Tag: color swirl

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Things are hopping here

It’s been quite a few crazy weeks around here again. You too? We had a great time at Donna’ Market last Saturday and met some more great people. Thanks to everyone who stopped by, the funny jokes, and also to those who gave me some new projects to play with! I’m hoping to start on two of those next week. Tonight we will be at the Klein Oak High School Spring Fling Carnival to help them with a school fundraiser so we hope to see more of you again. My ankle is still healing though so hubby probably won’t let me play on the giant inflatables. Sigh. That’s life though. I’m sure this thing will be back to 100% percent before too much longer and I’ll be back to zooming around at top speed- yay!

As I double checked the checklist to make sure I had everything loaded for tonight, I realized that I hadn’t updated the website. Bad, bad Dorothy! So I am uploading a few pictures of the recent soapy fun I’ve had in the kitchen and praying they show here for your enjoyment too. Someone really should get going on that smell-o-vision already because these soaps smell heavenly! The only way you’re going to get to breathe in this awesomeness is to come see us in person.

Cut oversized bars of Cinnamon Swirl Soap
Cut oversized bars of Cinnamon Swirl Soap

Another picture of cut oversized bars of Cinnamon Swirl Soap
Another picture of cut oversized bars of Cinnamon Swirl Soap

The green and white this time is our Sage and Citrus while the cool rock-looking one is the revamped Cinnamon Swirl Soap. (Remember not to put that one on your face or “tender bits” unless you want one extra spicy wash!) You’ll also find below the new Peppermint confetti soap that has been a BLAST! I called this run of it a “split decision” set because I had started topping it with the panels embedded flat as had been requested. I just couldn’t help making a few stand up like shark fins towards the end- and they loved that look even more. So awesome and fun- I will definitely be keeping more of this around!
Freshly cut Sage and Citrus Soap from March 2013
Freshly cut Sage and Citrus Soap from March 2013

Top view of freshly cut Sage and Citrus Soap from March 2013
Top view of freshly cut Sage and Citrus Soap from March 2013
Cut Peppermint Confetti Soaps and scraps March 2013
Cut Peppermint Confetti Soaps and scraps March 2013

Uncut log of the Peppermint Confetti Soap showing "split decision" top March 2013
Uncut log of the Peppermint Confetti Soap showing “split decision” top March 2013

Come by and see us tonight at the carnival too. The street address is 22603 Northcrest Lane, Spring, TX 77389 and even my GPS directions thing can find it- hooray! Over the next few weeks we’ll be updating everyone on where to find us for April and May along with more soaping fun. See you around, have lots of fun this weekend, and keep smiling everybody. It confuses people 😉

Happy Washing!

Dorothy

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A recent soap project

Brown and white swirled soap in the mold.
Brown and white swirled soap in the mold.

Some of the fun projects around here were more work playing with natural colorants in some of our olive oil blends. These pictures were of one of the batches from about two weeks ago. I had a lot of fun with this one and was overjoyed to see some of the swirling practice finally paying off. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really any left after to share so I’m planning to make some again to spread the love around and let everyone else enjoy it too. The coloring work continues with some reds and pinks that should provide some funny pictures down the road for all of us to laugh at, I’m sure. Cold process soap is well known for creating color surprises so I can only keep trying!

Freshly cut brown and white swirled soap.
Freshly cut brown and white swirled soap.

It appears that almost all of the weekend changes on the website have worked so far. I’ll learn more about coding this week and see if I can figure out how I turned off some of the pictures in the catalog. Hope you and yours have had a good weekend and we will start seeing everyone in about two weeks here in the Houston, TX area. Will post more this week with the calendar updates about where we’ll be.

Happy Washing!
Dorothy

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Honeysuckle Soap

I had written this post in early December but had to hold it so I wouldn’t ruin someone’s holiday surprise.)

There are two lades we love in Mississippi who were waiting very patiently for me to make more Honeysuckle soaps. I had promised them a batch but I really had wanted to improve the colors of their favorite soap over the last time. That was the tricky part for me. As the blog followers are aware, I have reservations about colorants in my soaps. It’s got to be a natural product- no FD&C colorants in my soaps! I first learned to color soaps with a waxy kind of colorant but they really never gave me the results I wanted. I refused to touch a lot of soap colorants that I researched as I found out what they were made from. Some of the “sure fire” herbs that I’d had recommended to me over the years gave me interesting results- at first. Color morphing is a bit of an issue for the cold process soaper as your gorgeous blue become purple overnight. A tie dye looking soap became brownish purple by the time it was ready to deliver and a deep emerald green slid into the color of something you’d almost step on in a pasture. Or the time my pink became brownish- yuck! Yellows became tan and don’t even ask about what we decided some of the results reminded us of. Let’s just summarize some of my soap coloring research as enlightening to me and fun for the household. But I kept making my research batches with the hope I’d get the colors I wanted if I just kept trying. I absolutely love looking at other people’s pretty soaps and admire their artistic work they create in colors. There are incredible soapers out there that I hope to one day come close to in great designs. In the meantime, my job was to try again to create a colored layer soap that stays the color I wanted it to so I could make these two little ladies happy for the holidays.

Green & White Honeysuckle soap curing on the rack
Honeysuckle Soap Curing on the Rack
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After many failed attempts, I got a herb green to work reliably. This batch of Honeysuckle soaps in the catalog still has the not too sweet fragrance with a layered green look. I has planned a swirl in them for the holidays but it started to get too thick so we went for the layers instead. We used one of our milder recipes for the batch to get a great smooth feel while not drying out your skin. (One of these two ladies has to wash up quite a bit in her job and tends to dry out this time of year so it was a high priority for us.) The feedback on this batch tells us it is great for all ages and even liked by the “no flowery scent” users. We hope you’ll enoy it as much as we have!

The sun is now rising on another cold day here and I must head out to check on the soap herb garden. I wish you a great day out there and an even better time in the shower!

Happy Washing!

Dorothy