Once it was all cooked, I added my colours again till I had a pretty blue then glopped it all back into the mold. Here’s what I ended up with. Decent colour, but YAWN….kinda boring. I wanted my favourite soap to at least be interesting looking.

Time to get creative. I did a couple of embedded ball soaps before with varying degrees of success. I decided to give it another try. I cut the loaf in half and then cut half of it into long rectangles- about the size to fit horizontally into my small silicone loaf molds.

Next I trimmed the edges to get it closer to a cylinder shape, then wrapped them in parchment paper and rolled them individually against the countertop to try to get the sides rounded. It was harder than I expected it to be. This took ages! I decided to only make a few of these and do the rest into little balls I could drop into the soap. Still time consuming, but it’s not as difficult to make them nice and evenly round.

The next step was to make a couple of batches of white soap. I used goat milk and a little TD added to get it whiter. I wanted a nice contrast with the blue. The goats milk makes the lather so creamy and smooth, and I love the creamy white colour it gives the bars too. I didn’t get any photos of making the new soap. The camera was getting kinda soapy and slippery! I left the large mold outside overnight to cool and put the smaller ones in the fridge. When I use TD I like to try to avoid gel or I end up with streaky lines in the soap that remind me of stretch marks- ew!

Here’s how they looked just before taking them out of the molds them the next day, and then the larger one unmolded.

A few cuts later and here are the finished bars. I’ll let them harden up a bit more, then smooth out some of the rough edges. I’ve still got half a loaf of the solid blue bars left, but perhaps I’ll just keep them as-is. Not everyone is an artsy soap fan. Some people just want to get clean! Imagine that— I know, I don’t get it either!

This photo was taken in my new kitchen (yeah baby!) so the lighting is a bit different there. The other photos were taken in my soap-making area in the laundry room. The soap is really a creamy white colour.

I thought I’d add a bit of bling to this batch, so I used a paint brush to coat the heart shaped ice cube tray molds with a bit of cosmetic glitter before pouring in the soap.

Next, I poured the soap and set it aside to harden. See me pouring with my left hand while I took the photo with my right?  NOT easy- aren’t you impressed? (I guess that would be why this photo is so blurry- ha!)

When the tiny soaps were cooled, they easily popped out of their molds and I set them aside for later. Don’t they look like candy in this photo?

Next I weighed out the oils to make the main part of the soap which is done by cold process. Here is the coconut oil being weighed out. Then, I melted it and added sweet almond  and castor oils. Salt bars need a high percentage of coconut oil so they will lather well.

I added the lye water and the essential oils at this point. I used a blend of Lavender, Eucalyptus and Rosemary. I call it my ‘spa blend’. Notice my gloves? Lye burns are no fun!

Here, I have split the batch into 2 bowls so I can make layers of different colours. I added titanium dioxide mixed with a bit of water to one half to get bright white, and raspberry pop mica mixed with a bit of glycerin to the other half to get pink.

I used a stick blender to make sure the colour was mixed well into the pink portion, then added the sea salt.

Here I go with my left-handed tricks, pouring while taking photos. This is just for the photo- I had to pour all the rest of them right-handed:-) I poured the pink soap into the molds to about half full. These silicone heart muffin tin molds were a great bargain. I picked them up at Target one day on the ‘dollar shelf’– $2.50 each!

Back to the white portion of the soap, I added the salt and gave it a few blasts with the stick blender to thicken it up a bit.

Then I gently spooned the white soap on top of the pink layer. I remembered not to fill them too full this time so I would have some space for adding the tiny hearts afterwards.The first time I made these they kind of overflowed and I had to do ‘plastic surgery’ on the edges to tidy them up.

After a few minutes, the soap started to set and I pressed a tiny heart soap into the centre of each bar. I like the way the white soap puffs up around it a bit when it’s pressed down.

Now, they will set for a couple of days before I un-mold them. Salt bars can get kind of crumbly if you try to remove them from individual molds too soon, so I’ll have to try to be patient. I’ll update here with un-molded photos when they are ready.

Thanks for reading!

Update Thursday Dec 30th:
So much for waiting a couple of days- I have no patience at all when it comes to soap! I un-molded one bar today (after about 17 hours) and it popped out perfectly, so of course I had to take them all out and do photos. I was surprised that the layers look so equal. I thought I had poured too much for the pink layer. I ended up with one and a 1/2 solid white bars that didn’t have embedded hearts. I took notes so that next time I will know how much M&P I need to make enough hearts for the whole batch.
These will get incredibly hard as they cure. Salt bars don’t feel gritty at all- they shine up like a polished stone with use and last for ages.

