on our Facebook page about the new layout and Vu’s photos. If you enjoy looking at cool soap pictures, please feel free to check out some of the links now appearing on the right side of our pages! Thanks for stopping by and visiting our page today.

Happy Washing!
Dorothy

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Pumpkin Soap

One of our favorite things about fall and winter are pumpkins.  I know you can grow and/or purchase them year round but Halloween really gets our celebrating in gear.  We love the color and shape of the whole pumpkins, use them for decorating, but our favorite part is to eat them, admittedly.  This year, I decided to harness some of pumpkin’s power in soap before we baked it all away!  You didn’t know it was good for your skin?  Let’s explore this together…

Pumpkin has been known for years to be good for our bodies.  It provides fiber, magnesium, potassium, antioxidants, and iron just for starters.  It is overflowing with alpha- and beta-carotenes which help support skin health.  It also has many vitamins including C, E, and B5, which help revive and restore your skin’s health.  This is one awesome fruit and tastes great too, in my opinion.  But why would I put it in soap instead of my stomach?  It has a comforting smell, pretty color, and also leaves your skin smooth and soft – perfect for dry winter months.  Why not?

Pumpkin Soap Cooking
Pumpkin Soap Cooking

I started with one of our creamier soap recipes and added pureed pumpkin to the mix.  As you can see in the picture, it created a gorgeous orange color as it cooked in the crock.  (I had a request to make this soap with the hot process method so it cooks for a few hours in a crockpot in that method of soaping.)  When it passed the test & was done, I mixed in a wonderful fragrance that includes a touch of cinnamon, clove, slight sweetness of carrot, nuts, pumpkin (of course), and a hint of rum in the background.  It created a marvelous harvest scent in one of my favorite soaps of the season.  They were cut into large hand bars and average about 5 oz each.  We made enough of this batch to share but this soap will probably remain in our fall/winter lines so grab it before it goes away!

Uncut Hot Process Pumpkin Soap & Wavy Soap Cutter
Uncut Hot Process Pumpkin Soap & Wavy Soap Cutter

As you can see in the pictures, pumpkin soap provided another chance for us to enjoy color morphing that is so common in natural soap making.  No colors were added at all to this batch, for those who find that an issue.  The soap started with this pretty burnt orange color while cooking, muted to a tan-orange by the time it finished cooking, and then started a gradual browning from the little bit of vanilla in the fragrancing.  As you can see, at 24 hours its colors resembled banana nut bread.  By four days later, I had mostly brown bars with beautiful dark chocolate-colored swirls throughout it.   The entire soap is dark caramel swirl color now and it hasn’t darkened anymore at this point. What fun!

 

Cut Hot Process Pumpkin Soap
Cut Hot Process Pumpkin Soap

As of posting time, I’m still fighting to get these pictures loaded for you to see. If you can’t see the pictures, please check back again later!  Have another soapy idea or challenge for us?  Contact us and let’s brainstorm!  I must now get back to the kitchen and wash a few molds before I start these other soaps this week.  Ready to cook this week will be Peppermint and another batch of our beer soap, Texas Suds.  Check back in with us later this week to see the update on our Honeysuckle Soap and don’t  forget to sign up to follow our blog here or like us on Facebook for the latest updates!

Happy Washing!

Dorothy

 

Finished updating on Dec 11, 2012 at 10:29am CST with all pictures loaded and better description of final color.  -Dorothy

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Looking up today

It’s been a busy day around here!  Are your holidays getting busy too? Seems we may be winning the battle with the shopping cart here on the website.  It’s loading almost everything now and seems stable but please let me know if you have any problems at all!   Maybe I might have this thing figured out?  When I have needed to run away from the computer screaming, I’ve been clearing the soap racks and cutting a few pounds of soap that  we finished cooking up last week.  I’m uploading pictures tonight of the new projects we played with so I can finish those posts I promised too.  Cross your fingers that my run of computer bad luck might be over!

The beer soap is once again sold out of on hand stock.  It is back to preorder only status for now but is listed here on the site to make it more convenient for you.  We have more molds on order so we will be mixing up the next batch very soon- and it’ll be  a much larger batch!  We go through this soap so fast I’m starting to think I’m going to have to look at buying the beer by the keg.  Anybody know if that’s even shippable?  And can you picture the look on the delivery man’s face?  I’m sure he’s really going to believe me that it’s for soap!  His eyes might roll out of his head.

I had a question presented to me asking if we might have a berry scent in the works.  Yes, there is a raspberry scent being tested but it isn’t quite ready to bring out yet.  It will most likely be available around the end of January, if it continues as well as it looks.  I’ll update you more about that later in the year or early January.

I must run back to the kitchen now and finish playing with the new green colorant.  At least the mess I made in there today is easy to clean!  I will return this week with a promised post and will be working in the background all week.  Drop me a line if you see something I missed.

 

Happy Washing!

Dorothy