My favourites in terms of fragrances are Sandalwood Vanilla, Spiced Mahogany and Clove Mint. I have to mention Summer Melon Spritzer too because I’m taking that one directly to my shower. It reminds me of summer time and I am really sick of fall right now!

My pick for best design has to go to Anne-Marie for her incredibly complex embedded and layered bar scented with Cranberry Fig. It’s just gorgeous!  There’s a How-To posting on her blog about it here.

Here’s a breakdown of the soapy bounty I received today, with links as I was able to find from the packaging.

Sandalwood Vanilla from Owl Tree Soaps

Marrakesh Goat Milk Soap from a soapmaker in Grant, Michigan

Cedar Saffron from Foster Creek Soap & Botanicals

Summer Melon Spritzer from Tub Time Treasures

Clove Mint from Freshwater Handmade Soap

Mango Sangria from Sweet Peas Soap

Cranberry Fig from Anne-Marie at Brambleberry

Spiced Mahogany from Dreaming Tree Soapworks

Karma Essential Oil Blend from Carmel Soaps

Lychee Red Tea from Barclay’s Soap Box

Cranberry from Bungalow Soap Co.

Rosehip Jasmine from Ali Mendelson

Looking forward to the next swap- this was so much fun!

]]> http://www.triagefromhome.com/2010/12/my-haul-from-the-soap-queen-swap/feed/ 5 http://www.triagefromhome.com/2010/02/a-week-at-the-mall/ http://www.triagefromhome.com/2010/02/a-week-at-the-mall/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:28:52 +0000 Helen http://www.triagefromhome.com/?p=1248 This week I’m selling my products off a cart at Semiahmoo Centre at 152nd and 16th in White Rock. I’ve been there 2 days so far and it’s been rather slow selling. It was so much work to get ready for this, so I’m hoping things pick up as the week goes on. Customers so far have been really enthusiastic about my soap, so that’s been encouraging. Thursday and Friday will be tough- 12 hour days!

Here’s how my cart is set up. This took Jon and I several hours to do on Sunday evening.

I made up some great Valentines Day Gift Packs for this. Here is one for the ladies.

It’s got 3 bars of soap:

- Bouquet of Roses (scented with English Rose)

-Bottle of Wine (scented with White Zinfandel)

-Box of Chocolates (scented with Expresso Chocolate)

A handmade cotton facecloth (not by me, I can’t crochet!), and a little wooden soap deck that Jon and I made from some solid wood trim boards.

Another one for the girls…these are Matching Scent Gift Packs, each contains

A bar of soap, a jar of whipped body butter and a jar of emulsified sugar scrub.

I did these  in 4 different scents:

Black Raspberry Vanilla

White Tea & Ginger

Love Potion

Lick Me All Over

Next I did a Chocolate Lover’s Gift Pack containing:

Edible Chocolate Massage Butter

Chocolate  Expresso Sugar Scrubs

Chocolate Scented Soap

Chocolate Orange Lip Balm

I think this last one is my favourite.  A Six Pack O’ Suds beer soap gift pack. I had a lot of fun making soap with six different types of beer and choosing scents to match. This is what I came up with for the soaps:

Ginger Lime, made with Nut Brown Ale

Rosemary Mint, made with Lager

Unscented, made with Guinness Draught

Oatmeal, Milk and Honey, made with Oatmeal Stout

Chocolate Expresso, made with Chocolate Stout

Salty Sea, made with Honey Brown Ale

This is how the packaging looks. I had a custom stamp made

for this. Inside, I added kraft paper crinkle shreds and a handmade cotton facecloth.

I’ve got to get there super-early tomorrow- proabably 6 AM-  because the Olympic Torch Relay will be taking place right outside the mall tomorrow morning around 6:30 so the main street will be closed.  I’m disappointed that I won’t get to see the relay come through here in Delta, but Devon will see it in front of his school later in the morning. I think they are starting classes later so the kids can all see the torch going by.

I spent some time listing some of my Juicybags stuff in my Etsy shop last night. I forgot how time consuming that can be! Now to promote and try to get some sales for Christmas. The great thing about my Juicybags for online shopping is that the shipping is usually quite reasonable since they are so lightweight. If I can pack them flat enough, I can even send them by letter post which is much cheaper than package rate.

Now- if only Canada would get a nice, simple flat rate system going I could get to selling more soaps too! I have to get Jon to update my Juicybath site today. I’ve sold out of so many of my soaps that are pictured there. Lots of new stuff is on the curing racks though. We just have to figure out how to get better photos to show them off properly. I’ve got another craft fair this weekend so I’ll be busy in between working nights (ugh!) this week to get everything stocked up again. I need to make more Whipped Body Butters and I need scent suggestions. I made some unscented and only sold one or two. I guess scented is the way to go for that product.

How about:

Coconut?

Pineapple Cilantro?

Instant Karma? (like Lush’s  Karma)

Mango Melon?

Orange?

Lavender?

Honeysuckle?

Yesterday, I showed my soaps for the first time at a local craft fair. Unfortunately the shopper turn-out was quite disappointing. You really can never tell how something like this is going to go, but I learned a few things anyway. I think it’s important to ask certain questions before deciding to participate as a vendor.

For example:

Is this the first year for this event?

Have you organized other craft fairs?

How many vendors will be there and what are they selling?

What is the expected attendance for this fair?

What kind of advertizing will be done?

Jon said he searched for info online about this fair and it wasn’t even advertised on craigslist! I’m sure there are other things I could do to research fairs. Something I thought of was to contact previous vendors and find out how the event was attended last year.

Jon and I stayed up nearly all night Friday setting up and printing the product labels, labeling everything and making signage. I finally crashed out at 4:30 am and Jon was up till 5:30. We had to be up again by 7:30 to go get set up for the fair. You know something? I really have the most wonderful, loving and supportive husband. He came along with me  yesterday, helped me set up, kept me company, went to get me lunch, helped me take down and pack up and then got me home safely so we could crash again. We went to sleep at 6:00 pm last night!

There were only about 15 vendors there. It was very low-key, with the tables widely spaced in a very large hall. The thermostat controls were locked up in the morning, so they weren’t able to get the heat turned on until the afternoon. Luckily I’d worn a hoody jacket, but it wasn’t enough to keep me warm. All afternoon I kept dreaming about getting home and into our heated waterbed. The lady who ran the event was apologetic, but what can you do? We probably sold enough to cover our table fee and lunch, but that was it. Many customers were  interested in my solid shampoo and conditioner cakes and  solid lotion bars, and I sold quite a few.  Some customers mentioned how they would be great for travel, so I would like to try to find some reusable storage containers for the shampoo and conditioner cakes. Maybe something like the lotion bar tins, or maybe something plastic and water-tight.

I met someone who might be interested in doing a fundraiser with my Scrabble tile pendant charms, that would be fun to do if it works out.

Here’s a few more photos of some of my products on display. These wooden display shelves were made by the husband of a soapmaker who sold me a bunch of her supplies when she sold her business. I think this shows off my soaps really well.

These are the shampoo and conditioner cakes. I think these are my favourite product. Made from shampoo and condtioner ingredients (they aren’t soap!) but without all that water and extra packaging. Great for camping or travelling. No water, so you can take them in your carry-on luggage for flying.

I knew there was going to be some colour morphing when I added the fragrance to the soap. It was a bit yellowing right at the start- not a great sign. Of course I was all ready to go with my colours mixed, so I went ahead and did the swirl. The design was quite good. I liked the thin lines of colour and the overall look. This is how it looked in the loaf and then right after cutting the next morning.

Not too bad, but certainly not white which is what I wanted for a bubblegum scented soap. I know you can’t tell, but I was going for white soap with pink and blue swirls!

I was lying in bed this morning very early and couldn’t sleep, so I started planning the rebatch for this soap. I visited one of my favourite soap blogs, called simply A Handmade Soap Blog. She wrote about a method of rebatching soap to add colours or fragrance and use it for embeds. Unfortunately she only blogged for less than a year and nothing has been added since Sept 2007. I hope she returns and blogs again. Her soaps are amazing!

I’d rebatched to make embeds before by melting the grated soap down in the microwave, adding scents and colour, letting it harden again and then grating it down again and forming it into balls. I used the melting-down method to make the balls for my Baby Powder soap. It worked pretty well, but the process took a long time and I found the re-grated soap very crumbly and difficult to work with and form into balls. It was a lot of work.

So this time I just grated the soap down, added a tiny bit of warm water and kneaded it like bread dough, adding some ultramarine blue for colour bit by bit till I reached the shade I was after. You can see by this picture how soft the soap is. I think this method is the best when the soap is quite fresh.

Then I used my cookie scoop to help form the dough into balls. I actually gave up on the scoop pretty quickly because I wanted different sized balls. It was like playing with sticky playdoh-  so quick and easy! I rolled about 1-1/2 pounds of balls in just a few minutes. Much easier than the previous method I’d tried.  I did get soap all over my camera taking this next picture. My hands were completely covered. Luckily soap cleans off really well

It worked so well that I went ahead and grated down the other half of the batch and used ultramarine purple for colour. (I didn’t get photos of the purple balls- oops!) Then I just made a fresh batch of unscented soap to embed them into. It’s a bit tricky knowing when to pour and how to to get the layers of balls in the mold at different heights. The mold is only half full here and I’m waiting impatiently to pour more base over it.

Here’s the mold completely filled and all ready to be put to bed. It needs to do its thing for about 24 hours to complete its transformation into soap,  so I’ll add photos of the cut soaps tomorrow. So far, so good!

Update Nov 1:  Here’s a photo of a few of the cut soaps. I’m quite happy with how they turned out. The little flecks inside the balls are tiny bits of soap from its previous life as a swirled soap.

My daughter Alison is the inspiration for these. She’s a big fan of the Twilight books and movie(s). Her bedroom walls are covered with posters of Edward and the rest of the vampires. Last Christmas, I bought her some Twilight-inspired pendants made from Scrabble letter tiles. They were a big hit, so this year I decided to try to make them myself. Alison suggested that I make them into cellphone charms, so I ordered some little coloured looped cords with split rings on the ends.

Once I got the hang of how to trim the pictures properly, they were really fun to make! I just ordered more supplies. I think I’m going to sell lots of these at the craft fairs this fall.

I added coconut, sunflower and castor oils to give the soap some nicer qualities like a bubbly, creamy lather. 100% lard or bacon fat would be great for laundry and dish soaps, but I wanted it to be more luxurious and soft on the skin for bathing. I’ve been researching scent blends, and Stacie said she liked mint, so I went with Lemongrass, spearmint and peppermint. It’s a winner!

I was worried about how to get the colour right, and ended up deciding on a mixture of iron oxide and mica. It looked so great in the pan after I poured it, just like a slab of fatty bacon! Lucky guess on the colours. You never know how it’s going to come out in the final soap, so I was really happy.

I had to wait overnight to find out if the colours survived and whether it would look right cut into bars. Here’s what happened:

I couldn’t resist the frying pan shot. Here’s a normal shot showing a bit more of the cut edges:

So, now it has to cure for at least 4 weeks to get the final, mild soap. I keep picking them up and smelling them. I want to try them…NOW! I sure hope I can duplicate this, because I think it’s going to be a great seller at the craft fairs in November and December. I will probably use lard or palm oil due to the lower cost but I don’t think it will alter the final results much. I have to find a scent that men will like because this would be a perfect guy gift, doncha think?  Thanks for looking!

Wild Baby Powder

My idea for this was a white soap with pink and blue swirls, but I was trying out Labcolours fushia and brilliant blue and had no idea how much to use or what colours I would end up with. I saved too much soap back for the swirly bit so I ended up with drippy and swoopy look instead.  Once I poured it in, I decided not to actively swirl it and see what happened. I like it anyway!  It’s definitely different. The fragrance was overwhelming when I made this one. I was afraid I’d overdone it, but now it has mellowed. My daughter Alison loves this one.

Maple Swirl

Here I was trying to make some maple scented soap for my son Devon. He is big on maple. I used Iron Oxide golden brown to get the colour and it came out exactly like I wanted. This was my first try using a flat slab-type mold. (really just a plastic Rubbermaid drawer organizer tray from Save-On Foods) I was so pleased with the resulting swirls too. The scent seems to be developing more as it cures. I can’t wait to try this one:

Here it is in the mold before cutting:

This next one is the second batch of my Beer Soap. The first batch I used cocoa for colour and it came out dark brown. It smells great but I wanted a lighter colour, so I added some dried carrot powder (grated carrots dried out in a low oven and then ground in a spice grinder) I LOVE the way this one turned out with the translucent look. It’s made with Red Racer Pale Ale. The scent  is a trio of citrus. I just love citrus soaps.

The other day, someone messaged me through Etsy to tell me she featured my Chocolate Monkey Solid Bubble Bath on a treasury. A treasury is a collection of items that an Etsy member puts together to show off items they like on a certain part of the site. I was thrilled to be included. How fun! You can see the treasury HERE. It will stay up till Friday Sept 25th.